My morning start with arrival duty.
Thermometer in hand, I check students’ temperatures. The different grades go in different doors to our school, so I have a manageable amount of students. Sometimes there’s a crowd of students, but I can get them checked pretty quickly, especially with the new thermometers, and I can get them inside without much of an issue.
I usually have some time between arrival duty and my first class. Sometimes it’s ten minutes, other times it’s an hour. My teaching schedule is different every day so it’s hard to keep track of what class I’m teaching when. I check the calendar constantly, afraid that I will be late to a class.
I’m on my third or fourth teaching schedule this year. If I had the same schedule the whole year, there’s a chance I would have memorized it. As I’m new schedule every couple of months, I’ve given up on keeping it in my head what my schedule is. So, I trust the calendar on my phone.
I take care of some emails after arrival duty, use the bathroom, force myself to drink a large travel mug of tea and think through the classes I’m going to teach. I would be constantly drinking water or tea when I taught before the pandemic. This is much harder to do with masks on and it’s not the best practice to eat or drink in front of students. So I do the best I can to drink a lot of fluids before I head to class.
I pack up my laptop, Bluetooth speaker, iPad into my backpack full of extra things I need teaching in other people’s classrooms. In my bag I got extra masks, every A/V adapter I could possibly need. I make it to the classroom, and wait outside. Some teachers wave me in as they are finishing up their lessons, while others cue me to enter as they leave.
Sometimes after class I have ten minutes to walk to my next class and other times, I have no transition time. At best this just me walking across the hall to another classroom, at worst I’m running across the school down two flights of stairs to get to my next class.
Lunch, because most of the teachers are vaccinated can happen in our offices. Earlier in the year, I’d just eat lunch in one of the music practice rooms near our larger music office. This isn’t that different then before the pandemic. I’ve never really been able to develop a lunch group of teachers to hang out with so lunch generally has always been by myself at my desk.
Sometimes I have classes after lunch other times I don’t. Lunch for me can be as early as 10:00am, other times, I don’t get to lunch until 1:00pm. There’s always plenty of emails to answer and planning to do. While there is a lot of stuff on my plate, things feel strangely manageable.
One of the changes my school made to make in-person learning work, was to have a shorter school day. This means that I am out early enough many days to pick up my own sons from school.
After months of this routine, my feelings about being at school are complicated. The routine feels normal, but it is still unpredictable. I’m happy to spend time with students in-person but it feels sad to have all of us wearing masks and limiting students’ freedom. I can’t wait to be back to teaching singing and instruments, but I also feel glad to have a shorter schedule so I can spend more time with my family at home.
In the moments in front of my students, all of this goes away, and we’re doing work together. It’s different, it’s new, and it’s challenging, but it feels right, and I’m glad to spend my time with them and for them.
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