There must have been a cumulative gasp from every educator in the city when we found out Dez-Ann Romain passed away. If we don’t know her personally, we know an educator like her. Young, energetic, helpful, a team player. Once we clear this curve, may we remember the moments when we sacrificed the helpers we sought out. Those of us who showed up for the three-day ad-hoc professional development training last week all knew we would put ourselves at risk for the same energy that carried us through any number of disasters. For many of us, if “essential workers” like nurses, doctors, grocery store workers, bus drivers, conductors, police officers, firepeople, and other municipal workers had to show up, educators would count ourselves in the number.

Little did we know that we’d be one to two degrees away from knowing someone who’s been affected by COVID, if not ourselves.

For NYC teachers, disaster is another one of those unwritten stipulations in our contracts. We have big budget movies dedicated to this moment except we don’t have stunt doubles coming to save us. I learned of biblical plagues all through my Catholic education. No locusts have shown up thus far, but apathetic politicians substitute quite nicely. What’s more, we’re so faithful to the work that we reconfigure our entire set of pedagogies mid-year, call parents, and deliver electronic devices to our students just so they feel like their school cares about them.

Then, we stay home because, while we can’t move mountains, we can try to flatten statistical curves.

We’re so far away from each other physically, we can’t mourn together. We can reflect together over video screens with different levels of lighting, but no other form of energy transfer. We try to hold our human selves together because we have younger humans reliant on some stability. As our work goes from rigid hours to around-the-clock notifications, we hope our physical isolation doesn’t dissolve our sense of community, the lifeblood of an educator’s work. Ed-tech companies proselyting disruption for more than a decade find themselves on the losing side of a moral war.

Disruption isn’t the most appropriate weapon to wield in moments where we could use reassurance.

Also, rest in peace to Andrew Decker. While he didn’t pass away from COVID, we recognize that these are the moments where video conferences aren’t enough. Another set of students loses their teacher in an era of widespread death. While we practice gratitude daily, the days have started rubbing up against each other. The press conferences bleed into one another. We’re experiencing a season of new plant life and human catastrophe all the same.

I remain hopeful because that’s the only positionality that’s ever saved educators from the doldrums of depression and dejection at a political system that never seems to love our students with fierce urgency. I know on some level that my students miss school partly because they miss me. The feeling is mutual. I’ve hoped that we could replicate my in-person performances with video and comment emoji, but that’s not enough. On the Internet, I can socially relate to them. Keeping them and my peers at yards-worth lengths keep more people alive and, thus, more social.

So now we’re sitting at home, reading from afar about colleagues, friends, family members who’ve passed on. There’s a plague upon our houses, and maybe we’ll disinfect our hands when we gotta pick each other’s heads up next time we see each other.

Maybe.