We were doing our first grade musical and it was only about a week away. We were starting to hear that schools were maybe going to go to an online setting. Even though they hadn’t shut our school down, we decided to limit the audience to 50 people and we still did it because we felt that the kids worked so hard and we didn’t want to give up everything that they had worked on. They only did one night of the show, which means that any understudies that would have gone on the second night did not get to do that. 

Then the transition into online was very interesting because we were working on Newsies and all my other classes were working on specific projects and shows. We basically just scrapped all those and we’ll probably pick up where we left off right at the beginning of the year and then move on. It’s a lot more work for us as teachers, certainly, because we have to keep it going and we have to refresh and kind of reteach some of that stuff. 

I’m the performing arts director and I changed my curriculum to basically just give them something to do. It wasn’t at all what my end goal is or what I want my kids to learn. An example of what I did is I took idioms and I had the kids create their own improv scene by taking an idiom and actually taking it literally. So I had a lot of kids that would do a chip on your shoulder and the mom would be in the scene with them, which was kind of nice because it gave families a chance to interact and engage together. 

There is definitely an uncertainty in the plan forward. I don’t think anybody has the real answer at this point and it’s a bit frustrating. I need time to plan on what I am going to teach and how it is going to look. Do I have to completely change how I teach choreography? Because as a dancer, I get up and I show them the move. Sometimes as a dance instructor, you’re fixing people or moving them into the right space. 

In terms of health, I teach theater and my closest colleague is our music teacher. We basically co teach everything and he’s in his 60s. I worry about him because if he’s gone and we get a sub to come in or a replacement that just changes the dynamic for the kids, but it changes the dynamic for me. It’s almost like starting at square one and having to reteach everything we’ve done. 

Also, I’m forty three years old. If you know the story of Nick Cordero, he was forty one and he was totally healthy. I actually did a show called Carnival at the Kennedy Center with his wife, Amanda. I’ve been following that story and it scares me. I might be healthy and I may have no problem if I do get Covid. But it’s very scary to go in not knowing and especially having someone that close to me not make it through. The other issue is I put up a post on my Facebook to my school community, and I said one of the questions I’m not hearing is, do you know my parents are seventy seven and seventy two years old. And my mom is going through cancer right now. She has breast cancer. She’s doing radiation. She’s doing chemo. Do I have to not see them for nine months during school because I don’t want to expose them? This is the thought going through my mind. Maybe I’m asymptomatic. I could go visit my parents for dinner tonight and then I give it to my mom. Those are the kinds of things that are a little bit scary and to go back before the unknown and nobody really has the right answer. 

It just makes me want to take extra precautions. So if we do go back to school and it is going to be in person  do I just wear a mask or do I wear a mask and a face shield? Being a theater teacher, I think about that. My kids live off of what’s happening in my facial expression. Especially kindergartners who are very new to school, they’re just still learning how to be a student at all. And are they reading my facial expression or are they just listening to my voice? They’re not going to get both because I will have to have some sort of face mask and I won’t know them as well because they’ll be wearing a face mask. And it’s like do I say 12 feet away instead of six feet away? And because my perspective is I could get it and I could be just as affected as Nick Cordero, who was two years younger than I am and totally healthy. Do I change the protocol even though they put safety protocols in? Do I double those? They tell me to stay six feet apart. I go 12 feet apart. They tell me to wash my hands every two hours. I wash my hands every hour. Or do I wear gloves all day long?

I think the kids will adapt. Kids are resilient. I just had a rehearsal today for Newsies online. It was 50 kids on a Zoom call and we haven’t looked at this material in two months at least. They picked up right where they left off; there were kids who had their lines still memorized. We did a run through of Act one. We played the music. These kids knew it. Their character started coming back alive. So that was pretty awesome. They are resilient. I will say that it probably will set a lot of them back. The saddest part for me is that not all of our kids will go to a middle school that has theater or has the type of theater. So they’re going to experience something that barely any kids in the country ever get to experience. 

I feel like it’s going to set them back a lot if they get another interruption, especially fourth graders that are going into fifth grade. The loss will be great if their first half of the semester or the entire school year has to be online and then they have to go to a school that doesn’t have any art at all. They might go to a middle school that doesn’t have any of those or maybe a music class, but nothing else. So I feel like they’re going to miss out on their last year of opportunity to really sink in some of this stuff that we’re teaching them that I think goes a long way when they get to college and they want to do this, they learn some of that stuff with us.

