Women’s History Month is a time to celebrate and applaud the outstanding women in our lives. This month in particular, for working double time during a global pandemic, the mothers of RV deserve an unending standing ovation. 

Mrs. Abby Littleford, a special education teacher and mother of two, struggled to find her footing last April as she was forced to merge her work life with home life. She expressed her concerns about having to occupy both a four-year-old and one-and-a-half-year-old. Although her oldest was easily distracted by their TV, her youngest sought an abundance of attention.

“It’s been really challenging, especially since last spring. We weren’t actively doing Google Meets as much, but it’s really hard trying to plan and develop lessons virtually and keep them on their schedules too,” she said. As most teachers and parents do, Mrs. Littleford had her daughters enrolled in daycare from a young age. The closing of childcare centers nationwide has impacted many mothers like her.

Mrs. Sara Redfield, another special education teacher at RV, faced the same challenges with her two sons at home. “My kids are really young, they’re three, so they’ve been in daycare since school has started. I’ve been very lucky for that but in the spring, teaching was really difficult. To be honest, I felt like I was failing at both being a parent and a teacher,” she said. “It’s so much harder now because the risks I have to take affect my children. Physically being in the building and the choices I make everyday and the choice of sending my kids to school five days a week is scary, and I wish I could say I had a choice, but I didn’t. It makes everything in general much harder.”

Usually, her sons would be in school full time, five days a week. However, in the spring, Mrs. Redfield had to adapt to teaching at home while caring for her sons. As a working mother, was not alone in these challenges and feelings of failure, as many other teaching mothers around her experienced the same hardships.

Mrs. Jennifer White encountered similar obstacles while working from home. Her typical teaching approach as a history teacher was in the classroom with a clear mind space. Like many others, Mrs. White found it difficult to separate her home and school life. Working through the hybrid schedules now, she finds her way to establish a boundary between teaching and spending time with her family.

“Both of my children are in daycare, but there have been times when it has been closed due to possible exposure, so they were home for a couple weeks. It is extremely hard for teachers across the board, whether they are home, doing hybrid, or virtual learning. To have quiet time to teach and to focus is definitely hard when there are kids at home. As a parent, you want your kids to learn or have something to do and be there for them, but you also want to be there for your students and find a balance.” she then added, “When my kids come home now I feel that I miss them a little bit more because I haven’t seen them all day, so when the school day is over, that’s mom and family time.”

Mrs. Aubrey Hunt, who teaches English, recently returned from maternity leave to hybrid learning, and expressed her gratefulness to have been home with her baby while still experiencing the pressure to come back to work.

“Definitely during the pandemic, you worry about your children and when you become a mother, nothing else matters. They become your main priority and I felt, especially with my newest baby, it was my job to be there with him while keeping my oldest out of school so we could be there together as a family and stay safe,” she said. “Despite everything that’s going on in the world, I’m super thankful to have had that time with them and to be able to pause and reflect on what really matters in life. We usually get distracted by the hustle and bustle of life and being able to be home with them allowed me to share these moments with them that I normally wouldn’t have had.”

According to NPR, 865,000 women over the age of 20 have left the American workforce in September 2020. These women have reported to be feeling burned out from trying to balance the weight of unequal demands from both home and work. Over 50% of parents have transitioned to working remotely, however a majority report that they still need child care in order to be able to do their job.

“Working mothers feel like they have to have it all together all the time,” said Hunt. “You’re stretched super thin in the sense that you want to be there for the kids at school, and for the parents, and for all the emails, but your head and your heart are somewhere else. You’re thinking ‘Is my son crying all day at daycare because he hasn’t been in school at daycare for over a year?’ or ‘Is my baby okay taking a bottle now rather than nursing from me?’ It’s really hard to have to worry about so many things at once because for the longest time the most important job you had was being a mother. I remember falling asleep at 9 o’clock at night. By the time I finished everything the boys needed me to do, I was too tired to even think about school or work or have time for myself.”

As their hard work and dedication often go unnoticed, make time to thank the important women around you, not only this Women’s History Month, but throughout the year.