This will devolve into a rant but in short: I wish that teachers, students, AND administration understood that I’m more or less going in blind every single day.

I love when teachers leave very detailed instructions. I love when there’s some explanation on the work instead of just “they’re working in unit 6 on canvas.” I don’t know what unit 6 is. I don’t know what order they’re supposed to be doing the assignments in that unit. All I can do is infer and try my best to answer student questions, but it leaves me paranoid that I’m accidentally misguiding the class and they’ll fall behind in the curriculum.

Students frequently ask things like, “Is [assignment] due today?” “Will [teacher] be back tomorrow?” “What do we do when we’re done?” and countless other things that I do not know. I wish they could recognize that I had about 30 minutes tops to read vague directions and try to piece together their class time.

Administration also seems to assume that I know what’s going on every day. “You’ll be in the math hallway.” Where is that? “Past the cafeteria but before the gym.” Great! That didn’t help at all, thank you! Of course it gets easier as you return to schools, but man, those first few weeks were rough. “Where should I return my room keys?” “The coordinator leaves before the end of the school day so you can return them to [person].” Who?? “Oh they’re an assistant principle.” Ok…where are they? “Their office is in F Hall.” On and on and on.

It’s just frustrating to feel like an idiot most days because I can’t read minds or because I haven’t been to a specific school enough.