Teachers find empty halls, full screens
Adapting to the realities of COVID-19 is a challenge they’re taking on with enthusiasm
MIAMI – Light poured through walls of windows. The woodwork had been freshly painted. The floors in the wide hallways shone.
Inside the building, a two-story structure built in 1967, teachers waited in classrooms: 30 teachers, 30 classrooms. Staff members and administrators were in place.
At 7:50 a.m., the bell rang. Another day was beginning at Miami Junior-Senior High School, the first week of classes in a school year like no other.
The only thing missing was students. The 500 sixth through 12th graders who should be pounding up the stairs, calling out to friends, were absent. The halls were quiet, silenced by a pandemic that had closed schools months earlier.
But classes would begin. Inside the classrooms, the teachers clicked away on keyboards and watched as their students appeared in tiny squares on the screen.
The students were signing on at their home or at grandma’s, in front of a laptop on the dining room table or a desktop computer in the family room.
It means teaching differently, said art teacher Mary Yazzie, sitting in front of a laptop in her empty classroom. She’s determined to make it work.
“They would rather come back. They miss their friends, but they’re excited to be doing something.” Misty Lundstrom
Parent
“I’ll figure out some other way to do it,” Yazzie said. She won’t give up on her students.
“Good morning!” she said as her students popped on the screen.
The school began preparing for the distance learning experience months earlier, starting with the technology. In the weeks before school started, the Miami Unified School District had distributed almost 900 laptops and 300 internet hotspots to ensure that all of its 1,000 students could learn this way.
Teachers received five days of training from Arizona State University about how best to teach distantly and spent the summer adapting their lessons to fit the format.
Janet Acevedo figured out how to teach health and P.E. distantly because she thought it was more important than ever to keep the kids moving, for their physical and mental health.
Dan Hill connected his laptop to the big-screen television mounted on the wall next to the white board, so he could better see and hear students as he perched on a stool and explained to his sophomore English students how to properly use commas.
Amanda Bickel couldn’t get used to the quiet in in her classroom, so she played music to fill the empty space.
Ken Vargas, a math teacher, wished the kids were on campus, but he knows what’s at stake. He had COVID-19 in July, and it put him in bed for almost a month.
Elsewhere in the building, kitchen workers prepared lunch, but instead of serving it in the cafeteria, they would pack 800 bagged lunches into passenger vans to deliver to students along the regular bus routes.
“We’re not sure where we’re headed,” Principal Glen Lineberry said, “but we’re making good progress.”
A new routine to start the day
Teachers and staff members put on masks from the moment they got out of their cars in the parking lot.
They signed in at the office and filled out a form, answering a series of questions about their health.
If they answered “yes” to either of the first two questions — “Have you recently been in close contact with anyone who has exhibited any symptoms of COVID-19?” and “Have you recently been in
When asked to draw a picture of “What should a leader look like?” Shelby Wampole drew herself as a journalist.
contact with anyone who has tested positive for COVID-19?” — they would have to leave campus.
One of the two secretaries, Jennifer Hull or Mary Ann Lopez, take temperatures with a no-touch forehead thermometer. The results are recorded. A reading of 100.4 or above was a ticket home.
If anyone leaves campus, for lunch or appointments, they would repeat the process when they returned.
Everyone stayed apart from one another. Teachers worked alone in their classrooms. If they collaborated, it was at a distance.
Just before 9:50 a.m., Lineberry sat at the desk in his office and signed onto his computer. He was preparing to teach his civics class for seniors.
In a small school like this, even the principal teaches. His schedule also includes a seminar on novels and film for seniors.
“I can’t imagine trying to teach geometry online,” Lineberry said.
All but two of his 64 students logged on.
“They’re like all of us. They’re disconnected,” Lineberry said. “For some of our kids, these teachers are some of their major adult connections in their lives.”
“Ms. Ortiz, how are you?” Lineberry asked, as he took attendance on the second day.
“Eddie boy, how are you?” He checked names off on his roster. Cheyenne. Blaze. Michael. Bailey. Gabrielle. Riley.
“Wow. Everyone is showing up,” Lineberry
said. “There must not be much on TV this morning.”
The bell rang.
“Good morning, everyone,” Lineberry said. “How many of you have a pen and a piece of paper in front of you? Note time!”
Exams would be open note, meaning the better their notes, the better they’ll do.
The day before, they had discussed civil rights activist John Lewis’ final words. Today, they would talk about government.
“Why do I need a stop sign? Isn’t it logical that you would stop?” Lineberry asked. “What about school attendance laws? Wouldn’t you want to be an educated person?”
“Because people don’t do what they are supposed to do,” a student responded.
