I Prefer the Snowball Effect Over Cascade Failure

My mother died a little over a week ago.  It was a shock, but not wholly unexpected.  The plans from discussions that took place two or three years after my grandmother's (Mom's mom) death came to fruition. The diagnosis of dementia cast memories of slightly unusual yet still semi-reasonable behaviors in a new light as I began some initial, surface-level reminiscing.  

I was back to work yesterday and able to enjoy some cheer created by the reds and pinks and sparkles and chocolate as students and staff exchanged valentines, despite class parties having taken place last Friday.  A few colleagues gave me a quick hug or told me that they were sorry for the loss of my mother and were praying for or thinking of me and my family.  I was exhausted long before I even made it into my truck to drive home at the end of the school day.

This morning a colleague approached me ten minutes before the school day was to start and apologized before asking me to change my own lesson plans in order to teach her students how to navigate our library catalog's landing page for research.  Because no time has been set aside for librarians in our district to actually check on, update and maintain digital and print resources during the workweek (rather we teach classes and during our "free" time are pulled elsewhere in the building to act as tutors/interventionists/crowd control/test proctors with no aides or volunteers to complete necessary maintenance tasks in the library), much less collaborate with grade levels, it was simply by sheer luck that I had managed to explore and update our landing page at home, on my own time, on the night before my mother passed away.  The landing page was ready for today, even if I wasn't. 

Unfortunately, students in today's upper-grade classes were off.  Grumpy, easy to anger, baiting one another with clique-ish taunts, failing spectacularly when trying to pass off rudeness as humor, annoyed at the schoolwide kindness campaign, and just wanting to exercise some control over something, anything, students refused to select books.  Some decided to toss disinfectant wipes onto the floor, next to their table, rather than putting them into the trashcan that has been located in the same exact spot for the entirety of the school year.  Quite a few decided that "please remember to push in your chairs before lining up" was the perfect opportunity to do exactly the opposite.  And when I dared to call students back with a reminder of our one library rule, to be safe, kind and helpful, the eye rolls and stomping were joined by fellow classmates attempting to appear to ignore me.

My students and I don't have negative, poor relationships, so today felt crushing.  Even if I credit this week's full moon, the valentine letdown, barometric shenanigans that may bring inches of snow back to our neck of the woods tomorrow night, teachers who have no qualms asking me to dump my planned lessons and create new ones on the fly, having to "intervene" for a handful of students at the expense of the maintenance of the library that serves over four hundred of them, pandemic malaise and whatever else that may have gotten under so many students' skin since I last saw them, what little patience, energy, or (gag) resilience that I still had when I woke up this morning was completely depleted by ten a.m. 

Via Wikipedia: Cascading failures may occur when one part of the system fails. When this happens, other parts must then compensate for the failed component. This in turn overloads these nodes, causing them to fail as well, prompting additional nodes to fail one after another.

(image found here)

The five-minute transitions I had between classes and beating feet to other parts of the building were filled with abbreviated discussions with teachers summarizing some of the problems we encountered during library. I rarely choose to have those kinds of conversations because well... they're ineffective. Context isn't sought out and is tough to provide with the time limitation.  Resulting lectures to students by their teachers about how we "shouldn't disrespect Mrs. Sommerville's library" miss the point that it's not "my" library, it's OUR library and we all contribute to the feel of it.  Students need our safe space as they work through a lot of social-emotional stuff this year, and shouldn't have to worry that mistakes and not-so-great choices will hang over them.  But today, I was working hard to keep emotional stuff on the backburner too, and I just couldn't right the boat.  Can I tell you... there wasn't a lot of kindness coming in my direction this morning, just student frustration, colleagues' stress, and me unable to find any sign that what I do, what I try to do, and who I advocate for means anything, especially after realizing that I haven't even been included in this year's Read Across America plans.  Nothing like being purposely excluded to put the cherry right on top of a sludge sundae.

Later in the day, an engaging, professional, spontaneous conversation ran over its allotted five minutes, making me late for a reading group in another school location with students of the teacher who requested my lesson plan change earlier this morning.  My tardiness was likely interpreted as unprofessional, an element of whatever cascade failure that grade level is raging against as they prepare for state testing. No. One. Wins. None of us is "winning" this year.

I'd really rather be experiencing (positively positioned, of course) the snowball effect, those occasions in which one action or event causes many other similar actions and often pleasant consequences, such as random acts of kindness, shared and growing laughter, or even a sincere "thank you" that receives an equally sincere "you're welcome." The chance that these acts will be witnessed by others who then in turn choose to pass the grace along, snowballing with momentum still sparks in me a faint glimmer of hope.  I just wish that there weren't plenty of other factors, not just grief, trying hard to stamp it out.