For weeks I had been thinking about what the election would mean to me as a teacher. Four years ago, I was on an outdoor education retreat during the election. The results came in sitting in a lounge area with some great educators, and the next morning, we told the student the results and kept moving on the activities that we had planned. This was one of the most important moments in my teaching career. It kicked started a journey into diversity work and helped see the real importance of my work as a teacher to instill in my student the perspectives, and the skills to make a better America.
This year would be different. Because of the pandemic, our retreat was canceled, and after going through the last election away from our families, we made sure to schedule it on a different week even before the pandemic hit. I thought about what I would say to my students if the election was decided Tuesday night or a later date. I tried to figure out what I would say if Vice President Biden won and how I would handle my own emotions in front of my students if trump won.
I was concerned that my students had the space to process their feelings, and at the same time, I wanted to make sure that teachers didn’t bring up the election in every class and overdue discussions about the election. Most importantly, I wanted to make sure whatever I did around the election was for my students and not for me.
Monday felt as normal as Mondays have felt teaching a new schedule wearing a mask, and doing lessons about music without singing and playing wind instruments. It ended up being a good day, and I came to school Tuesday, planning to focus on creative, fun lessons for my students. The election was on my mind, and I still wasn’t sure what I would do, if anything, about the election in my music class.
Around 11 am, my student teacher and I walked to the 8th-grade classroom that we were going to teach our next class in. As I peeked my head in, the teacher in the room gave me a telling look and told me that she would talk to me in the hall. We waited outside for a minute, and she came out and told us that a student in 8th grade had tested positive for COVID-19 and to see when we last taught the class that included this student. I was pretty sure we had taught this student late last week, but I wasn’t sure, so I quickly sat on the ground and double-checked my schedule.
Yes, we had taught this student. I was going home.
While no COVID-19 cases have been spread at my school, students had gotten COVID-19 outside the school, come to school when they were asymptomatic, gotten tested, and been found to be positive. When this happens, all the other students in the pod and all teachers who taught that pod have to be quarantined and switch to remote learning and remote teaching.
We went down to the middle school office, and a group of teachers was gathered there, talking about what was going on. The students in the pod and the teachers who taught this student in a specific time period were going home immediately. I knew that quarantine was a possibility from the moment I started teaching in-person, but all of the ramifications were just now coming down onto me like an avalanche of boulders. It took all I had to keep moving forward as I felt beaten down upon by the possibility of what could be. We went back to the music office, and I stood there looking at my student teacher in silence for a couple of seconds. I asked her if she was okay, and at that moment, looking in her eyes, I realized that I was not okay.
We went to the school nurse, and she broke down the specifics of what we should when we would get tested and how to handle our specific familial situations. My two older sons would have to say home until I got a negative COVID-19 test, and the circumstances and timing of my teaching the pod with that students meant the chances that I would have gotten COVID-19 were very low.
I grabbed all I could think to take out of my office and found the two teachers of the two remaining classes I had that day. I figured I could get home to teach one of them remotely and one I couldn’t, so I canceled one class and told the other one that I would teach remotely. I mixed up the schedule, and at the last second, I sent an email with a list of activities and told the other teacher that I could not get home in time to teach the class remotely.
The next hour I sat in my car trying to schedule a COVID-19 test. It was a frustrating process, but I finally got a test scheduled (both rapid and PCR) and headed home.
Wednesday, my children stayed home from school, and I got tested. The rapid test result came back quickly, and it was negative, to my relief, and my children were cleared to return to school on Thursday. I’ve been so used to coming up with new lessons and unique teaching situations that switching to teaching all my classes remotely didn’t feel that out of the ordinary. Like so many lessons this year, my first remote lessons were not good, but they got better as the rest of the week progressed. By the end of the week, I felt like I had an idea of handling teaching while quarantined at time.
Tuesday night, I had no emotional energy to react strongly to the election results. I fell asleep in front of the television, and for the rest of the week, focused so much on my family’s health, the election had little emotional effect on me. I didn’t think to bring it up in my music classes. I had to focus on just making them work, and I was successful at that by the end of the week.
I can’t imagine going through this past week, well this whole school year, without my student teacher. Each twist and turn, she was right with me, and her support and hard work helped keep my focus. In helping her grow as a teacher, I had helped myself grow and re-thinking what and how of what I do. In this difficult time, having someone share the experience with you makes the challenges feel that much more doable because I haven’t had to face any of them alone.
I’m more okay than I was on Tuesday, but I’m not really okay. No one is right now. Even having the slightest possibility that I could have contracted COVID-19 from my job was scary, and this week, this part of my life felt more important than the election. I’m not angry at my school for putting me in this situation. I may have felt very different about this if I did contact COVID-19 from that student. Right now, in my mental exhaustion, I am proud of how I handled this week, and I am proud of the way my student teacher and my colleagues handled this difficult situation.
In a school year full of hard days, Tuesday was the hardest day I’ve had this school year. The difference from four years ago is that instead of feeling dread, I have hope in my heart. With this feeling of Joe Biden having my back, I can do hard things.
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