A Reflection from our Staff
Lesson Learned
I have had one career for 33 years—teacher. To be kept away from my passion has been painful for me. Coming to school each day at Holy Comforter Preschool and Kindergarten is life-giving and life-fulfilling. As educators, we hold the sanctity of our school deeply in our souls, but still we are people. As people, we all have our own lives and families that are affected by tragedies, similar to those all over the world. But as teachers, we always dropped that baggage outside the front door of our school. It was there for us to pick up on our way out but we would not allow it to affect the preciousness of our school for its students.
Our school is sacred and we make a conscious effort to fill the halls with love, laughter, and learning all surrounded by the wonders of childhood. It is something I fiercely protected. But now, the outside world has invaded our “second home,” and we are unable to do anything about it. A pandemic is dictating our time away from our school family, calling all the shots and I find this angering and frustrating.
As a teacher, we automatically move into how to “fix” it mode; how to proceed. It was at that moment that I realized the building itself is not what created the need for us to protect. The children and their childhood is who and what we hold dearly, so if this pandemic is keeping the children out of the school, then we must put the teachers into their homes.
I found myself setting up a YouTube channel and posting videos of myself in crazy costumes, performing science experiments, and reading bedtime stories. Why? It would have been easy to say as others have said to me, “It’s just preschool.” But it’s not…it’s childhood. It is letting our children know we are not forgetting them. We continue to want this relationship with them, and we are not abandoning them when so many other things have been taken away from them through this pandemic. Their childhood, their memories, are still something we will fiercely protect. And I, for one, feel so empowered that we did not allow this preciousness to be taken away from them or us.
Linda Meyers
HCEP and K Director
