Seeing Isn't Believing...Believing Is Seeing

 

We have a tradition in my house around the holidays that we don't begin to celebrate one holiday until the previous holiday is over. Normally, this isn't too difficult, however, around Thanksgiving and Christmas, it gets a little harder because of the anticipation. The purpose of this tradition is to embrace the moment and celebrate giving thanks before the wonderment of the Christmas season. Regardless of your faith and the holidays you choose to celebrate, this tradition holds up in a variety of scenarios because it forces you to be in the moment. During this time of year, for me it means not hanging the lights, decorating the house, listening to festive music, or watching seasonal movies until Thanksgiving is over. When it is, however, I'm all in. When many people are out Black Friday shopping, I do a binge watch of my favorite Christmas classics like National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation, A Christmas Story, It's a Wonderful Life, and of course Die Hard. I will watch these movies repeatedly during the month of December and every time I do, I am reminded of the moment I am in  The other night, I was watching The Santa Clause (another classic) and the line, "Seeing isn't believing. Believing is seeing" struck a chord with me. At that moment, I turned to my bride and said, I know what my next blog is about. I didn't elaborate any further because I wanted her to read this at the same time everyone else was.

I'll be the first to admit that this year has been really difficult professionally for me. Trying to educate children during a global pandemic has a funny way of ripping out your soul and making it into mincemeat. You're constantly left with feelings of inadequacy, doubt, anxiety, and fear not only for yourself, but also for the students that you are trying to serve. You want to provide a rigorous learning environment for you kids so they can get something out of their education, but at the same time, you want to acknowledge the social and emotional issues that they are facing in a critical developmental stage of their life. We struggle on the reg with teaching in a pandemic, but also with trying to understand how students will learn in a pandemic. Additionally, many of us are also trying to parent during a pandemic and when you combine all these factors together, we are left feeling exhausted and baffled about how we are going to come out of this whole thing.

That is where the quote from The Santa Clause comes in. Up until the pandemic, we BELIEVED we were doing a good job because we could SEE the results. We had engaged students in our classrooms doing the work and then demonstrating their progress through a variety of different projects, assessments, essays, etc. Seeing was believing because we had benchmarks we could operate on. In the pandemic education experience, however, these benchmarks are gone and we need to shift our focus. That is where the second half of the quote, "Believing is seeing" comes into play. It is important to embrace this not only as educators, but also parents because it may be the only way that we can get through this current reality we are living in. We need to BELIEVE that we are doing whatever it takes to help our young people get through this insane time. This includes, but is not limited to cutting ourselves and our kids some slack, helping them navigate their feelings and emotions, and putting a premium on helping them cope with their mental health. Let these benchmarks take the front seat and push everything else off to the side. What we may SEE as a result are kids who are better prepared to take on the world that will face them when they reach adulthood. The key in all of this is BELIEVING that these things are more important than what we traditionally focus on in schools which is content and curriculum.

This all may be a pipe dream that was inspired by some silly seasonal movie, but I am of the mindset that it is not. I don't need to see this focus on social and emotional learning in action to believe that it will have an impact. I actually believe that choosing to make this a priority not only during the pandemic, but a regular staple of what we do in schools will actually yield better results overall. Some might argue that this is "touchy-feely" stuff that should be left up to families to teach their children, but we also have to come to the realization that some kids don't have this support at home. In the spirit of equity, it is incumbent on schools to fill in the gaps.

A crisis is a great time to re-evaluate our priorities and the COVID-19 pandemic has provided us with a golden opportunity in education to focus on what we want to be BE rather than what we have to DO. It's going to take a movement of educators and parents to get the ball rolling so we can shift from the traditional thinking of what a school's purpose is, but count me in as another person wanting to lend a hand. If you aren't there yet, might I suggest a Tim Allen Christmas movie to inspire you?

#OwnYourEpic #ONWARD