Day #161 Writing Through COVID-19: The Kids Are Back!

How was the first day of teaching during a pandemic?

I'd say it was a mixed bag. 

• It was pure joy to see my editors. It felt easy and right to be back together, picking up with jokes and memories. A journalism lab is not like most classrooms. It's a workspace where everyone is pulling together for a shared project--with the students in charge. I hover around the edges, trying to keep them legal and reminding them of AP style and objectivity. 
• Words that capture the essence of my editing classes today: reunion, energy, empathy, uncertainty, and love.
  
• Several students voiced approval of my scrubs, and the others nodded with understanding when I explained that my new look was to keep myself and my family as safe as possible. When I got home tonight, I went straight to the laundry room and shoved the scrubs in a hot-water wash. They were wonderfully comfortable. I might never go back to dresses and heels.
  
  
• Wiping desks between classes felt like carrying water in a sieve. Desks are surfaces that will surely transmit the virus. Kids touch their faces, their masks, their eyes, then their computers, their desks. The next kid comes in and touches the same surfaces, as well as his/her/their own eyes, face, mask. To me, wiping down desks between each class is a no-brainer. So I tried. I tried to keep the kids ready to enter my room at bay while I sprayed the desks. I then asked them to take a squirt from the big hand-sanitizer jug on the front table, grab a paper towel, wipe their desks, then zigzag back to the front of the room to deposit the towel in the wastebasket, return to their desk...Do you get the picture? The first time we did this (at the beginning of second period) the kids and I were bumping into each other. I felt like I was playing COVID pinball.
  
  With each period I improved my system.
  
  But then I ran out of paper towels. So I greeted my last class of the day by telling them to go get a towel from the bathroom, which meant they all had to clog the hallway with more traffic all push a towel-dispensing bar by the bathroom. Not a perfect system. Sheesh. 

For every cautionary measure I take, I am met with huge gaps in containment. There's a part of me that suspects all of my adherence to best practices will be for naught.
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One of the activities we did in my journalism classes today was a News of Summer 2020 Kahoot game. The first question asked how many positive COVID cases had been reported in Cass County. 

Most of my students missed this question. Many chose the lowest answer choice (Between 20 and 30). Only a few knew we are now over 100 cases.

On a positive note, most students knew George Floyd was the man whose death reignited the civil rights movement this summer. 
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I did not go into the hall today. Therefore, I don't know how many students wore masks in this shared space where social distancing cannot be assured--which according to our school board's directives is where masking is the expectation.  TBC.
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Tonight's blog does not feel like the rounded construction of an essay. Instead, it feels like scattered thoughts thrown Pollock-style against the page. 

Bear with me. It's only day #1. 

Enough.
Be well.
Wash your hands.
Wear a mask.
Write.

Allison

Wolf! Six weeks old, wearing a onsie from his grandma in Iowa
and mittens and hat from his grandma in Belfast.