From Our Lonely Islands and Isolated Shores: How One Teacher Found Hope Through His Students During the 2020-21 School Year
A small stone sits on my classroom desk, a gift a student I taught years back had plucked from the shores of Walden Pond when she had visited Massachusetts with her family. She brought it back to Ohio knowing I would appreciate a piece of a place I had spoken at length about in my American Literature class with a sort of religious reverence but had never seen.
Thoreau found freedom and a renewed spirit during his two-year isolation at Walden in the 1840’s and decided to write about it. I read those words in my college days and they enlivened my spirit and pointed me towards a career in teaching now almost two decades ago. I figured that there must be magic in these books I was reading by the way they spoke. It was like I suddenly possessed some special skeleton key that would unlock just about anything. I was compelled to pass that magic on to others.
Of course, I learned soon into my career that not every day in the classroom would I or my students be as delightfully inspired as Mr. Keating and his students from Dead Poets Society. Yet, I have pressed onward all these years, because, when I am open to seeing it, the light of dreams still flashes in the eyes of students I get to work with. Their vitality and interest in life’s learning keeps me going, keeps me fighting for them. And as I am about to close the books on the most unsettling and bizarre year I have ever known, I must admit in all my justifiable pessimism that the saints and poets and good soldiers of this world are still being born and we will be okay in the end. We must be. But the hardest times are ahead.
“From what I’ve heard, there’s no way we’re returning to school,” a colleague of mine said on a Friday back in mid-March last year, just before our school’s scheduled spring break. At the time, I had become so disinterested in news and politics that I really did not know what was going on. A strange cold virus? And sure enough, after that extended two week period of waiting at home, it was decided so.
Students at my school would wrap up the year working remotely from home using their school-issued laptops. Long used to interfacing on an online learning platform, it was not a difficult transition for most of them. Teachers would teach from home (not something we were used to), barred from entering the school. Spring sports and state testing were canceled. Senior graduation was held outside, diplomas handed out in a sort of drive-through parade.
Image by Kathy Wise
The remainder of the 2019-20 school year consisted of posting a couple assignments per week and keeping track of student progress from the kitchen table. I kept Zoom office hours that were lightly attended. The only difficult part of remote learning ultimately was trying to reach the fairly large number of students reluctant to complete assignments. I found myself making dozens of phone calls to students and parents at all hours of the day. Were they taking advantage of the distance and the strangeness of the circumstance? Under the impression the work was optional? Or had they suddenly found themselves lost and wallowing in the new darkness?
Even while I worked from the comfort of home I found myself falling into despair. I rarely slept from many late nights scouring the news for understanding. I let my health go. I stopped running after the marathon I had trained for months to race was canceled. I worried about the safety of my family and friends, but also lost track of them. My island was dark and I didn’t want company.
But it was soon summer and time to get back to coaching. I’ve headed up the girls cross country program at my school for almost as long as I’ve taught there, about 15 years. As much as I look forward to getting back each summer with the team, I was not in the right headspace. High school sports were given the green light with certain restrictions. And there were no guarantees as the fall approached what would happen next. How could we go into training for a fall season that could be taken away from us at any time?
I pulled myself together and showed up at that first scheduled summer practice. I was ready and eager to see who had shown up and how they felt about things. I was working hard to mask my worry. But there they were, gathered at the old meeting spot, smiling, stretching, laughing in the mid-June sun, delighted to be granted the chance to see each other again.
Image by Kathy Wise
As coach, I was supposed to keep my distance and discourage unnecessary close interaction. That soon proved impossible. In trying to give my instructions and overview for the start of the preseason I asked them to come my way, close enough to be in earshot, and they immediately packed in together like they always did. It was at least reassuring to see that no one was irrationally afraid to contract any illness. Instead, they were willing to stick it out together like a team.
“Okay, well maybe not that close right now,” I said, with a hesitant laugh, then continued. “Look, we have to understand that tomorrow is not guaranteed this season, so we just have to focus on running for the love of it and for our time together.” I looked around and each of them seemed to agree with what I was saying, but they also responded without qualms.
I had a few runners who had trained day and night for months to make their dreams of placing high in the state championship. I would have been crushed to think that chance might be gone. But my team was not only ready for anything, they were ready to work with even more determination and face head-on the unknown horizon before them. That was my first realization that the kids would be helping me get through all this.