Last I heard, in my district, the kids are going to have to wear face masks on the bus. I believe they’re going to have to get temperature checks before getting on the bus, and have to use hand sanitizer as they get on the bus. So the plan, I believe, is for them to sit one to a seat and run more buses. If they’re siblings, then the siblings can sit together. It’s similar to what my kids’ district is doing as well.

There has been concern over the fact that now this bus driver now has to take temperatures, tell kids they can’t get on the bus if they have a temperature, make sure they’re staying seated, make sure they’re keeping their mask on. How is this all of a sudden the bus drivers you job? They didn’t sign up for that. That’s not in their typical job description. There’s already enough problems on the buses. If you think about a school, where the most problems occur? They occur on the bus or at recess.

I would say I don’t have a lot of faith that we will do everything necessary. I think especially because we’re seeing a lot of push from the national level and then individual people, parents saying, you know, we need to get our kids back to school so that we can get back to work or they need to be back in school so that they’re learning. So I’m worried that because of that big public push that there may be corners that are cut, that we may not have all of the PPE that we need to be able to do our job safely.

Because of the nature of my job, as a speech language pathologist, I’m not in a classroom with students. I’m working one on one or in small groups of students. And I imagine that even if students are back in school face to face, there will be different ways for us. For those specialists to work with students that wouldn’t necessarily be face to face. So I’m a little bit less concerned for myself, but I’m definitely concerned for the classroom teachers. 

My district was a little bit different because we have a lot of families who have high poverty. So a lot of families don’t have access to the technology that they need to do online learning. So my district made the decision to not actually continue with online learning, but to have kind of optional learning opportunities so that those families who could participate could participate. But nobody was really going to get left behind if they couldn’t participate. So I did not have a lot of students who participated in those optional learning opportunities. But for sure, there was for me, there was a big learning curve of learning the technology of how and to try to get as many of my students involved as possible with whatever whether it’s over the phone or sending them paper packets or, you know, however we can get them involved.

I found that some of the students were using the mom’s phone and that was really the only option. Maybe there was a tablet, but a lot of them didn’t have a laptop. Some families don’t have access to the Internet at all. If you have a family where they’ve got two or three kids and the only way to get online is one phone or one tablet, one kid can do that at a time. They’re not able to participate in the full school day.

That is absolutely one of my concerns that the schools that I work in are high poverty. They’re the ones who don’t have access to either the district materials or even things that their parents can provide, whether they may not have as many books at home or opportunities to get online and do other learning activities. So that’s one way they’re already behind because of the high poverty. But then also all of the students that I work with have disabilities. So they, by definition, are already behind where their peers are. So they’re losing out in both of those aspects.  

I’ve definitely heard a lot of concerns from parents, whether it’s parents of the students that I work with or just, you know, on social media that, you know, their child has an IEP and, you know, the IEP  (Individualized Education Plan) hasn’t really been met. It’s a legal document that basically states where that student is performing and what services and accommodations they need to be able to access their education. But as the people who are providing the services, our hands were really tied because there wasn’t a way to provide that service. They’re already behind and they’ve lost another three months of the last school year. Looking forward into the next school year, how much time are they going to lose?

One of the things that I did this summer is that I bought a mask that has a clear spot around the mouth. So I bought one of those so that if I am working face to face with students, they’ll be able to see my mouth because that is an important part of my job; I’m working on speech. So they need to be able to see what I’m doing. I’m hopeful that with my job, since I see students for half an hour, then go see another group of students that I have a little bit of a break, that I could step outside and take my mask off before I put it back on. Maybe I’ll be providing my services online so I won’t even need to be face to face with students and won’t have to wear a mask. But that’s several for teachers. That is a big concern that they will be in the classroom with the students all day. They’ll need to be wearing their masks all day. Whether the students will need to be wearing masks also is another concern.

I see teachers as being frontline workers. I think hopefully one of the things that people have learned from this experience is how important teachers are. Initially when parents were having to homeschool or support their child’s education at home and I saw a lot of comments about how difficult that was. So at that point, I felt like teachers were getting a lot of respect, at least from parents who are realizing how difficult their job was and how important their job is. And I hope that continues moving forward. When we realize that getting the economy back really does depend on teachers at this point, that teachers have a very important role for children, but also for the economy. So hopefully people can respect teachers and pay them what they’re worth.

