About a quarter of our seven-hundred kids lined up at pylons placed around the school this morning. Children with oversized backpacks wandered the outside of the school, looking for their homeroom teachers who signalled them with poster board signs with their names in big, bold letters (the elementary teachers had particularly elaborate decorations). Fear was thick in the air, but strangely, it wasn’t due to COVID. It was just the first day jitters of nervous students, the same as always. In fact, there were many norms still hanging around. There were a few parents outside, reluctant to leave while wishing their kids goodbye, mostly teary-eyed mothers and fathers taking pictures of their kindergarteners heading off to their first day. The junior highs were still either happy to see their friends or awkwardly half-crossing their arms hoping either to be noticed or not noticed at all, depending on the kid. There were plenty wandering around aimlessly, unsure of where to go. Those things haven’t changed a bit - save for the fact they were all wearing masks.
The bell rang at 8:30 for the first set of kids to enter. The start time is staggered now, with some kids going into the school at normal time and the rest following up ten minutes later to reduce hallway congestion. Even the starting days themselves are staggered for the first week. Students with last names of A-M are here today, with N-Z following up tomorrow. With so many students not knowing where to go and parents looking to help their kids find their way, the powers-that-be decided it would be best to split them into two groups until things get under control. The result was a quiet school with only a skeleton crew of students.
Hand sanitizer waits outside each classroom. The teachers lead them through the door, squirt a bit into their hands, and they can enter. The same process will be repeated, except with far lengthier hand-washing, at lunchtime. That was a great point of contention in the meetings leading up to day one, with all the math teachers running the numbers to see just how long this process will take. (How many sinks are in each bathroom, which classrooms go where, how many students in each class, time per hand-washing… there was a lot to factor in.) Mundane, everyday occurrences suddenly have become surprisingly time consuming tasks.
Once all the students are in, they go over extensive guides and PowerPoints welcoming them with bright colours and smiley-faces while simultaneously warning them not to touch or get too close to anyone else. A few googly-eyed characters of viruses wearing masks are on the front page. From what I can tell, the teachers have done a good job. The students, even the young ones, seem to have come to grips with the situation well enough, even if they can’t fathom the complexities of this (hopefully) once in a lifetime event. From there, the day carries on as normal-ish.
The bell rings again at 10:15 for recess. Each class is scheduled a time to leave, again to keep from cluttering the halls. The teachers are asked to take them to separate places in the field and to ensure they don’t get too close to the other classes, all corralled into imaginary barriers patrolled by the teacher. It looks and feels terribly dystopian, like every individual class is treating the rest as some unknown, untouchable 'other'. However, kids will be kids. They still get out there and run around aimlessly and have fun with the friends in their class they can go near. It’s odd, but functional.
As for me, I’ve been busy wandering the school, watching the whole event unfold. I’m a new breed of teacher, designated to teaching online and online only - although I still have to be physically in the school (much to my frustration). Tech problems have limited my ability to begin classes today, but that seems the norm across the board. Many online teachers still don’t have their assignments yet, wondering just what they’ll be teaching as the first day passes by. That alone is unprecedented. From my experience, teachers can be summed up with two words; preparers and worriers. A late assignment certainly doesn't help.
Personally, I just learned what I'll be teaching yesterday at 9:00 a.m. during a three-and-a-half hour meeting where I heard more we’ll-figure-it-out-laters and flat I-don’t-knows than I’ve ever heard in my life. I’ve been given the strange, unprecedented task of teaching, of all things, physical education and health online. Are you wondering what that is and how that would look?
Well, so am I.
There are very few things that work for physical education in an online setting. (I typed that out unsure if it’s too obvious to even have to state directly.) The curriculum, while never directly saying a specific sport must be played (for example, nowhere does it say you have to play basketball, but rather says you have to teach them how to dribble, move into space, pass, etc.) still prevents you from adequately teaching these skills online. I bet fewer than half of my students have a basketball, soccer ball, or football at home, and even if they did, I wouldn’t know how to make a lesson out of it. “Dribble a ball on your carpet” can’t be a well-received lesson plan. These lessons, by the way, are three hours long and every four days, albeit with breaks and time allowed to send students to work on homework individually. What phys. ed. homework consists of remains a bit of a mystery.
"So, uh… go for a run, kids. See you tomorrow."
With that being said, the other subjects seem to be a lot more clear from an online perspective. Social Studies has a lecture followed by individual work. Science can’t do labs, but hey, Bill Nye still gets the job done. Math is trickier, but certainly workable. Language Arts is hardly more difficult online than it is in person, in my opinion. Physical education (the more commonly used ‘gym’ doesn’t seem appropriate anymore) is a much stranger beast. For now, I’m crossing my fingers and hoping the school board puts out some information on how they’re expecting it to be done. Online teaching starts in earnest on Tuesday, and the clock is ticking. I feel the same way about health, which has a minuscule curriculum in comparison to the standard core subjects but has now been allotted the same amount of time per three day rotation as math, science and so on. One way or the other, it'll be interesting.
However, I feel I’m slightly out of the norm with my feelings on being unsure of what to do. Things seem to be running surprisingly smoothly today. It’s different, certainly, but the safety measures are in place as best as they can be and the students seem happy enough. Hearing a mumbling, nervous junior high student through a mask is a bit of a challenge, but they’ll get used to it. Until then, it’s one day at a time. For now, it feels like cataloguing the event is the right thing to do, as major historical events need their primary sources.
We’ll teach that in history class.
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