Image by Kathy Wise
We had a great time at that first practice catching up with one another. Sara*, my top returning runner, had competed at the state tournament last year and was shooting for All-Ohio honors, top 20, this year. Despite the track season being canceled, she trained harder than ever and was running personal bests in casual workouts. I was so happy to see her drive to succeed still there, undeterred. A couple of my other varsity runners blew me away when I found out that they had completed a running challenge they found on Tik-Tok where they ran one mile each hour for 24 hours straight to complete 24 miles in a day. My daughter and I came up with some fun running challenges for the team as well: a neighborhood trash pick up run, a mult-iteam scavenger hunt, mini-triathlon, and others. But most of them had no problem finding their own ways to keep in good training so far. They had all been training. They all seemed okay. The freshman group was quiet and slightly nervous, as per usual. Melissa, Ellie, and Abby, the team jokesters, were as snarky as ever.
The true barometer of the team, however, comes from A-dog. Ally is the heart of the team. She’s the one who is always positive and lets nothing get to her. I had to see how she was doing. She’s not the fastest on the team, but has the most love for what we do. She has the faith and rosy-eyed outlook of a child, and when she’s around, everyone is better off for it. “Hey, Coach! Are you ready for a fun season?” She greeted me with a fistbump. I sure hoped so.
Practices went well over summer. It was relieving to be able to run together on the trails or roadsides without any obvious signs of anything abnormal going on in the world. I read that in some places runners were being forced to compete in masks and passing out from oxygen debt. Out running in the sun and open air we could be free and forget about “the wackiness,” as Melissa liked to put it. I suppose the hardest part was the physical distance I chose to keep from my athletes. No hugging, no high fives. I didn’t feel comfortable covering up my face if I didn’t have to, particularly around kids I had known for years, my own daughter, a junior on the team, for one. So I spent just about every moment with them at that so-called safe distance. I knew that running and sunlight and good laughs together was good for them and that was enough.
August came around and it was time to face the new school year. Despite the uncertainty with the season, cross country was moving along and our first meet was coming up. Like most area schools, we would meet in person for the 2020-21 school year with students having the option to learn remotely if preferred. The large majority opted to return to school, and before I knew it, the classrooms and hallways were full of masked teenagers. Because it was held somewhat controversial by some to conduct a full time return to school, the administration was sure to provide an assurance of safety. There were a few more interesting safety measures put in place. Every surface of the building had apparently been sprayed with an invisible antiviral “magic water.” Books checked out and returned from the library would be wiped down and then put into a 72 hour quarantine before they could be reshelved. It was all so uncomfortable and strange. I almost passed out in my first days trying to talk all period through a thick piece of cloth. Worst was that I had the hardest time getting to know my students. I could not connect names to faces. They were quieter and I couldn’t tell whether they were engaged. That would improve some, but it took a while. It did prove better than continuing to stay at home. It even got to a point where things were almost like normal.
I taught a creative writing class in the fall and it proved to be the scene of my second little satori. It was a class of about 15, all quiet and did whatever I told them. I knew a few of them from past classes. Creative writing class is typically very alive and interactive and I was bummed to see that we were all so hesitant to engage with each other. But then one day I issued a challenge. “I am offering an opportunity for those interested to attempt to draft a 50,000 word novel. You’ll work independently while the rest of us read and write a few short stories.” To my amazement, half of them raised their hands to give the challenge a try. Cory was one of them. He could really just lean into the keys and type away. And that’s what they did every day.
One particular day, he called me over to read his draft. He had this elaborate psychological thriller dual plotline going on that he was really proud of, but he was stuck about 20 pages in. “Mr. Wise, I have it to where the killer shows up at the main character’s doorstep, but I don’t know what he’s gonna do next.” I suggested that maybe it wasn’t a problem, but an opportunity for a cliffhanger.
“Take us back in time to tell us more about the killer’s history and motivation.”
We talked it out some, and then he came back the next day with several pages of great backstory.
I had a few students that just suddenly opened up and started writing like crazy. I entered the class into a poetry contest later and half of them won top recognition, even prize money. But I really was shocked the day two of my seniors told me they had decided to study writing in college and become teachers. I looked out and saw the world before me in creative decline, headed for economic and social doom, complete with strange super viruses going around and the global elite making a killing from our distress. These kids simply saw the world they built for themselves in front of them. Even if they have to plot from their isolated shores, what else were they to have but their goals and ambitions?