With kindergartners, there’s definitely going to be some developmental issues. A lot of these kids have had no experience in a classroom. They’ve had no experience using a computer in terms of using it for schoolwork. A lot of them know how to watch YouTube videos, but they don’t know how to log into a zoom meeting or post their work online or even log into the computer without help from a parent. If everything is virtual because now we’re relying on parents to help get their kids logged in, then it’s causing stress on parents, which puts a stress on families, which causes stress on the kids. And it’s just a snowball effect. The fact that we are virtual, I think is good in terms of health reasons. But there’s definitely a socialization aspect that the kids aren’t going to get. They’re not going to get those first day of school jitters. There will be no leaving the classroom to go to the music room. You’re not going to get to wander the halls. You’re not going to get to go to the cafeteria. So it’s all going to be very, very different. Even when we do go back face to face.

That way we have enough space to socially distance all the students in our classes. They have plexiglass dividers that they’re going to put up. Each group of kids will be four in a group and there’s going to be a plastic divider between them so if they do sneeze without their mask they will be protected. They’ve also talked about how we’re going to stay in our classrooms. So if it’s our day for music, our music teacher will do her lesson in our classroom. And that’s going to be the same way our school offers breakfast and lunch. We have touchless sanitizer stations that all the classrooms will have. They’ll be at the entrances of the building and on the school buses.

With all this social distancing that we’re enforcing it’s definitely taking away from students learning from each other. That’s the part of this whole process that really bothers me, not just as a teacher, but as a parent as well, because I know that kids learn from each other and they learn from being around each other and exploring. And even when they’re playing, they don’t realize that they’re learning from each other. And now going back to school they can’t do that. We have to try and keep them safe as possible. We’re keeping them safe health-wise, but we’re also taking away from them as far as their growth goes.

I am totally okay with the plan right now. As long as everybody does their part and does what they’re supposed to do. I think that it’s to the point where we need to come together for our children’s mental and physical health. I’ve been working throughout the pandemic; I’ve definitely been exposed. I may be in the minority, but I think that the protocols in place are going to be fine.

Since I taught arts, I would give them one meaningful assignment a week and give feedback more as grades. They got to do monologues, film them and send them in. I was still able to find some meaningful activities for us to do and just reached out to kids who weren’t participating. But, it was more of just checking and we hope you’re well, we hope you join us.

Because a lot of us are nurturers and caregivers, we want the best for our students. And yes, being in person with them is the best. But at the same token, we’d like to be with our families and keep our families safe. So we’re starting to be more vocal. The larger society wants us to go back but I’m hoping the teachers union fights very hard to keep us safe. You read articles about those teachers in Arizona, where there were only three in the classroom, they did social distancing, masks, hand sanitizer, and they all got Covid. Then my husband has a shoe box classroom with thirty five kids in it. 

When I first started my career as a teacher in 2005, I had such small class sizes. I remember having one class that had 15 students. Then around two thousand eight, it just skyrocketed. I had a Spanish two class with thirty-nine students, thirty-nine eighth graders. After lunch, every class was packed with thirty-five. I started my career with about fifteen to twenty five and sometimes you get a class of 30 and you’re like, oh my goodness, I have a class of 30 this year. I’ve got two classes of 30. No one knew that five years later thirty-five would be the normal number. So my class sizes doubled between when I first started teaching and a few years ago. Then when teachers retired, they didn’t rehire back because they would just put more students into a classroom. It’s very tiring to have six classes of thirty five students. So definitely it is not a great combination of a pandemic and now really large class sizes. 

I think that there’s definitely going to be a deficit if a child doesn’t have a parent that’s sitting down with them and making sure it gets done. I guess I’m an optimist, though, in thinking that is one year of everyone falling behind, is it really catastrophic? I don’t think so, only because, I think back to what I had to learn when we were in elementary school. Our students already know more than we did at their age because it’s this push for kindergarten now what first grade used to do that. I don’t worry that the kids are gonna fall that behind. Obviously, some are not. The fortunate children that have parents that say, “do this”, they’re going to go ahead. But I’m an optimist that thinks when things go back to normal, we can catch those students up. Teachers are very flexible. We are problem solvers. We are already taught to differentiate with our students. So we can play catch up.