As I read about the plans Harvard has in place (single dorm rooms, up to 40% of students on campus, remodeling of shared spaces), I can't help but think Harvard has done its homework.
I see the Des Moines schools will be offering high-school students the choice of all-online or a hybrid model that will bring them into the building one day a week. The district is planning for over 30,000 students who touch every aspect of the city.
My head spins as I try to picture what teaching my own classes would look like with such a structure. But it also spins when I visualize myself in my regular room with 23 students smiling (and breathing, and coughing) at each other in our usual circle of couches, sharing a communal jar of lemon drops.
I told a friend tonight that after my diligence of self-isolating, mask-wearing, and minimizing all unnecessary contact with others these past months, I see the return to school as a leap from sanity and safety into devil-may-care chaos. It's as if I've been driving the speed limit with my seatbelt on, both hands on the wheel, for nearly five months. Now I'm hearing: No speed limit! Only wear a seatbelt if you feel like it! Wheeeee?
I'm not alone. The countdown to school is on, and teachers are wondering what risk we, and our students, will be asked to shoulder. A colleague wrote eloquently about this today:
"So I'm trying to figure out what I'm comfortable with, and what's at risk, and for someone my age the risk isn't so much death (though it's totally possible!), but lifelong comorbidities like chronic fatigue, strokes, reduced lung capacity, or permanently losing the senses of taste and smell. Even the least of those - am I willing to never smell a lilac or my mother's perfume again, or taste a watermelon or a birthday cake or barbecued ribs or anything so that students can learn something this year they could totally wait until next year for?...I hate that these are the decisions being foisted upon people in our profession."
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Tomorrow our school board meets. On the agenda is "Return to Learn Plan." Since March, the district has made meetings available through Youtube, so I plan to watch.
None of the options feel right. I have to trust that administrators (and the guidance they are getting from the state) have prioritized health and safety.
As a teacher, I am usually a first-adopter, an eager teacher-learner, a can-do team player. But I'm having trouble with a gung-ho attitude about returning to the classroom with so much uncertainty. The pandemic looks like it's in the second hump of its first wave. I'm already drowning.
Enough.
Be well.
Write.
Allison
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Tomorrow our school board meets. On the agenda is "Return to Learn Plan." Since March, the district has made meetings available through Youtube, so I plan to watch.
None of the options feel right. I have to trust that administrators (and the guidance they are getting from the state) have prioritized health and safety.
As a teacher, I am usually a first-adopter, an eager teacher-learner, a can-do team player. But I'm having trouble with a gung-ho attitude about returning to the classroom with so much uncertainty. The pandemic looks like it's in the second hump of its first wave. I'm already drowning.
Enough.
Be well.
Write.
Allison
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