For most of last week, I was in denial about how a teacher strike would upend my family life. That came to an abrupt end Friday afternoon with a single email from my son’s fifth grade teacher that described the final moments in the classroom for the foreseeable future.
She wrote: “As we were saying at the end of the day today, ‘See you when I see you and I hope it’s very soon!’”
My heart sank, tears welled, and I slumped at my desk.
I looked out my office window and tried to untangle the root of my sadness. Was it for my kids? The teachers? The state of San Francisco’s public school system?
Or was it self-pity?
The teacher’s email explained that students were given the option of taking their Chromebooks home to access their Google Classroom and apps. Another message from the PTA described work packets and “on-line instructional materials.” Who, exactly, would be tasked with making my kids do their packets?
Oh, right: me. So clearly, perhaps selfishly, that’s who I was saddest for.
By dinner time Friday I put my brave dad mask back on, and with my wife, explained to our kids our virtuous hopes for the teachers strike, to not only survive, but thrive for however long it took.
“It’s giving Covid,” my daughter said. She wasn’t wrong.
By Sunday, we had a plan in place. My son would go to one of the numerous soccer camps that sprung up across the city almost instantly in response to the strike, seeing as how San Francisco’s soccer industrial complex is ready to profit whenever parents are stuck. My daughter, a high school freshman, is more complicated. Reading isn’t the hard part in my family. If I can pry devices from my kids’ algorithm-addicted eyes and screen-attached fingers and replace them with books, they will devour them. She can read the strike away.
I’m most concerned about my daughter’s math. She’s taking trigonometry. I told her that we’d visit an old pandemic-era friend, Khan Academy, the online classroom my daughter hated but I found incredibly helpful during the pandemic.
“Khan stole half of my soul during Covid,” she responded.
Well, that leaves an entire half intact, I thought.
This morning, my wife woke up first and got breakfast going. She went into work today, while I am taking care of our kids.
“I feel weirdly sick about the strike this morning,” she said, our kids were still asleep.
“Why?” I asked, knowing the answer.
“Because it's the first day, and there’s no end in sight,” she said. “It’s a feeling of uncertainty.”
After I dropped my son off at soccer camp, and headed home to get my daughter started on our plan, I stopped at Daniel Webster Elementary. Teachers were gathering up their signs and practicing their chants. They looked ready to dig in.
However reluctantly, I guess we are too.
