It's interesting because..

my philosophy this year has been to "shake things up" take leaps and chances and try new things. And it is always interesting to me how important it is to "shake things up" until you realize that shaking things up so fast that you feel like the world is overflowing-is not necessarily what you hope for either. 

I left school Thursday evening thinking that we would have at least one more day together with the students. And this morning I woke up to a text message and multiple phone calls indicating that our school was closed today. It felt weird-I'm going to be honest. It felt weird going to school today knowing I would not get to see my students or their beautiful smiles. It felt weird seeing the sun shine through the trees and quite honestly not paying much mind to it. It felt weird to enter a school that had a tense type of silence hugging every wall. And it felt weird trying to set up a virtual classroom online when everyone knows that - if you asked me what I do in a day...I could not tell you because there are so many concepts and projects and assignents and reviews and collaborative projects to actually carry out. 

And so what I had to let go of today was this feeling of normalcy. The fact that I won't feel "normal" until this is all over and that could take weeks and weeks. The fact that whenever life is fully shaken up like a milkshake, we often yearn for the steadier life, the one that appears less chaotic. Right now, I long for that feeling of normalcy to come back. But alas, sometimes, things are quite beyond our control or comprehension. 

When I received a spelling test via email from a student who was so sad she couldn't go to school today to take it, I did begin to well up a bit. These are trying times, and it is imperative that as teachers and parents, especially for our little ones, we stay strong and try to carry out normalcy (whatever that may mean for us) in any way that we possibly can.