Graphite Glory

You’ve heard stories about incomprehensible lesson plans, and teachers that get on Zoom dressed as contestants from The Masked Singer. So I won’t complain. Much. Because unlike thousands of set designers, flamenco dancers, judo instructors, travel agents, university tutors, et al… high school teachers are still employed. However, you’re reading this for my take on 2020. It was April. I was rummaging through my desk for snacks when my colleague walked into the eerily empty core subject staff room. She was one of the new staff, many of whom just started teaching this year. In the staff room, the desks were an elbow-space apart. I would get to know this woman well. I asked her what she thought about the changes. “I’m not just worried that some people in Australia might die,” she said, “I am worried that the next time we’re in this staff room, some of us won’t be here.” And then it hit me: we were exposed to hundreds of students a day, twenty or thirty simultaneously in crowded classrooms,...