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.