Bizarro World

I've been a fan of Seinfeld since its inception and have probably watched every episode at least a half dozen times. During this COVID-19 school closure, I have had the opportunity to binge watch a variety of shows I've fallen behind on and also catch up on some classics including my favorite Seinfeld episodes. The other night, I came across a great episode called "The Bizarro Jerry" which was the third episode for the eighth season of the show. For those of you that haven't seen it, the title and plot reference the Bizarro-Earth concepts that originally appeared in various comic books published by DC Comics. As I watched the episode, I chuckled at the similarities of it to our current situation in education. One particular scene that struck me was the scene HERE. I had to re-watch it multiple times because it kept on conjuring images of what I have experienced over the last few weeks of our school closure.

As I finished the episode, I just had to get my laptop out and write this blog post because we are all experiencing our own "Bizarro Jerry" moment. While I am not very old (in my own mind), I can't recall ever going through something like this. I've lived through 9-11, the Gulf War, the Challenger Explosion, and other historical events, but none of these have challenged me like the current COVID-19 scenario we are experiencing now. In most historical events, we have each other to lean on and connect with, however, with our current situation, we are practicing social distancing and are relying on virtual connections. For all intents and purposes, we are all experiencing a heightened sense of isolation and learning how to deal with it as we go. The added variable that makes this even more challenging is that while we are working through this situation in our own personal lives, we also have our students who are dealing with this without the life experiences of history to guide them along the way.

History will look back on this time and how we dealt with this crisis and I, for one, want it to look back favorably on the hard working educators who were expected to do a pivot with only hours of advanced notice. I want the narrative of that story to show that educators across the country were able to put a focus on Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs before Bloom's Taxonomy and to ensure that our kids' social and emotional needs were addressed before focusing on the content in our curriculum. In this epic, I want the heroes to be the educators who looked at school through a different lens and helped our students to develop grit and an understanding that when adversity presents itself, we have an opportunity to rise up and thrive in the face of an unforeseeable future. 

The great news is that in this "Bizarro World" that we are currently living in, teachers are answering the call and taking ownership of the narrative rather than letting others tell it for us. For this, I am proud to call myself an educator and I am honored to be a part of a profession who is answering the call to do better and be better in a time of crisis. The challenge that I put forth to you is to archive this moment through pictures, blogging, or some other means so that you can look back and share your story of how you demonstrated the principle of #OwnYourEpic so that you can share it forward with future generations.

#ONWARD