For Lineberry and the other teachers, the hardest part of teaching distantly is not being able to interact with students in person.
“You know how performers feed off the audience? It’s the same thing,” Lineberry said. “There’s this energy that comes back at you. That’s the fuel. That’s the payoff.”
Teachers are figuring out how to make that happen through a computer screen.
‘Let me see. Let me see’
In an empty classroom, Mary Yazzie taught her leadership class, wearing a mask printed with ladybugs.
She was happy to see her students’ faces, even if it was in the tiny squares on a screen.
“I mean, look at Cory’s face. Who would not want to see that lovely face?” Yazzie joked.
As class began, two of the 14 students had to go outside to get a good Internet connection.
Yazzie asked the students to draw a picture of themselves on one side of a piece of paper and then fold it in half and draw what a leader looks like.
She teaches this leadership class, art and graphic design. Instead of desks, her classroom is filled with big tables, where students worked on projects. Typically, Yazzie would walk around, offering advice as they worked.
She missed that. She even missed the noise.
“I see some busy people,” Yazzie said. “Let me see. Let me see.”
The students held up drawings of people in suits and ties, uniforms or medical scrubs. Shelby drew herself as a journalist, in a skirt and blouse and with a notebook and pen.
Yazzie has been teaching here for 14 years. Since she can’t see her students or chat with them between classes, she gave them a survey about their goals, what obstacles they have overcome and what they care about.
She’s teaching differently, too. In talking to her graphic design students about balance, she had them shift to one side of their screens to illustrate symmetry.
“It gets them engaged because it gets them moving,” Yazzie said.
She assigned them to capture different moods for their Zoom backgrounds by using light, colors, props and filters.
On the weekends, she makes videos of herself demonstrating different art techniques.
Her advanced students want to learn animation so she was looking for computer programs. She wished the school could afford Adobe Photoshop for each student to make brochures and posters.
At the end of class, Yazzie said, “One last thing before you go. You have to tell me something positive.” The students groaned.
Reena had a new kitten. Shelby got a new TV. Cory can’t think of anything.
“You came to my class?” Yazzie suggested. Cory agreed.
“Can I use the same one?” Tanner asked.
Tanner got food from Sonic Drive-In. Riley got a new truck. Kaleigh slept in.
“I’m going to ask you every day,” Yaz
zie warned. She wanted them to recognize there is good in all of this. They’re safe and healthy.
“OK, guys, I’ll see you later,” Yazzie said. “Be safe. Be strong.”
Laptops mean kids have access
A laptop and internet access for every student was one of the good things to come out of this.
“We would never have been able to afford that,” Lineberry said.
District administrators used savings from closing school buildings early in March, some grants, federal pandemic funds and money pulled from other parts of the budget.
A survey of families in the spring found while some had computers, they had limited internet access, or more kids than computers, especially if parents were working at home.
Misty Lundstrom came in to pick up two computers and a hotspot for her kids, ages 10 and 13. Her 14-year-old has a computer. Lundstrom said she was happy her kids could learn distantly.
“They would rather come back,” she said. “They miss their friends, but they’re excited to be doing something.”
Lineberry said having the computers also means once students return in person, they can keep up with their class even if they test positive for the virus or someone in their family does, and they have to quarantine.
If there was an outbreak, and schools must close their buildings again.
Gym class via Zoom
“Occasionally you have a kid who comes to school for geometry and five-paragraph essays, but mostly they come for sports and extra-curricular activities.”
Janet Acevedo taught health and P.E. from her office just inside the deserted girls’ locker room.
This is her 16th year of teaching. The transition to teaching distantly was daunting, but she knew she had to figure it out.
“Teaching is not what I do — it’s who I am,” she said.
What Acevedo enjoys most about teaching is interacting with students. Since she can’t see them in person, she asked them to tell her about themselves, how they’re doing, what they like to do and their goals. It’s how she’ll get to know them.
She’s teaching about nutrition and other health-related topics. She’s focusing on hygiene with her sixth-graders, interval training with her older students.
She downloaded videos on how to properly do exercises — burpees, mountain climbers, jump squats — and sent them to her seventh- and eighth-grade students with instructions for a sixminute workout.
They’ll film themselves doing it. If they can’t or don’t feel like doing the workout, they can take a 20-minute walk instead.
They don’t need a gym or fancy equipment to work out, Acevedo told them. Jump rope. Go for a run.
“All you need is tennis shoes,” Acevedo said.
She’s continued her tradition of Crazy Leg Day on Thursdays, starting students with 25 squats with the goal of building up to 600 repetitions by the end of the quarter. It’s something familiar among all the changes.
