“It’s so hard to know where to get engaged.”
“People are exhausted with these politics.”
“I don’t feel either party gives a damn about me.”
“The politicians are all in it for the money they can get.”
“I don’t see a reason even to vote this time.”
“I hardly recognize this country… it’s like everything has turned upside down!”
I’ll bet you’re hearing comments like these, too. People have had it up to here about what, if anything, we can do as citizens and neighbors to find shared meaning and progress together. So let’s meet some people who have discovered some good answers about how to live in these maddening times.
D R U M R O L L ... Introducing Ms. Deborah Taylor
By early 2020, Deborah Taylor, a public school teacher in Ft. Collins, Colorado, was caught in her chosen profession’s growing challenges; she had begun questioning her future. She even found herself with premature thoughts about retirement.
In March, Covid-19 had spread into the U. S., and no one knew what to do. On March 11, it took two Utah basketball players out of action before their NBA game. Commissioner Adam Silva took bold action to protect players and the public, canceling the remaining pro-basketball season. That day, professional baseball, soccer, and hockey halted their seasons; the NCAA canceled March Madness.
Two weeks later, Colorado’s public schools entered lockdown; New York City, Covid’s most significant epicenter, led the national outbreak.
Deborah lost contact with the eager faces and wondrous eyes of her eighteen second-graders and their intriguing differences, many of whom had international parents who studied at the nearby agricultural university. Everyone struggled to improvise home instruction while using the new Google Meet platform. Deborah saw the wide-open gazes of her students fade into dots on a screen or, worse, disappear on the other side of emailed lessons.
Around her, teachers began leaving their jobs in what soon seemed like droves, but then, a most unusual thing happened to her. Suddenly, as she battled to design and develop student contact and instruction strategies, the scenes in New York gripped her.
- In New York, the virus struck neighborhoods densely populated by people with no immunity. EMTs, ambulance drivers, firefighters, doctors, nurses, and aides, all struggled without adequate protective gear through endless hours to save the sick and the dying. Hospital administrators fought for ventilators for their besieged intensive care units.
Nearly a third of hospitalized Covid patients died in those opening weeks. Trailer trucks served as morgues for the overflow of bodies. Neighbors applauded from their windows and porches as frontline workers traveled to and from their exhausting work. Citizens and news commentators started calling these workers “American heroes.”
As Deborah Taylor — Ms. Taylor, the teacher, chatted with me, she confessed, “I asked myself … What can I do? What can I do? All of a sudden, it came to me. The answer infused me. I’m a frontline worker! I have these skills…my craft. This is what I can do.”
The thought hit her with great force: “I’m an American hero!”
Deborah adopted it as her mantra, saying it in the mirror each morning — “I’m an American hero!”.
She planned her Google Meet home-connection classes to be ready by August. In doing so, Deborah improvised; she learned that she needed to reduce her lessons to ten-minute sound bites to keep her students attracted and engaged. Previous experience as a slam poet helped her become an on-screen performer. She cut coursework into minor, vivid episodes with on-screen use of her classroom materials, among them a fishbowl with a big question mark. “We ask questions. We find answers!”
Deborah continued, “I’m always teaching by learning the art of inquiry with them. ‘How is paper made? How long does a marker work until it runs out of ink? All eyes are riveted when I’m coming up with an answer.
“Where do babies come from? How are birds related to dinosaurs? Why did Hitler kill so many people?’
“The kids honor each other’s questions. I tell them I don’t know the answers to everything, but I will find the answers to your questions and always tell you the truth.”
“I haven’t missed a day of work since,” she says three and one-half years later. “I continue the mantra every morning. I’m so full of purpose. I have a skip in my step every day. I have enough credit for three PhDs; I’ve eased back, but I’m retaking many courses. I’m happy! My students’ parents are happy. I have learned how to set up the kids’ discoveries for the ‘aha!’ moment — this magical moment when they find the answer to a question that comes from their curiosity. We have community time every day. It’s just me at the level of a seven-year-old, questioning. Even when, with our masks, we couldn’t see each other smiling. But above the masks, all the light within comes through the eyes. The kids get that.”
Her broader sense of her breakthrough continues. “I learned to do the right kind of teaching. Because I love America, I love all we are. My whole career has been about uplifting, seeing, honoring, celebrating our differences.”
So, about those frustrations in my first paragraph: Deborah searched locally, finding powerful ways to engage. She learned that trying new things created the future for the kids. She’s not in it for the money. She’s not exhausted. And she’s loving and shaping, locally, her place in our upside-down country.
As I write this, I hope you’ve enjoyed meeting her. I hope she and her creativity energize you!
Deborah Taylor … Ms Taylor — the teacher, is truly an American hero!