This post is text heavy and not terribly well organized, but, hey. You get what you get. Maybe I'll revisit this post some day in the future and make it more readable, but, for now, I felt it was important to get it down.
Well, yesterday was the one year anniversary of everything. One year ago yesterday, the call was made for schools to close down a week before Spring Break. The thought was that if we all quarantined for two weeks then the pandemic would go away.
And then it didn't. So we continued to social distance, not visit people in person, wear face masks if we needed to go out in public. All this with extra hand washing, copious amounts of hand sanitizer, and arguing about whether we should believe scientists and science (who were making lots of suggestions for being safe and limiting the spread of the virus) or the Cheeto in Chief (our president who somehow managed to politicize wearing masks and sanitization).
I have many thoughts about the latter, but I will stick with my own experiences here rather than derailing into what would become a rant about politics and Trump. Don't need to do that right now. Or at least I don't want to.
We finished the last school year completely virtually. Our district was in a pretty good place as far as technology went because we had enough Chromebooks already for all of our students and we managed to get a plethora of hot spots, as well, for our families with no or limited internet connection. We quickly arranged food and other resources to support our families as best we could. Teachers continued trying to teach, but with limited training and families in disarray, it was a difficult task to say the least. I spent a great deal of time reaching out to families to check in, connect with resources, and try to help students connect with one another in a meaningful way virtually.
In the midst of this we sold our home in Newberg and moved to a house in Aloha.
Then the protests started in Portland. Watching the live-streams together was very sobering.
Sooner than it felt possible, the start of the new school year was approaching and everyone was frantic to get everything ready for students. It felt like information from the district came in small, spread out chunks, making it difficult to plan.
And right before the school year was supposed to start, Oregon caught fire. Wildfires spread, choking the air and displacing a great deal of our staff and students, delaying school for an additional week both because of people being displaced as well as the noxious air quality. Mandy and I were lucky enough that were not in an evacuation zone, but we were on notice to be ready just in case. Our cars were loaded with go bags and extra water and we had moving blankets at the bottom of all our doors to keep as much of the smoke out as possible. Both of us had headaches from it for days even so.
Once the school year got started, the real work began. I was assigned to provide specialized instruction for students with social and behavioral goals on their IEP's (special education services that I normally help support but am not usually the sole provider of). A week into the school year, I was asked to move offices so that our speech pathologist could have a room closer to the entrance to do her early intervention testing (it made sense and I happily moved, but it did mean having to move all my stuff and organize a new office right when my groups started and so my time to organize was limited).
It took a good amount of time to get into the swing of things, but eventually things started to feel like they were going well. We even got another part time school counselor at our school which means she has been supporting first grade and running some of our virtual lunch bunches.
The presidential election was more painful than usual with unsubstantiated allegations of voter fraud pushed by the president and multiple high ranking Republicans. All of this culminated in the storming of the capitol in Washington DC. God, that was terrifying. And the lack of response - especially after it was common knowledge that there were planned protests that day during the ceremonial counting of the electoral ballots. It is still so hard to believe that it not only happened but that those directly responsible for goading it on will never be held accountable.
Just as the vaccine was becoming available, our district announced that we would be moving to a hybrid model - with four weeks notice and no plan. It was infuriating and frustrating. There was so much to get done before students came into the building and we couldn't do anything to prepare without more guidance from the district which was very slow coming.
For those not in education, "hybrid" means that students will come into the building for part of their learning and continue online for a good chunk of their learning. In our district that means students come into the building for 2.5 hours Monday-Thursday - one group in the morning, a break for our custodians to clean and sanitize the rooms, and then a second group in the afternoon.
The roll out of hybrid was supposed to be gradual: the first week would be kindergarten only, followed by first, then second and third, and finally fourth and fifth. This would allow us to train students in the new restrictions and procedures in smaller chunks.
But, nope.
The Friday before kindergarten was supposed to start, Oregon Governor Kate Brown announced that ALL K-5 SCHOOLS would be required to open up their doors to in person learning by the week after Spring Break. While this only shortened our timeline by a week, it's means we are going to have all of our students in the building the week after Spring Break. Another wrench into the wheels of our planning. It's not THAT big a deal for me, but enough of one to add more anxiety and additional work to all of our plates.
With all of that looming over us, we finished our first week of hybrid with kindergarten fairly successfully. I got my second vaccine on Monday and was laid up on Tuesday and had to take a sick day - though I still attended one teacher planning meeting that had been rescheduled twice and I didn't think we would be able to reschedule before the students arrived next week.
There have been so many different emotions this year. A lot of rage and anxiety like I haven't felt in I don't know how long. Many changes in a single year - not all bad, but a lot. Some of the changes were even fun. I'll share more about those in a later post. But I felt it was important to share this brief outline of the last year to look back on in the future.
No comments:
Post a Comment