If there is one thing the pandemic taught me, it is that I am not a teacher.

Having my son home for the tail end of sixth grade and all of seventh made me appreciate teachers. I thought I appreciated them before. I was wrong.

I mean, yes, I was glad they were there doing a job I didn’t want to do — much like I am glad other people are doing jobs I don’t want to do, like plowing snow and building houses and studying nuclear fission. But I did not truly grasp the work itself.

And that’s the crux of the word “appreciate.” It doesn’t just speak to gratitude. It also implies understanding.

I knew my son and his ADHD diagnosis made keeping his attention a challenge. Hey, I try to get him to clean his room. I get it. Nope. I did not get it — not entirely. I did not realize the soul-sucking work it is to try to keep his attention on task for 40 minutes when he had absolutely zero interest in the 100 Years War. And I only had one of him — not 25 other kids who would also rather be playing Nintendo.

I have said for years that I would never home-school because I wanted my son to learn math — and there was no way he would do so with me teaching. I was half right. He did learn math as I sat slack-jawed and confused by his understanding of what seemed like a nightmare where I couldn’t understand the language. Because I couldn’t.

I think of that moment a lot when I am reading about parent protests about education, with terms like “parent-led” and “parent- directed.”

Dear God, don’t let me make decisions about my son’s math curriculum. I am completely unqualified. In a world where I make math decisions, your taxes will be audited every year and your checking account balance will always be a crapshoot. But I understand that limitation.

I fear what happens when parents who may not understand the material make decisions about what children — not just their children but a whole district’s worth of children — learn based on questionable sourcing.

The banning of books from libraries is part of it. So is the banning of books studied in classes. But there is also a perception that things are being “taught” in class or that a curriculum is in place when that is far from the truth.

It all becomes a “do you still beat your wife” question for districts asked to justify their curriculum to committees insisting that a book in the library equates to a program of indoctrination. My son recently took Stephen King’s “It” out of his school library. I am somehow confident no one is trying to turn him into an evil clown.

But educators still come to school. They are still teaching kids while being vilified as seditious. They are still teaching kids when now it seems they are dealing with the attention spans of parents as much as students. And that is something I didn’t really appreciate before.

I do now. I feel gratitude and understanding. And I just hope that our schools can survive this because I am still not prepared to teach my son math.

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