THREE MORE WEEKS. I CAN SURVIVE THREE MORE WEEKS.
Ahem.
I'm not talking about the quarantine or working from home or the home school thing or any of that, I am speaking very specifically about Mila's kindergarten teacher. Look, she's not my favorite. I have a whole list of reasons and those reasons are exactly why I'm not going to bother to address the thing that sent Mila over the edge today.
This morning was the third Zoom meeting for Mila's class. They have one per week for half an hour, and the entire half hour is the teacher trying to find the "mute" and "unmute" buttons. She isn't brave enough to lay out the rules and trust the kids to follow them, which sounds smart, but I've seen for myself that they do know how to be polite humans. Mila has Zoom meetings for dance and cheer and the occasional one I set up with her friends and they somehow always manage to know when to be quiet and when it's their turn to talk. It's impressive, actually. Like, they could teach some adults. Regardless, Mila's teacher hasn't given it a try, which means she is stuck with this awkward thing where she asks a question, all the kids raise their hands that they know the answer, and then the teacher hunts and pecks to find a kid to unmute so they can say one or two words before going back on mute.
It is every bit as painful as you think it is. But, whatever, if that's what it takes for the teacher to be comfortable, it's fine. The tediousness of the whole thing wasn't what sent Mila over the edge.
The thing that sent Mila over the edge is the thing where she never got a turn. 20 minutes into today's class, the teach had asked over 20 questions and Mila had raised her hand to answer every single one. But she didn't get picked a single time. Some kid named Parker had answered four questions, so ... well, I have a guess. I am guessing that it's a little hard to click and scroll through over 20 little circles in Zoom, so there reached a point when the teacher started repeating students. She very likely had no idea she had done it. I'm absolutely certain it wasn't purposeful.
None of that matters when you're five. Mila burst into tears and threw herself to the floor and that was that. She was done with seeing her class and refused to participate in any way, shape, or form.
I ain't mad. I get how it looks from her perspective.
Still, it's not worth saying anything because I do not have 30 minutes to be lectured by an incredibly condescending teacher who is way outside of her comfort zone and doing what she can to just get by. I may not like her, but I do see the challenges she's trying to work through.
The whole thing is just dumb. So ... Three weeks. We just need to get by for three more weeks.
