The Best We Can…Is Pretty Good

We didn’t ask for this.

We didn’t ask to reinvent our curricula over a weekend. We didn’t ask take decades of in-person teaching experience and transition to all online teaching without proper training. We didn’t ask to see and hear our choirs one-at-a-time in Zoom windows.

But we’re doing the best we can, and the best we can…is pretty good.

Teachers are among the most resilient professionals I know. Resilience is an acquired trait, and one that serves teachers particularly well.

So I’ve seen teachers give up nights and weekends to learn skills. They have shared what they’ve learned with each other – we’re all in this together, after all. They have reinvented, and then often re-reinvented, their teaching plans week by week, day by day, even hour by hour.

That’s pretty good. And it’s important to recognize that, when you feel the weight of all the challenges you’ve faced and will continue to face as an educator.

Tonight my colleagues and I did the very best we could for five composition students at Grand Rapids Community College. With several weeks of coaching, hours of personal tech support, and lots of communication with our excellent media team, we created an online livestream recital. We chatted, cheered each other, and listened to the music our students worked so hard on this semester. It wasn’t the same as an IRL recital. But we did the best we can…and that was pretty good.

Teachers – pat yourselves on the back. You’re doing the best you can, and that’s amazing.