Prayer

Primary school teacher with …. years of experience. For the last …. years, she has been working in a small village with 1 to 3 graders. Specialist in working with children with educational difficulties, including autism spectrum disorders. During the pandemic she was also a form teacher for children in 7th and 8th grade. She has 2 children of kindergarten and younger school age.

The pandemic period was a hard time for me. There are big problems with telephone and internet coverage in the village where I teach. I teach children at a younger school age so learning to write, to enter letters remotely, was a huge challenge. We worked on Messenger,Teams, technical deficiencies meant that the children worked the way they could. It was a time when I couldn’t cope with the work-life balance. I worked at home in the presence of two children and grandparents. Grandma’s fear of a pandemic made it difficult to cope with professional responsibilities. I had constant remorse that I was neglecting my own children, that they were in second place, that I was not a good parent. I lacked assertiveness – I was at the disposal of my students’ parents all day – including phone calls at 10.00 pm. It made me frustrated all the time, I was nervous about the kids, and it made me feel guilty again.

At that time, the support of my husband was a huge help for me, he had a calming effect on everyone, conversations with my colleagues who also had to face the same problems as me were also very helpful and energising. I was also encouraged by gratitude and good words from my students’ parents. I tried to relieve stress by cleaning the house and taking care of the garden. When I was fed up with everything, I went for walks in the fields so that nobody would talk to me, I took my rosary and prayed for strength.

I don’t see too many positive aspects of the pandemic and remote teaching in my life. The only positive thing is that I didn’t have to commute to work so I was able to sleep longer in the morning.
Fortunately, I really like my job and the pandemic period has not changed that, although it was an incredibly difficult time for all of us, I do not feel professionally burned out because of it.

“Do not put off until tomorrow what you have to do today!”
“I got it!”

Date: 23. 9. 2022
Organisation: Szkoła Podstawowa nr 2 w Sanoku