It's been almost a week since the governor declared that school would be suspended from March 18th through March 27th here in Minnesota due to COVID19.
Our district decided to have students on campus for the two days between the governor's press conference on Sunday and the imposed deadline to close schools on Wednesday.
Our district had an added wrinkle - spring conferences were scheduled for Tuesday and Friday.
The whole conference question was settled pretty quickly and easily. We would send conference folders home with the children and then call the parents at their scheduled conference times. It was something I hadn't done in my almost thirty years of teaching, but it worked pretty well. I was grateful to have a chance to talk to my families after our abrupt closing of school, but they had so many questions, and I had so few answers!
Those last two days with students were a nightmare for me. Don't misunderstand - the kids were great. I teach third grade, and the kids arrived those days with differing degrees of information, misinformation and mixed feelings. Some were thrilled with the prospect of an unexpected vacation and others had many worries - about missing the stability and structure of school and, of course, about missing the food supplied by our district (a need which our district filled almost immediately).
Personally, the hardest part was that I had turned in my resignation for the end of the school year just 11 days prior, and I knew that Tuesday could possibly be my last day of classes with students...ever.
If it turned out that we would not be able to resume class before the end of the school year, I would never get to give my kids all the experiences I wanted to provide them before they went off to fourth grade - or even to say good-bye.
The first day without students was surreal. We had a staff meeting in the gym sitting spread out far apart on the bleachers. It was hard to remember to keep that social distance through the day as we worked in grade level groups and tried to identify essential state standards in math and reading not yet covered.
Every doorknob I touched made me wonder: Was I washing my hands often enough and well enough? Were any of my co-workers already infected?
It hit home the next day when I discovered that someone in my rural county had contracted the virus. It was someone I know...and then I found out that my sister had had indirect contact with a person who had tested positive and would be quarantined for fourteen days.
On Friday we had phone conferences and were allowed to make calls from home if we wished. I decided to take advantage of the opportunity, setting up my "office" in the spare bedroom.
This coming Monday we need to report to school again. I am hoping we will soon be told to work from home exclusively. I don't like sharing bathrooms, copy machines, and door handles with a large amount of people. My husband and I are both over 60 and in a higher risk group. I worry about bringing the virus home to him.
And I suppose the title of this post is a misnomer. For while everything about this is "new", nothing about it is "normal".
