If you held a Chromebook close to your ear on Friday afternoon, you would’ve heard the quiet roar of teachers across the state breathing a collective sigh of relief.

It’s a natural phenomenon known to occur annually, but this year it reached an unprecedented volume and duration. A brief exhale reportedly swept through the islands, but abruptly ceased once we all remembered to inhale again.

Winter break will mark the end of one of the strangest and most challenging semesters in recent memory. In a decade of teaching, I can’t recall being this exhausted this regularly, except for maybe my brief stint teaching kindergarten. Just thinking about what it must have been like to teach 5-year-olds these past few months makes me want to nod off into a yearlong hibernation.

Much of this exhaustion was the result of speaking into a computer screen for hours on end every day, but that’s not the only reason. Since the end of July, we’ve all been in a perpetual state of agitated readiness, unsure of what plans will come next and how comfortable we should get with the current ones…

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If all goes according to plan, the remaining few weeks of school before winter break will be the final weeks of distance learning. Of course the next six or so weeks may not go according to plan, and we should be ready to adjust to new realities as they continue to unfurl.

But assuming there is no surge of new cases from now until January, the phasing out of distance learning is a good thing.

The stressors, challenges and distractions that come with distance learning impact all aspects of student life: academics, social and emotional development, psychological well-being. And students aren’t the only ones affected. Families are strained, teachers are exhausted.

These are easily justifiable sacrifices in a pandemic – stress and developmental delays can be addressed much more effectively than death – but they are sacrifices nonetheless. Distance learning is not a serious long-term proposal except in the direst possible futures…

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In the days following the Paula Fuga incident, the same question was on everyone’s mind: how could anyone be like that?

Here was a popular and inspirational local singer performing at a fundraiser to help needy people have food for the holidays, getting repeatedly mocked after opening up about her own traumatic experiences with hunger and homelessness. It was gross and shameful and idiotic, and nearly everyone who watched the clip felt the same angry disgust.

But the outrage, justified as it was, seemed to be aimed less at the content of what was said than the context in which it was said. In general, viewing homeless people as objects of derisive entertainment is not an uncommon attitude in Hawaii…

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