Time again for a change of focus
It happened again.
The day-to- day I thought I knew was turned upside down.
The first week of October, I told my fifth graders that we would soon be together in our classroom. I know I was a bit giddy with expectation, wondering what we would look like “in real life,” and how our voices would sound when muffled through fabric masks. Oh, the things we could and would do when we were not muted, tiny boxes on a computer screen!
Then the district needed me to continue teaching online, in seventh grade.
The kids cried over Zoom. I cried over Zoom.
Over the weekend I ate mounds of chocolate, filling that hole in my heart.
Yep. Just another adjustment that ismade in the name of a pandemic.
The majority of students at my school returned to campus Monday. I’ll remain in my classroom, performing the “Miss Hacking” video show for students who will continue learning online and need to adjust to new programming.
On that first new day, lunch rolled around for the students who were excited to be back in a brick-and-mortar classroom. I stood at my desk and watched my fifth graders parade toward the cafeteria. The windows of the classroom are tinted, so they didn’t see me struggling to see if I spotted “my kids” behind their fabric masks.
They’re just a few doors away, but it did not seem appropriate to visit. I would feel like an exwife or a former bandmate, interfering with their new lives with their soon-to-be beloved new teachers. A few have sought me out, and we stood atmy classroom door, hugging by curling our hands into the shape of a heart.
The switch hitme hard, probably because in this isolation of pandemic, those kids were the central focus of my life. I also don’t like when losses in life come suddenly. It felt like we had something special, had built a strong foundation despite the pandemic. We literally found common denominators.
At least we finished the novel we started reading the first day of school.
Undoubtedly, I will soon fall in love with my new seventh grade Zoom children, all 65 of them in two sections of Language Arts and History. They’re still kids, only taller and a bit wiser. After one week, they must already have learned their teacher is a goofball.
Another upside, and of course there is always an upside, is that I will have more distance from the possibility of getting the coronavirus. This means I will be able to visit my parents.
To celebrate this new confinement/assignment, I’m visiting Dad this weekend and he scored that entrance pass to the Yosemite Valley.
The wither of autumn weather
As always, when life gets busy, my plants suffer. I remembered tomow the lawn before the grass was too tall to manage with the electric mower. Even though the weather has been warm, the days are shorter, which means