Hope and Kindness 10-19-21

Just one week ago, about 18,000 runners launched the 125th running of the Boston Marathon. As many know, in the herd was none other than our own Hopkinton Middle School Principal, Alan Keller. Our administrative team kept cheering him on: “Good luck, Alan!” “You got this!” “Keep going!” When we all came back to work on Tuesday, we wanted to know how it went. Mr. Keller told us two things were true: “The last miles were tough,” and “I’m officially retiring from Marathon running.”

 

It struck me that running the Marathon—not that I’ve ever done it—serves as a metaphor, in a vague way, for enduring the pandemic. In March of 2020  (the pandemic “start line”), school administrators were so naïve that we went to the High School cafeteria and worked alongside the custodians to disinfect the tables and chairs, hopeful that school would reopen on Monday. True story.

 

Then we began the shutdown, which, at least in the beginning, kids reported seemed “kind of fun.” 

 

Then the era of “hybrid or remote?” “Green or orange?” “Wait, there’s going to be a full-time return to school in April 2021?” (The Heartbreak Hill of pandemic schooling.) That’s when we thought the race was going to end and we’d come back to school in August 2021…normally. Not so. 

 

If you run the Marathon, you know that from the summit of Heartbreak Hill, the Prudential building comes into view, but several miles lie between the runner and the finish line. That’s where we are now. Standing just past that summit. Spent. Muscles aching. The end in sight, but still far enough off.

 

This final stretch pains us. We’ve grown short-tempered. We are frustrated when the Elmwood cafeteria menu says there’ll be cheese pizza, until there isn’t any cheese, beyond annoyed when road construction slows buses until students regularly miss the Pledge of Allegiance. The kids’ tardiness won’t make them miss a math worksheet because of the nationwide shortage of toner for the copy machines—no toner…not in Hopkinton or anywhere else. Some close contact kids are required to  arrive early to school so that they can ”Test and Stay,” a program that took nearly a month longer than expected to get up and running.  This is the blistering that cuts us, as if with shards of glass, in these final miles.

 

It’s easy to let these closing miles plunge us into despair, bitterness. However, I’m asking our community to choose hope, choose kindness. Choose the vision of the finish line. As we as individual “runners”  trudge through this last leg of the race, please know that as individuals we are all trudging, slogging, plodding, laboring, struggling.  

 

Reach out and support a fellow runner. Overlook the missing cheese. Thank the bus driver, who, as you can imagine, is equally frustrated by the traffic tie-ups and delays. Appreciate the nurses and the teachers and the paras and the custodians and the building administrators and administrative assistants who are conducting “test and stay,” modifying lessons due to rations on toner, staying a bit later each day to monitor protracted dismissal in the elementary buildings, putting in extra hours sanitizing buildings, and pitching in to fill all the unfilled positions in the buildings due to a national labor shortage.  In that same spirit, let us take a moment to thank you, the families. 

 

Maybe in a few months we can all “retire” from running the COVID-19 pandemic.

 

Let’s fuel the last few miles with hope and kindness. We got this.