Dangerous Disturbances
By Dr. Marcia Davis-Dawkins
Music has always been a source of inspiration, a time of reflection and motivation and I recently heard a song during the dreaded COVID-19 pandemic that we faced and I thought of how disturbed this virus had made us. The song, titled “Dangerous Disturbances”, by a Jamaican Reggae group called Chalice, refers to reggae taking over the world and I thought how interesting that it is indeed a shock how the human coronavirus has literally taken over the world.
Because of this virus, everything has come to a halt. Well carved out plans, which were put in place months and years ago, are disturbed. Plans that have disturbed our peace of mind and sent us scurrying and wondering what next. This dangerous, disease came and disturbed us in so many ways. It brought about scarcity of common household items including paper products, cleaning items, disinfectants and variants of food.
Teachers are collaborating and gathering ways of teaching from home. Who would have thought that this was possible for teachers, especially for elementary teachers, to be working from home? What a challenge this has been. The same invisible disease has incited fear in so many of us in us on a global scale. Well, new things are happening and 2020 – a leap year too, has been disturbed in many ways. With teachers working from home, parents are forced to become teachers and educate their children.
It is sad realize that some students will not get the support from some parents and we wonder how they are surviving – we know that there are students who definitely need teachers to encourage and support them. There are students who are desperately seeking love, kindness, wisdom and understanding from many of their mentors and may not receive. We often think of those students who have stopped learning and are distracted by various entities within their home environments and wish they could be in the school setting. For some, school is a part of their regular schedule and may even comfort them.
Students who may have been preparing to take state tests or final exams have plans that have been disturbed. These exams would have determined which student would be promoted to the next level of schooling or the next level in life. Suddenly, these plans are simply wiped out.
As educators, we are grateful for technology that is available. This technology gives us opportunities to encourage learning, as well as to teach virtually. I recently saw that one person even referred to this form of teaching as “quaran-teaching”. To top it off, there is a definition that states “teachers scrambling to prepare for digital learning with zero training, funding, or assistance, for an undisclosed amount of time, for parents who have an equal amount of preparation.”
For whatever it is worth, I hope that this dangerous disturbance is bringing, a sense of connectivity and most of all love in the family. Families that are isolated and quarantined are often too busy to even talk to each other have finally received the chance to truly get to know one another in this time of crisis. Dangerous disturbances cause us to pause and reflect on our lives and to think of those around us. Interestingly, the disturbance didn’t affect a certain, race, color, creed or country – everyone was disturbed! 
Students and teachers who are confined in their homes and fearful and tend to feel hopeless, but I certainly will not encourage it. There is a sense of hope and love among each other. The educators are hoping that even though we are not connected physically, there will always be a way to connect virtually; there will always be a way to put our hearts in it. As the late Country and Western singer Kenny Rogers, would say, “When we put our hearts in it, it can take us anywhere, and who’s to say that we can’t make it, it’s the same dream that we share.”
There are many questions we may have, but in the end, we will be drawn closer to each other and assist our neighbors, families. So many losses, so many broken promises, so many broken plans – plans that are simply wiped out (disturbed) because of the pandemic. Amidst our challenges, though seemingly disturbing, is a hope that we, as educators, can send wonderful messages of encouragement to our friends, families and students. Hopefully we will find the good in the disturbance.
Even though there are fears, fears of not knowing enough for an exam, fear of what is going happen to students, or just fear of the unknown, we can see that there is a silver lining behind the dark cloud. This disturbance is giving us a chance to be attentive to our way of life, our way of teaching and the hope is that; our students’ families are able to get to know their family members again through bonding and talking to each other. They can read, play, be creative and problem solve together. The idea is there is a sense of support and renewal in the family. Most of all, the dangerous disturbances usually help to discover and reveal the true us. Through the educators collaborating, there is a new sense of community, creativity and shared responsibility. We are all in this thing together and we will work things out. We are in solidarity!
