Monday, Monday

“Monday, Monday, can’t trust that day
Monday, Monday, sometimes it just turns out that way.”   The Mamas and The Papa’s song Monday, Monday is playing in my mind as I write this post.

Like most mornings these days, the “Who’s on First” strategy of filling unfilled teaching, E.A. and ECE vacancies started at about 6:30 am. This Monday morning, however, knowing that we were set to start Day 1 of the highly anticipated online EQAO for our grade threes, seeing vacancies for staff who were scheduled to support students with special needs heightened my anticipation about the day. I am forever thankful that my colleague with whom we share an Itinerant Long Term Occasional Teacher, sent a quick, “She’s all yours” text when I shared our list of vacancies today.

By 8:30 am we were navigating the list of names on the large white board by filling in assignments, checking for student absences and creating a supervision schedule for the day. By 8:45 am, we were on to the next task of shuffling the EQAO support schedule, when another staff member (who was scheduled to support a student with scribing) found us and shared that needed to head home as she was feeling unwell. I could feel my anticipation about the day take a turn ~ and not for the best.

With my mind swirling with a possible Plan C, as we had already scrapped Plan B, another staff member compassionately comforted her colleague and shared, “We’ve got this”.   With relief, the ill staff member went home to rest.

By 9:00 am, with the EQAO schedule solidified the rest of the day started to unfold. Emails, interviews, connections with students and staff, a quick walk through the subdivision to see if a neighbour would be kind enough to return a soccer ball that had been kicked over the fence, were just a few of the items on the docket.

That early morning, “We’ve got this” turned out to be true. Students were supported, the assessment was completed (with only a couple of SOS calls directly to EQAO) and the team came together at the end of the day for a debrief, a review of day 2 and some smiles.

Upon reflection, I am so thankful for the colleague who knew that in the moment, “We’ve got this” was the perfect response.

Before composing this post, I reached out to that staff member and thanked her for her calm, compassionate leadership. May we all continue to be open to receiving those reminders when we get lost in the logistics and forget (if only for a moment) what is important.