Thread by @TheJLV

Let me take a moment to discuss death.

Death is an important discussion right now given how, even as I type this, another siren blares past my window, another hearse double parks near the funeral home, another set of birds rest in front of the shuttered church.

Teachers who believed in me never heard me complain about the nightly shots ringing through my project buildings. They rarely inquired whether the shots missed their targets or when the murals and candles would find an empty wall.

They believed in me academically. Cool.

They have varying levels of pedagogy, practice, and assessments. My elders would pass from any number of diseases and after-effects from addictions.

When my aunt passed away from leukemia, my counselor had little to say but I’m sure she was glad I attended a prestigious school.

Time and again, we take policies and decontextualize them from the era because compartmentalizing disaster makes it easier to digest. Our political responses to said tragedy get dehumanized, along with the humans who get directly affected.

Discussions in education need humans.

In the middle of this, several of my friends either caught COVID, have COVID, or passed from COVID. A student e-mailed me to apologize for not turning in an assignment because her father passed away and she needed more time. A colleague’s father passed away a few days later.

Hm.

Some of us endeavored to teach children. Some others endeavored to discuss the abstractions of education. But death takes precedent, and its seeming finality can pull many of us into treating life as death.

Observers are smart to respond to the humans and their humanity. Grace.

Let’s reflect. Some of us don’t know how to react with empathy. Others refuse to see their fellow humans as actual people. Maybe that’s something for us to all reflect on before, during, and after this pandemic sweeps more of our family and friends.

We’re not together yet. /fin