Image by Kathy Wise
Time coaching my athletes after school at least gave me the chance for some relative normalcy. The cross country season progressed nicely with little issue and we were able to compete each week. By November, Sara and two runners from the boys team had qualified for the state tournament like we hoped. It was a rare beautiful, warm and sunny day at the race course in Columbus as Sara and I jogged around to watch the boys race. Her race was next. In the past, she would be a ball of nerves at this point, but that day, right before the biggest and final race of her high school career, she was smiling and relaxed. I told her as much and we laughed. “If you place in the top five, I’ll jump into that gross looking pond over there,” I said on a whim.
“Okay. Bet,” She said.
A sudden joy came over me, then and there, seeing her so content. All the hard work and commitment had paid off, despite what was going on in the world. There was no need to talk any more about race strategy. No pep talk needed. This was the end of my coaching time with her and all had been said. Soon,it was time for her to jog off to warm up for her race and I just stood there amid the crowd for a while, my sunglasses well secured to my teared up face.
Back in school, we were beginning to set our sights on Christmas break. My Sophomore English classes had been assigned an argumentative research paper and presentation. We had just finished a rather grim study of Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 (and, my God, this was the year the ridiculously far-fetched “mechanical hound” from that book became a reality. Look it up!), so I decided on a much lighter theme for the paper: I called it “Awarding Greatness.” Students were to select a group or individual in popular culture they believed to be worthy of greater recognition and argue the case. They could pick a videogame designer, film maker, artist, or musician, anyone that was maybe nominated for an important award, but never won it.
Image by Kathy Wise
For my example, I thought about all those bands that people argue should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, but have been unfairly snubbed, and I chose one of my personal favorites, the post-punk band Joy Division. Sure, they only made two albums before their singer Ian Curtis died and they became the new wave outfit New Order, but they were groundbreaking! Inspired so many great bands, some who are in the Rock Hall already! I said. I played them “Love Will Tear Us Apart” and didn’t care to show my unabashed excitement. It was all to get them interested in their own underdog artist to defend.
But by the end of the day in one of my final classes, I was giving my talk, and looked at a kid’s water bottle on his desk. It was plastered with a Joy Division sticker. Later that week another student of mine came in wearing a Joy Division t-shirt. I had been feeling so out of touch this year, and again, I was reminded that nothing can stop genuine connections person-to-person being made. With those students mentioned it was coincidental, but I found that my persuasive presentation actually won over another student of mine who told me he was going to see the band (as New Order) with his parents next summer. It will be his first concert.
I had gone through most of the school year seeing so many kids in my classes with eyes downcast and uncertain, off in their own worlds, never knowing for sure what was going on behind the mask. I’ve tried to give them the space to let them think. I’ve tried to wake them up a little, too. This past year has been a sea change for reasons still not yet fully realized. We are at a critical juncture in the course of our human evolution. We have lived from one screen to another. One covered face to another. Never quite connecting, but somehow connected: that’s not the way to live. It’s never been a more essential time to “live deliberately.” As I look back, so many of them have shown me the light, brought me out of my despair. But it’s an uphill battle for all of us.
By early May I had begun to feel like we had all survived, that we had each been able to carry the weight of these baffling times. But then I received an email from my runner Ally’s mother (A-dog, the ever-positive heart of the team!) saying that she had been suffering with bouts of anxiety and had been hospitalized. I sat alone in my classroom listening to the buzz of the lights and the distant rumble from the world outside, and thought, if it can happen to her, it can certainly happen to the rest of us.
School’s almost out now. Ally was able to return to school and will finish just fine. When I talked to her she was back to her old self and excited for the upcoming cross country season. The other day, the one student who surprised me when she came into my class wearing a Joy Division shirt asked me if I ever heard of the film Dead Poets Society.
Thoreau claimed he was never lonely at Walden, but did his loneliness bring him there? Despite the tentative start, I am grateful to have spent this school year with the young people I got to know better each day. They deserve the best life they can get before it all goes away. And maybe, just maybe, some of them will be the ones to help turn back the tide. Will they be able to “[advance] confidently in the direction of their dreams” as Thoreau wished for his readers at the conclusion of his book? I pray for that much now, in light of all that has transpired over this last year. Each of us came calling out from our lonely islands and isolated shores.
*All the names of students have been changed to protect their identity.
