the day it all ended

 I was sitting at a group table with my head in my hands. It was late in the afternoon and both of my writing groups had headed back to class grumping all the way. I don\’t know if I have said goodbye to my kids for the day or for the rest of the year. We are getting mixed signals from the district and from our admin. My para is coming at me with a spray bottle and some paper towels to sanitize the table. I am so tired. Everyone is stressed out to the hilt. No one knows what to expect.  Then, with my next breath, I am packing up what I think I may need in the next week or two (which, spoiler alert,  turned out to be the next four months) and schlepping myself out to my car to head home.

Once I look at my email, the official announcements start coming. School will be shutting down for the next week, two weeks, foreseeable future, forever. All teachers must start teaching virtually, literally two days later from home. Here\’s hoping that you crammed the essentials in that book bag before you left on Friday. Like every single essential, because no one is allowed back in the building, student or teacher. We are home for the long haul.

My husband and I were living in an apartment then, a way station between selling our house and buying a new one. I was a six minute drive from school; he was maybe nine minutes from work. We thought that we had settled for a spell. And now the world as we knew it was turning upside down.  I immediately thought of my students who depend on school breakfast and lunch for their little bodies. I thought of all the progress we have made, imagining it slithering down the nearest manhole into the sewer. I wondered what kind of materials or books students might have at home. I knew a few kids who don\’t have any books at all. I knew another few whose parents both work full time. I cannot wrap my mind around what this experience will be like for them. I have high hopes, but realistically, I am pessimistic. Like real bad.

Such was the middle of March 2020. Teachers everywhere had simultaneous whiplash as their profession was asked to do the impossible in just a few days. Establish an online routine with your students using Zoom starting Monday.  Digitize every piece of curriculum so that it can be accessed and completed online. Construct websites and choice boards for students so that there is less learning loss. Stay in touch with families and make sure they have what they need. (Except childcare. The biggest need was sliding fast into the biggest sinkhole.)

 Now more than a year on from that fateful day, after a full year of the covid classroom in person, I still remember how bewildering those four months were for all of us. My lifeline? I would drop into Zoom meetings just to see some familiar faces. For some families, I used FaceTime to greet, encourage and reassure families of students with IEPs, that yes, we actually were all going to be okay. I sympathized with the absurdity of trying to access services virtually and speculated daily about how long this nonsense was going to last. I was the best cheerleader I could be for a team none of us wanted to be on.

Most of all, I missed my kids. I missed my daily interactions and the opportunity to move the needle a little closer to mastery. To practice those self-regulation skills that were so so hard to master. I missed the joy of a smile at the end of a hard lesson, or a long week. I missed my students. That, beyond anything else, was the worst, hardest part of covid for me. I had to hope for the best and do what I could in the meantime. It was a tall order. I wish that I felt more confident about how I filled it.