My son doesn’t like it when you smile.

Seriously!   Seriously!  I am killing myself trying to teach your child and nineteen other five year olds on Zoom and this is the feedback that I get.  We are in our third week of starting a brand new school year with brand new students completely online, and are completely overwhelmed, and that was how I ended a conference with a parent today.  To put the start of this year in perspective for those of you who know both Sara and I and our respective balances of work and life, let me describe how hard I am working right now by saying that I am working as hard as regular Sara.  Except that distance learning Sara is working twice as hard as regular Sara, which is both confusing and frightening for anyone who knows how hard regular Sara works.

I wish I could say that I’m sure it will be easier for our teacher friends who are starting soon, but I can’t.  It’s rough.  And not just a little, oh look a new reading curriculum rough, but more like a this is different than anything I have done as a teacher rough.  Everything is different.  Nothing feels familiar.  Zoom is awkward, slow, and glitchy.  Interactions and relationships feel flat and impersonal.  Ok, not quite everything is that bad. Of the the thousands of things teachers do every day, one thing is easier on Zoom, quieting your class.  You might notice I very carefully didn’t say stopping your class from talking.  That is ludicrous.  But yes, the Mute All button does make for a very quiet digital classroom when needed.  At least for the 1 and 1/2 seconds it takes them to notice and turn their microphones back on.  And sorry my K-2 friends, it is the hardest for you.  Sara’s fifth graders can already do an amazing amount of things in week three, and Hannah and Lila have transitioned to the new digital school year easier than we expected, so distance learning definitely works better in general for older kids.  But, and it is a huge but, this only works when students have the equipment, internet and family support needed to make this happen.  We are at a very affluent school and almost every child has a device, internet access, and some sort of adult by their side when needed.  That is such a luxury, and it still feels like we are swimming upstream every day, so it will be so much harder in many places.  Ok, enough teacher talk (except for the smile thing, which we will come back to).

Happy One Year in Brazil to Us!  Crazy!

It is hard for any of the four of us to believe that we have been in Brazil for a year. It has been one of those strange moments in our lives where time has at once slowed to a crawl and also moved at light speed.  We have done so much, and have had so many amazing experiences, that it feels like we must have already been here longer than a year.  And in the same breath, our time here is half over in just a blink and we feel like we are cresting a rolling wave heading towards the backside.

Interestingly, lots of people have expressed sympathy for our situation, as if somehow our experience here has been lessened by having happened in the middle of a pandemic.  While I totally understand that thinking, it is the complete opposite of how we see things.  Of course we would have liked the pandemic not to be happening, but we don’t have any monopoly on those feelings just because we are in Brazil.  In many ways, we are incredibly lucky to be doing this right now.  If we had waited and accepted jobs in Brazil starting this year, I am not sure we would have been able to come.  It was scary enough moving our family here when life was “normal”.  Sara and I don’t think we could have pulled it off, or would have wanted to, had we waited a year and been trying to move right now.  Anyone who helped us barely get out of the US under ideal conditions last year can attest to just how little room we had to spare in making that happen.  And there is no telling what the international teaching scene is going to look like in the years to come, so yes, we are still so happy that we came when we did.

And I’ll say it again.  We are lucky.  We are healthy.  We are happy, all things considered.  We live in a really cool, interesting city.  We continue to find new, beautiful places every weekend. And we aren’t suffering like so many.   Now we don’t take any of this for granted, and we are fully aware that things can change in an instant, but that is forever true for everyone.

Ok, back to the smile thing.  I have to admit that it was a strange thing to hear, especially because I so often hear from students  and families that I am always smiling, which until this moment I assumed was a good thing.  What the hell am I going to do if I smiling is no longer ok?  Mayday!  Luckily, I had a meeting with other teachers on my team right after this encounter and I shared the story with them. The rest of the story is that mom wanted me to know that her son was scared of speaking English in front of me because he thought that I was laughing at him when I smiled.  What!  That didn’t make it any clearer.  Well, thank goodness for my teaching team, because it took a Brazilian perspective to help me understand what might be going on.  One of my co-teachers explained that basically, I am not macho.  Shocking I know, but hear me out.  She thinks that this young man may only have men in his life who smile when they are making jokes at other people’s expense.  She thinks that the men in his life may all be old school Brazilian types who don’t play with kids unless it is on weekends at barbecues in between telling stories and making fun of people with other like minded men.  Basically, she is guessing that the smiles this young man sees on men’s faces are most often there when those men are laughing because they are making fun of someone.  Whoa!  Not something I had considered.  And that is where she gently explained to me that in Brazil, it is unusual for men to teach kindergarten, and so, well, I would be considered not macho.  Ok, that’s a not macho label I can live with.  Now I just have to figure out how to not smile and still connect with this young man, at least until he gets used to being taught by a not macho unicorn of a teacher.

Bend friends, and Bear Creekers especially, our hearts are hurting alongside you at what has come to our little town.  Thank you for taking a stand for those families.  Our thoughts are with you.

Be safe, be well, and be happy,

Beijos from Brazil,

Adam, Sara, Lila and Hannah