As many of you know, my undergraduate degree is in music education. I will never forget my first day of teaching, just a few short months after graduating from college. I had been going in to school for several weeks prior to that day: designing the perfect beginning-of-the-year lesson plans, rearranging my classroom, purchasing supplies, decorating bulletin boards. As a music teacher in a Catholic school, I would be teaching students in Kindergarten through Eighth Grade. Specialty teachers didn’t begin our classes until the second week of school, so that classroom teachers could establish their norms during the first few days without the disruption of changing classrooms. So, on my first day of teaching, I got up early, listening to my clock radio, as, yes, it was prior to iPhone years. The station I listened to had comedic DJs that typically joked about nonsense between playing top 40 songs. That day, something seemed off, as they were more serious than usual and talking about New York. At 6am, it didn’t phase me. I got ready for work and, after pouring a cup of coffee, they were still talking about New York. At that point, I turned on the television. I watched just as the second Twin Tower was hit by an airplane and started to billow smoke. The hosts of the news programs were still uncertain about what was happening, but it definitely wasn’t some freak accident. I got into the car, drove through the hushed city at 7am, and arrived at school. Walking in the door of the school the building was quiet. I walked up to the Teacher’s Lounge, where everyone was huddled around the TV, eyes glued to the news, as more information became available. Sitting in stunned silence, we continued to watch the now famous footage of September 11th, 2001.
All those wonderful lesson plans, beautiful bulletin boards, hopes and ideals no longer mattered. The world was in chaos, and the United States was at the heart of it. 2,000 miles away from New York, D.C., and Pennsylvania, it seemed like a terrible disaster movie, where Will Smith or some other actor would soon appear and save the day. Instead, it was a day of fear, as students began to arrive and were directed to their classrooms.
9/11 was a moment that changed and shaped our lives – even the lives of the Class of 2020, although most were too young to remember it. For those of us a little older, this event is equivalent to knowing where we were when the Space Shuttle Challenger blew up, when the first Moon Landing happened, or when John F. Kennedy was killed. This generation will remember COVID-19 in a similar way. For educators and students alike, the day that will be encapsulated in their memory may be the one on which they heard that all classes would move online for the rest of the academic year – and that they would have only a weekend to prepare for the shift. On 9/11, we scrapped our planned lessons, and instead gathered in the field, praying and singing. Parents began picking up their kids, as it became clear that the terrorist attacks weren’t isolated and we didn’t know if they would occur in cities across the country or just on the East Coast. That day, the rest of that week, and the year were shaped by that event. Things would never be the same. There would be no going back to normal as before 9/11. This academic year is similarly like no other. We turn to prayer, hope that people are learning in the midst of interrupted classrooms, lack of access to specialists, supplies and meals. 9/11 provided fear for a short term, but COVID-19, with the uncertainty about how it will evolve in warm weather, what it will take to have “herd immunity”, when a vaccine will be developed, and what the results of loosening restrictions will have, has fed a culture of anxiety. Teachers and students are trying to do what needs to be done now, as well as prepare for an unknown future in education.
Our first reading at daily and Sunday Masses throughout the Easter season comes from the Acts of the Apostles. Throughout Acts, the disciples take on a teaching role, sharing the story of Jesus and getting their students excited about the man who shaped the world in a new way by teaching about and giving real life examples of healing and reconciliation, caring for the sick, reaching out to the outcasts and the vulnerable, raising the dead and challenging structures of injustice and exclusion. It was an exciting and dangerous time, often resulting in martyrdom. I imagine what these early Church leaders would have been like in a Zoom classroom, trying to share a life-changing event and dealing with technical issues and distracted disciples.
Teaching today might not be nearly as dangerous, as schools are shut down and education is happening in a variety of online formats, relying on parents to assist children in subjects they haven’t studied in years. But it is still challenging. All of those courses in classroom management, using types of teaching that work for multiple learning styles, trying to do group projects or direct band, orchestra and play rehearsals, just don’t translate the same way over the internet as they do in person. Teachers are necessarily multi-tasking as they teach their classes and their own children, sharing the single household computer. Learning new technology without the benefit of in-services and developing new lesson plans that can be communicated over video, all being done in real time, is one of the many challenges educators are facing, not to mention being the counselors, advisors, and social workers for some of their students.
In the Gospel today, we hear Jesus say to the disciples, “It was not you who chose me, but I who chose you and appointed you to go and bear fruit that will remain, so that whatever you ask the Father in my name he may give you.” Both the Gospel and the reading from Acts remind us that we are called to a vocation. As we celebrate St. Matthias, may all educators be renewed in their calling to go and bear fruit that will remain, no matter how difficult the circumstances. And, may all educators know that they are loved by God, in particular during this difficult time in education.
As we celebrate St. Matthias today, a Mass for Educators will be streamed live from Saint Thomas More Chapel. May all educators be renewed in their calling to go and bear fruit that will remain, no matter how difficult the circumstances. Follow the link to view the Mass:
https://stm.yale.edu/youtubelive-mass