March 13th.
Like a storm on the hurricane approach, you could feel a change in the air. It wasn’t just on this day but it had been building slowly over the months. At first it was a whisper at the edge of my consciousness. There was something going on in Asia, a fever, a virus that was spreading. Then slowly through in late February and into early March the unimaginable starting becoming an incomprehensible reality.
Before we had time to process what was happening, with no clear information to settled our anxiety, cracks in American invulnerability started appearing. A world away, in countries like China, schools were closed had been closed for months, people were wearing masks, and hospitals were out of beds. Even though I have aunts, uncles and cousins in Hong Kong and Taiwan whose kids were stuck at home and whose lives were dramatically changed, it just didn’t seem like this would hit America as hard.
America the brave, the rich, the powerful, and the intelligent. With the most resources, and the best of everything how could a virus devastate our country. So many Americans saw other countries running out of hospital beds, and wearing mask, and figured this wouldn’t happen in America because they are not as good as America. These Americans were wrong, and so was I.
First the talk was among our administration, and then to department chairs, and finally after much consideration a letter was sent out to families on February 27th outlining our schools plan if we had to shut down and switch to remote learning. As I write about this moment right now, I feel tension and anxiety build in my body. Because that moment when that email came out, brought forth anxiety that I did not acknowledge that is only coming out now as I give myself permission to reflect and feel what that moment was like.
I was optimistic. I didn’t think we’d close. And even we did, it would only be for a couple weeks. I was so naïve that I looked forward to the idea of closing for two weeks so that I could get a break from school. I had small idea that it might be worse than a couple weeks off, but I had no idea that we would be out for the rest of the school year, and no idea of the trauma that was on the horizon. Part of me was scared and the unknowns were beyond comprehension on that moment and leaning on the faith and optimism that got me through this moment took its toll.
On March 3rd the department chairs, which includes me as the music department chairs received further details about a possible school closure. There was a three-week plan. One week off to switch to remote, and two weeks of remote teaching. That week off for students would like an extra spring break. We were charged to consider plans and schedules and figure out how we’d make this work if we had to go remote. There was so much to figure out as most of us had never even heard of Zoom and had limited if no experience with Google Meet.
School events started to be cancelled. Field trips at first were discouraged, and then also cancelled. We started getting warning to wash our hands more, not touch our face, and keep our teaching spaces clean. Still I was relatively optimistic that we could just make this work. It’s just two weeks of remote teaching and we’d have a week to prep. At this point there was no guarantee that this was even going to happen. Part of me actually believed that the incompetence of the trump administration would somehow turn around when faced with this crisis and prevent the closing of schools.
The week of March 8th we were told to start sending supplies home with students every day just in case we would close. Then we got the call over our emergency phone system on Thursday that Friday, March 13th would be our last day before switching to remote learning. In that moment I felt relief. There was a decision hanging over this whole school for weeks and now we had certainty, a plan for at least the next three weeks. I didn’t know how I was going to make remote teaching work, but I knew it was going to happen and I had a week to figure it out.
I gave up that week in moving the curriculum forward and focused on having fun in music class. I wrote about the how I said goodbye to my 8th graders that week in this blogpost that I published on March 13th.
Leaving school that Friday, I had no idea the road ahead. It felt like the storm and hit and passing over, but we were only in the eye. There was much more ahead of us, much worse ahead of us.
It wasn’t three weeks away from school. Announcements would come, hopes would be squashed. Politics would be thrust upon, and the respite of summer schools would be struggle through stress and anxiety. Teachers not realizing that in many ways opening back up in the fall would be harder than closing in the spring would be slammed in late August and early September with unprecedented challenges never before seen in education. And right now conflicts continue as teachers holding the line to keep schools closed from the Spring face a very different reality.
This is the story of what started on March 13th, the summer that followed, how we made it to back to school, and the future.
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