On first day of class after fires, losses build bonds at a distance
Teachers who have lost homes in blaze find way to connect with students
SANTA CRUZ >> Brian Cooper sat in front of his computer at Santa Cruz High School on Monday morning, getting ready to teach integrated math to an empty classroom.
His first lesson wasn’t about equations. It was about resilience and empathy.
Cooper was supposed to be teaching 32 students remotely from his house, like most teachers grappling with distance learning in the age of the coronavirus. But his home office in Bonny Doon, with the view of the madrone and oaks and an occasional deer passing by, was destroyed by wildfire nearly two weeks ago. He and his fiancée bought the house a month ago.
Their misfortune wasn’t a reason not to get back to class, Cooper said — even in a year when the classroom is virtually empty.
“I’m trying to stay focused,” he said, positioning the monitors he rescued while evacuating. “I’m trying to keep my kids’ needs in mind.”
Monday morning was the first day back since the CZU Lightning Complex Fire destroyed hundreds of homes and forced thousands of people to evacuate in nearby Santa
Cruz mountain towns a week and a half ago, just days after the new school year had started. Several teachers lost their homes to lightning-sparked wildfires, both in the Santa Cruz district and across the region around Vacaville.
And along the way, as Cooper opens up about his own loss and encourages his students to do the same, there’s a chance that a bond may take hold that has been missing in Zoom’s virtual classrooms.
“Something so intimate and painful, it does help build that relationship a little more quickly than telling them what you did for
your summer break,” Cooper said.
That connection began in Cooper’s empty, chilly classroom Monday morning, as he sat in front of a multiplication chart and spoke to the freshman students through the computer microphone. Unlike the rental home he moved into over the weekend, he has a desk here.
“I want to say that I’m fully aware of the impact this has had on you guys, even if you weren’t directly affected, the community is still reeling from this,” he said. “I understand everyone is going through a lot right now.”
Cooper, 39, who just started his job at Santa Cruz High after moving up from Southern California, was one of five teachers
and staff who lost homes in the CZU fire. At least 114 employees were evacuated.
In the Vacaville area, where the LNU Lightning Complex fire destroyed more than 1,200 structures, about a half-dozen employees, including two teachers and a principal, lost their homes. Most of the teachers, it appears, are back at their jobs.
“For me, just having a bit of normalcy, if you can call virtual teaching normal, just having that to do, and interact with the students, has really helped me manage a really awful thing,” said Brenda Hensley, a math teacher at Will C. Wood High School in Vacaville who has been teaching for 27 years.
Her home in the Berryessa Highlands neighborhood
was one of about 100 homes that were destroyed, about a third of the subdivision.
Besides, Hensley said, her students “need to see someone coping with something really difficult and still moving ahead and still there for them if they need it.”
The losses come in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, when students are banned from the classroom and teachers are trying to get the hang of teaching remotely, with breakout rooms, virtual whiteboards and thumbs-up emojis.
“It’s a whole other complexity on top of the pandemic,” said Judith Mayer, a Harbor High School history teacher in Santa Cruz whose rental home in Ben Lomond was destroyed. She’s staying with friends in
San Jose. “Running so many virtual classes and keeping all your tech aligned and apps open and on the correct flow of how you want the class to run — it’s just a different level of feeling displaced.”
But she’ll be back to teaching today, when remote learning returns to Harbor High.
Two days after lightning strikes sparked the CZU wildfire, Cooper and his fiancée, Heather Burman, were hosting their first dinner party in their new home. Her sister and her sister’s boyfriend who lived up the hill were their first guests. Dessert was ready to be served when they received a call about the fire heading in their direction. Both couples managed to evacuate with their valuables,
but both lost their homes.
Over the weekend, to save money as they wrangle with insurance companies, the four of them moved into a Santa Cruz rental home together. Once Cooper finds furniture, he hopes to use the third bedroom as his teaching office.
On Monday, he told the students not to worry about homework for a couple of weeks.
“We’re hoping that can alleviate the stress a little bit,” he said. “I’m here for you guys, and I want to do anything I can to help you out because I really appreciate you guys being there for me.”
Then he started his math class: “Today, we’re going to be looking at patterns of growth.”