Reflection on 2020-2021 School Year - Louisa Palomo Hare

Hi my name is Louisa Palomo Hare, and I am a Kindergarten teacher at Liberty. When Debra asked me what I would like you guys to know about the school year as it starts, my mind was spinning. I thought of our kids and our families. I thought about our staff and I thought about how we go forward from here, and I think to begin with, we have to acknowledge the grief. We are all grieving; whether you are a student or a parent or a teacher, we are grieving the idea of what school used to be. We are grieving all of the missed opportunities that we’ll have; the back to school hugs, the pictures with families, the classroom tours, we are grieving and we have to own that and we have to rely on each other.


When I think about our kids, I think about how loved they are. How loved they are by their families, how loved they are by their teachers. I think about how many lost experiences they have and how that puts an added challenge on me as a teacher trying to connect through a screen and our parents trying to make up for those missed opportunities for their children. I think about how important our modeling as adults is going to be. How we respond to all of the change and all of the uncertainty is what our children will do.


Having taught for 17 years, I can tell you that anything that I do is replicated by the 20 little ones in my room, so it’s a really good mirror from which to remind myself of how I’m acting and I encourage you guys to think about that. You are going to be spending a lot more time with your little ones and they will reflect what you put out into the world. I think about remembering that we’re all resilient. The world is a hard place right now, but when we come together - and I think about this great quote from Miles Adcock - is that healing happens in community. I think the charge is on us, we have to help each other heal, we have to help each other remain resilient. We have to protect the fact that kids are still kids, and kids need to play and kids need to be outside and so knowing that your child will be online in school, know that teachers are doing our best to protect the time in that day for them to look away from their screen, for them to get their wiggles out and to go get their hands dirty. We ask that you help with that. We need to do everything we can to protect this magical age of being a young person in our world before they grow up and they join the world of adults where we carry these burdens.


I think about our families. Our families didn’t ask the world to be upended. Our families didn’t ask to suddenly be teaching their children at home while at the same time trying to work while at the same time trying to keep kids engaged. It’s a tough job and we have to come together. We’ve always wanted to partner with families, we’ve always invited families to come together; we really have to now. I work with teachers and I tell them every day how important it is that we need to continue reaching out, but as families - I want families to reach out to us! I want you to email us and call us and reach out so that we can meet the needs of our children. I want you to know that schools are only as good as the community around them, and we're lucky because we have great community partners in Omaha. Reach out to your school. If you don’t happen to have young kids in school right now, find a neighborhood school, offer your support. Maybe you jump online and read stories to kids, or you sing with us or offer kind words to teachers because we need it.


That leads me into thinking about our teachers. I don’t know a single teacher in the country who says that this is what they signed up for. I don't know a single teacher who got a degree so she could sit behind a screen and look at 20 little faces and patiently coach them as they figure out how to unmute themselves or how to move their juicebox from in front of the camera. That’s not what we signed up for, we're trying our best. Know that we love your children, know that we are trying our best. My heart breaks for so many teachers that I've had conversations with who are amazing, wonderful teachers, but because they haven't learned the technology in the last 5 days, they’re questioning their own great teaching. And I just want teachers out there to know that we are all great teachers, and the technology is going to be a different vehicle that we are using to connect to kids, but our love and our passion for what we do will come through the screen.


I want you to know that if it were safe, we would have you guys here in a minute, welcome you to our messy classroom, welcome you into our busy lives. Every teacher I know wants to be with kids. Every teacher I know fought so hard at back to school night to not to run up and hug the kids like we wanted to, hug the parents. I had parents say I'm not worried about my kids, I'm worried about you, you’re a hugger, how are you gonna handle this? So think about teachers, know that we’re struggling, know that we are doing our absolute best. We are working with imperfect information. We are not master scientists. We don't know what this virus is doing or has done or will do, so give us patience and give us grace and understand that we’re not super amazing tech geniuses, but we will get there soon, we’re not there yet so have patience with us and if you have tips, we welcome those! Again, as much as we want to offer you support with your children, we would love any support you have or any tips for us.


And then while this is a really tough time and it's a really emotional time, I think it’s also an exciting time. I think again about another quote I love, and it’s “not all storms are meant to cause damage. Some are meant to clear our paths.” I’ve been thinking about that a lot lately in terms of this pandemic and I think maybe this is a really amazing time in history where we get to wipe the slate clean and really re-envision what life looks like going forward. For me, that means re-envisioning what public education looks like. For my husband, who is a physician, it’s re-envisioning what public health looks like. It’s re-envisioning what it means to live in a community and so really understanding that, as we go forward, the change is not going to happen by policy makers and it’s not going to happen by political leaders. It’s going to happen by all of us doing the work and coming together and amplifying what is working and celebrating that and really deciding how to decide to re envision our future. Thank you.