The New Holding

I’ve been thinking of schools as holding environments for years, but never has the relevance of the concept been clearer to me than now. Schools don’t just house students; they are essential containers for adults.

They have walls and offices and doors; they have bells that mark beginnings and endings; they have rules and consequences and procedures; they are committed to keeping people safe. They are literally boxes that divide up space and time and roles and responsibilities. When teachers enter, they know what to do. When they exit, they at least in theory can leave the school world behind.

All that is gone.

Instead, it seems that educators are now standing in their own vast private expanses filled with limitless need.

And no horizon in sight.

The limitless need has always been there — there’s really no end to what students can take from their teachers. What’s new is there’s no container for those needs. And no container for the people whose job it is to satisfy those needs.

So teachers are running around in these endless fields

working

and worrying

and wearing out

as they try to contain everyone and everything all by themselves.

Students are scattered all over. They’re living in environments that may not be conducive to learning, that may not actually be safe. They’re sick and caring for sick relatives and grieving. They’ve disappeared, fallen completely out of touch. They need what individual teachers can’t give them, like therapy or hours of individual support or technological aid or morning wake-up calls or the motivation to work on their writing instead of playing video games. They’ve even got parents who need help from teachers or are so tired of hearing from those teachers about their slacking kids that they, too, have stopped communicating.

Teachers can’t hold all this. They can’t be the container that schoolhouses used to be.

So what does the new holding look like?

The answer, as I see it, derives from these questions:

What does the new holding look like for you now?

How are you dividing up your time? (Are you?) Whose needs are pulling you? Whose demands are pushing you? When does your anxiety spike? When are you relaxed and in the flow? (I can hear some teachers laughing right now.) When do your arms start to burn from (figuratively) holding too much?

Next question:

What should the new holding look like for you?

Where does the possible turn into the impossible? How can you pare your responsibilities down so you always stay within the possible range? Where do your responsibilities end and students’ (and parents’) begin? What limits — beginning times, ending times, unplugged times, deadlines — are you willing to accept and, importantly, enforce? What structures can you build around yourself that can contain you (and, by extension, your students)? How can you find peace with your answers?

Final and extremely important question:

Who will hold you?

So. A possible mantra for this week, to ask yourself right before you get out of bed in the morning:

What will the new holding look like for me today?