Separation

Going back to work after a long vacation is always hard. There is so much excitement and anticipation leading up to the December holidays that when they’re over, and everyone goes back to their daily routines, we’re ripe to fall into a depressive state.

January is the darkest of months.

For my family and, I imagine, for some of our students’ families this may be the case, too.

Separation is hard. No matter how old my adult children are it is always hard to go our separate ways at the end of our time together. Until recently, I hadn’t thought too much about this except to accept it as an idiosyncrasy of our family dynamic. I hadn’t analyzed or therapized (new word!) what separating meant to our family unit. It’s just what we go through every time we’re together because we all live in different places and, no matter how much we want to be together or closer to each other it doesn’t look like that’s going to change any time soon. So, at the end of our time together, we’re always thinking ahead to the next time we’ll be together.

I had not made this connection to how our students deal with separation from their families until now. I regret not being more sympathetic to some students’ difficulty separating from their family circles. I am thinking of one student in particular who was with me for two consecutive years. The first year was particularly hard for them; they cried every morning at the beginning of the day for most of that year. The second year was the same with gradual, but steady improvements during the first couple of months of the school year. Still it was hard and I couldn’t understand why they were so fraught with anxiety about being at school and not at home.

Now I understand, after talking and thinking about this more with my children and husband. I regret not having more empathy for my student. I am reminded how important it is to put ourselves in others’ shoes so that we can better communicate and support our students, friends and families.

Lately, I’ve been growing a “suck it up butter cup” mentality that is as out of character for me as it is unhelpful to others. Feeling constantly overwhelmed and under-appreciated tends to give rise to anger, which makes us less capable of feeling for others when they are distressed.

And, our students are distressed.

Teachers are distressed.

Families are distressed.

This is not a time to create barriers.

This is a time to build bridges. To nurture empathy. To reclaim our humanity because so much out there is conspiring to strip it away from us.

I fell pray to this real life conspiracy – the US-THEM dichotomy – that threatens to break us apart. To make us less compassionate, which creates trauma.

We are traumatized by the lack of humanity around us. So much so, that we become immune to acts of injustice. We turn our heads away from people in distress.

But we need to show up. We need to show up for our students. We need to embrace our humanity and hold on to our students. They need us, no matter how hard they try to prove that they don’t.

We need each other. Human beings cannot survive alone. We need community. We need to include others into our communities, especially others different from us.

Take deep breaths. This is lofty work.

Our students are not to blame for our distress. It’s a systemic problem. It is embedded within societal structures working overtime to undermine the good in the world that is our natural state. We were never meant to live separately from each other. We were never meant to raise our children in isolated pods. We were never meant to create artificial barriers around race, class, sex, age, disability, identity and other societal markers.

As educators we are tasked with a very important job: to raise the next generation as strong, independent thinkers who see humanity above all else. I believe the next few years will be critical to the survival of humankind. If we don’t turn things around soon, it may be too late later.

I know this sounds like gloom and doom and, in some ways, it is. But I’m actually feeling and thinking the opposite. Embracing, empathizing, being compassionate are all positive actions. Instead of fighting each other, our students and their families, let’s revolutionize the system and undo the organizations and systems that are oppressing us.

What will your contribution be?