Next Apocalypse I'm Taking A Sabbatical by Dr. Michael Flanagan

Original Art by Pamela Michaels

How educators have continued teaching, and students have continued learning while this world is crumbling at our feet amazes me.

I always imagined that when the apocalypse came, and the world was in chaos I’d be like Mad Max or Daryl Dixon. Fighting for survival. Killing armed marauders and shooting zombies while doing supply runs. 

In reality, I’m drinking coffee behind my computer, trying to teach students and keep them engaged while cataclysm revolves around them. No matter what age the students we teach are, props to them for submitting assignments to Google Classrooms and logging on to Zoom everyday during this madness. 

Mad Max didn’t have to do schoolwork.

Kids are watching the country literally burn in front of them. Our students are facing unimaginable stressors from the world around them. And that’s not even factoring the possible conditions within their own families and communities: food insecurities, poverty, violence at home and in the neighborhoods. Substance abuse, unemployment. The traditional trauma we expect kids to suppress while we admonish them for not having a pencil.

Here’s their childhood reality: A highly contagious disease. An economic collapse the likes of which has not been seen since the Great Depression. A wannabe dictator as president. Politicians so corrupt, they no longer even try to hide it. Bigots brandishing assault weapons, systemic racism at all levels, brutal murders videoed live, militarized police acting like storm troopers, and elected officials scared of reining them in. Peaceful protests met with tear gas and rubber bullets. In the past two and half months, their world has gone from lock down to revolution. 

Yet, every morning, I prepare lessons and assign them classwork. Teachers have continued teaching, just as the band kept playing while the Titanic sank. Keep the children calm, and redirect their gaze from the dystopian dung heap that is our country. Keep our heads while all those around us are losing theirs. Educate our students to see the real potential of this world. Pay no attention to the crazy man holding the Bible upside down in the tear gas. 

Students may lack technology in this remote learning environment. They may be living with siblings and parents who need to share the devices or the bandwidth. They may be hungry or sick. But, have they completed assignment number 82?  

Teachers have moved from classroom management to catastrophe management. 

What a far cry from when we used to worry about kids playing Grand Theft Auto or Fortnight. Adults used to worry that those games would instill violent behavior in our children, and a disregard for societal norms. Ha. Those games are “child’s play” compared to what’s actually happening around them. As a matter of fact, any survival skills they may have learned playing those games might serve them well right now.

We teachers have been trying our best—from behind our computers—to establish remote learning procedures and technologies that can anchor our kids to a childhood fast slipping away. 

Yet, non-educators clamor for us to issue “real grades.” But with this hellscape as our students’ playground, with all the roadblocks they’re encountering, how are teachers supposed to gauge children’s academic progress? In what world is that fair? I am just glad that these kids have remained sane. And hopeful. And beautiful.

And what about the future? What about the next school year? There’s lots of talk, lots of conjecture, but the truth is, no one knows anything yet. We can’t even plan. 

Any teacher knows the most important day of any year is the first day of school when the kids come in. It‘s the time the tone is set. When school starts fresh and a teacher can take that first step toward shaping the class into the form it will be for the entire year. Next year, with the “blended learning” models we are being threatened with, we may not even meet our students face to face at first. We will be denied that first day, of seeing their faces, of them seeing ours, of feeling that energy, of remembering why we teach and why they love to learn.

As terrible as that is for us-as professional educators-can you imagine how that will feel for the children?

What I’m thinking is, next apocalypse, I’m taking a sabbatical.

Not really of course. Our students need us to help guide them through this crisis. We need to be that rock that they can cling to in a storm. 

So I will be there for this apocalypse, and the next. Besides, with all the budget cuts looming, there won’t be any money for sabbaticals anyway.