Fire Me. Please.

In every job I’ve ever done, I’ve always wanted to excel. It didn’t matter if it was making ice cream cones at the Dari-Licious when I was 16 or supporting leaders in an Investment Bank when I was 36. I always wanted to help, learn, and achieve.

But today, I find myself doing a job that I am desperate to get fired from.

It’s a job I didn’t apply or interview for, but nevertheless one I’ve taken on since the start of the year. It was forced on me – I had no choice.

I’m talking about being my children’s school teacher.

Some people refer to this as ‘homeschooling.’ But as one parent (who homeschooled her children for years) explained to me:

“This isn’t what homeschooling is, Beth. This is education in a pandemic.”

That’s right – people who homeschool their children sign up for it. They have lives and career plans that support it, rather than responsibilities that directly conflict with it.

Now as a parent, I will always be my children’s teacher. I delight in helping them learn and explore. 

I loved taking them to the V&A Museum or the Tate to learn about art seeing the works of Frida Kahlo, Monet, and Andy Warhol. They learned about Beatrix Potter’s writing when we took a family trip to the Lake District. They learned about basketball by watching Michael Jordan in Space Jam and practicing his moves at a nearby court. 

Teaching the kids is fun. 

Or it was.

Now it is a task. 

My daughter and I have been office mates since early January. She sits at a small desk next to mine, and I attempt to work while also answering her questions and helping her navigate when something goes wrong in Zoom.

We start our day at 9 am with three back-to-back online learning sessions. My daughter and 59 six and seven-year-olds from her school join a Zoom session, while two teachers try to make sure the kids don’t fall behind in their maths and English.

Sixty kids on Zoom is not an ideal way for young kids to learn.

For weeks, I’ve heard the teachers repeat the same phrases over and over again:

“Stop writing on the screen, please”

“Don’t use the chat.”

“You need to unmute yourself.”

At times it’s obvious how much the children are struggling. You can hear it in their voices, their words, and by looking at them. 

Four days into home learning in January, I could empathize with a child who took themselves off mute to declare to the teachers and classmates:

“I don’t want to do this anymore!” 

Messages about crying children and tantrums flooded my whatsapp that day. I was grateful that our sessions hadn’t involved tears.

But that was only Day 4. The honeymoon phase didn’t last. 

Tears have become a constant companion of the home learning sessions. As much as I espouse Carol Dweck’s ‘Growth Mindset’, it’s not sinking in. My daughter gets frustrated when she doesn’t get called on, or when she gets something wrong. Today the world nearly ended when she misspelled ‘bagel’ and then wasn’t able to draw a rocket as well as the teacher did. 

Tomorrow it will be something else. 

I see the stages of grief as my daughter bounces from denial and anger to bargaining and depression. I’m still waiting for acceptance to show up.

My daughter follows her morning lessons with ‘independent’ work in the afternoon, at the same time my son – who turned five last week – has his Zoom lessons. If you think adults find Zoom boring, you should see how a group of four and five-year-olds respond. The teacher read them a story earlier this month about a magic wand and asked the children what they would do if they had a magic wand.

One child wanted to make it snow. Another wanted to make the coronavirus go away. Then a third child shared what he’d do with a magic wand. 

“I’d turn you into a frog,” he said.

“A frog? Why is that?” the teacher asked.

“Then we wouldn’t have to do this anymore,” the child replied matter-of-factly.

Well, it seems that Boris Johnson has now waved his magic wand. And after much speculation, he officially announced that children will return to schools from 8 March.

That word ‘from’ is important. The schools will determine when they return, so now we wait for the Head Teacher to wave his wand and make our daily slogs through google classroom disappear.

I’ve never thought this with any other job I’ve held, but today, I say sincerely and confidently: 

Please, wave your wand and make this job go away.

Fire me.

Or turn me into a frog.