Date: Thursday 3/11/20
Announcement: Remote from 3/16/20-4/3/20, starting with one week off for teacher preparations.
My school decided to go remote for three weeks. Rumors were starting to go around that other schools in Chicago were also going to close earlier that week.
We knew for about a week and a half that this was on the horizon, but the reality hadn't sunk in that this was going to really happen until earlier this week. This decision was made by my school administration and was not handed down by any government officials.
There was great anxiety in my school, but this was tempered because the administration had communicated to us that we would have a week off of teaching to prep for remote learning.
Yes, this was going to be difficult, but we had a week to prep. Also, we were only looking at two weeks of remote teaching. Like many other faculty members, I thought that we'd be back in three weeks and that this was going to be a bump in the road. Little did I know that this was the beginning of a turning off the road and going on a completely unknown journey.
Other schools that announced that they were going remote had Spring break the following week, so going remote wasn't that big of an adjustment. There were some questions about whether we would not have our spring break since we basically a week off earlier. The other thing that felt odd about our initial plan is that we would have a week off, two weeks of remote learning, then one week of in-person school, followed by spring break. Even without COVID-19 concerns, coming back for one more week and then going to break didn't make a lot of sense.
Only a week into the school closure, we got an announcement that we would basically we off until after Spring break. This change added one more week of remote learning. It was logical, and it gave us a solid chunk of time away from school. We hadn't started remote learning, so even though we had made some plans, it seemed like this wasn't going to be a big adjustment.
This didn't feel like a decision that was made because things were dire. It was just a logical way to schedule our classes to deal better with remote-teaching and not have to deal with one week of awkward in-person teaching.
A week and a half later, in our second week of remote learning, we got the announcement that the school would be remote for the rest of the month. Illinois was a mess. Many schools were closed, but many weren't. I went to an Asian grocery store on March 13th, and they handed me a mask as I walked in, and even though some people by the end of the month were wearing masks, most were not.
In only two and a half weeks, this virus that was going to shut down our school for a couple of weeks became a pandemic that would shut down America. Hospitals were full, doctors and nurses were dangerously low on supplies. People were dying at an alarming rate.
Leaders were playing responsibility chicken. Many school administrators and mayors didn't want to make difficult decisions, so they did nothing and waited for someone higher up to make the hard call so they wouldn't have to. Finally, Governor Pritzker did it.
We were previously planning on closing until 4/21/20, so the governor extending our closing until 4/30/20 really wasn't that big a deal logically, but it felt big. This felt more serious, direr, and consequential than my school administration's first two announcements.
The first three announcements that closed schools happened over a twenty-day span, and the last and final announcement came seventeen days after the previous announcement. This was the longest period of time that we had to sit and think about what we were going to do as teachers. In this time, we had canceled performance, put projects aside, disregarded carefully planned units and lesson plans, and learned how to teach remotely.
Creating multiple contingency plans became a regular and exhausting process during this time. We were making plans to go back to school, and we were planning to stay remote. Things never felt "normal." It felt like we were barely getting through the weeks, clinging onto what joys we could find in our work.
My hope that we would be back, that we, as a country to change the direction of this pandemic for our children's benefits, was bashed away by the reality of this final announcement. I kept it together during the first three announcements, but I lost it on this final announcement.
My blog on this day captures how I felt:
I'm sad because I will not be able to say goodbye to my students at the end of the year. I'm sad because I won't be there to help that student see that they really can do what they think they cannot. And I'm sad because amazing moments that I cannot foresee, that happens every day when we share our wonderful building with my wonderful colleagues and my students, will not happen.
Not all is lost. I do have the ability, as I have been for the past month, to teach my students remotely. My colleagues and administration are with me every step of the way. And I'm blessed with resources.
My work will not be as effective as it would be if I shared a classroom with my students. My teaching is not as smooth online, and my lessons lack the benefit of years of development, but I'm still here. I'm still damn good at my job, and I can still make a difference in my students' lives.
I'm still a teacher.
This was the most difficult time I had as a teacher up this point in my professional life. While most of my energy was focused on the present and near future, there were signs that there was an even more difficult time ahead of us.
Teachers in parts of America had to fight to close schools for their students' safety and themselves. And some leaders urged schools to open later in the Spring. Schools stumbled, and many failed at remote-learning because of a lack of resources and support. And COVID-19 was not going away.
By June, it hit me. Closing schools was hard, but opening schools would be much harder.
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