Acevedo wants to keep them moving. It’s good for their emotional and physical well-being, staving off depression, particularly now.
At the end of class, Acevedo told her students, “If you do have questions, email me.” She promised to get right back to them.
“Thank you for attending today,” Acevedo said. “When you go out, wear a mask. Wash your hands. Do all the things you’re supposed to be doing.”
Do you tell a child to go home?
Lineberry was preparing for when students come back to campus, whenever that might be.
Like teachers and staff members, student will wear masks, though Lineberry can’t imagine enforcing that rule. He doesn’t like to set rules that he can’t enforce.
He’ll station staff members at several entrances to ask students the health questions and take their temperatures.
Aides would ride on buses and do the same.
More than half of students ride the bus. Some of the bus routes are 80 miles roundtrip. He doesn’t have enough buses, drivers or money for fuel to send two buses to where one had gone before.
“There are just so many issues all tied up together,” Lineberry said.
While he’d be comfortable turning away a 15-year-old with a temperature, what if the student was younger, 6 or 7?
“Do you tell that child to get off the bus and walk home alone?” Lineberry asked. “What if no one is home?”
His school has run on a four-day-aweek schedule for decades, with no classes on Fridays.
To keep students at least six feet apart, he’d bring back half of them on Mondays and Tuesdays, the other half on Wednesdays and Thursdays. They’ll learn distantly on the other days, and custodians will clean and disinfect the school in between the two groups.
Already, staff members have taken all upholstered furniture out of classrooms. He locked the 1,000-seat auditorium because the seats are upholstered. He told a teacher to take home a stuffed animal collection.
“If you can’t Lysol or Clorox it, it has to go,” Lineberry said.
So will anyone who tests positive for the virus.
In an elementary school, if a child or teacher tests positive, the entire class could be sent home and quarantined. In his school, where students change classes every period, an infected student could expose six or seven teachers and as many as 200 students in a day.
“If that happens, do I close down?” Lineberry asked.
He imagined calling substitutes, who are paid $110 day, to replace infected teachers. Would they risk it?
New guidelines from the state health and education departments released four days into Lineberry’s school year suggested it will be some time before students could be on campus.
Under the state benchmarks, schools could open in a limited capacity when:
The county’s rate of new COVID-19 cases per 100,000 people dips below 100 per week for two weeks.
The positivity rate for their county falls below 7%.
The percent of hospital visits related to COVID-like illness falls below 10% for two weeks.
No county meets all the criteria now, according to state data.
Lineberry thought the guidelines were sensible, in line with recommendations from the Center for Disease Control and Prevention.
“It seems like there ought to be some real hard and fast rules, but maybe leaving it up to the school boards is the way to go,” he said.
The administration has a good relationship with the district’s board. Board members are supportive.
“If anyone ought to make rational decisions based on data and science, it is schools,” Lineberry said. “That is what we are teaching.”
He still was uncertain how to pull off a mandate that schools offer onsite space for students who have nowhere else to go starting Aug. 17. Schools don’t have to provide transportation or instruction, just a safe place.
“If it’s not safe to have kids on campus, it’s not safe to have kids on campus,” Lineberry said.
He’ll likely utilize the cafeteria to provide enough space for physical distancing and bring in aides to supervise those kids.
“It’s just a mess all the way around,” Lineberry said. “Kids need to be in school. Their parents need them in school. But it’s just not safe.”
If it’s safe to do that, he wonders if it would be safe to bring in small groups of students who need extra attention, such as English language learners and special education students.
Understanding what’s at stake
Amanda Bickel, who teaches biology and agriculture, would like students to work outside to tend 200 trees they planted last fall in an orchard as part of their studies.
Students would be assigned to tend the native trees, which are all edible or medicinal — pomegranate, peach, pecan, mesquite — and track data about each. Plans were to plant 160 more trees and shrubs.
Culinary students will use the harvest in the kitchen. Construction students were building structures for planned arrivals of goats and chickens.
For now, Bickel shot videos in the orchard so students can see how the trees and plants are growing and the progress on the greenhouse and fields where they’ll compare planting techniques.
Ken Vargas has been teaching for 35 years and coaches the varsity boys basketball team, just as his dad, Dickie Vargas, did for 50 years.
He was anxious about teaching distantly for the first time and struggled with how to teach complex math concepts over the computer. He teaches accounting, algebra and quantitative math.
“It was so new to me,” Vargas said. He has a piece of paper on his desk with the word “patience” on it as a reminder.
He worked here and at home, 12 to 14 hours a day, to rewrite lessons with detailed instructions, breaking concepts down step-by-step.
His colleagues helped him understand the technology. He used Zoom for the first time on the first day of classes.
By the second day, Vargas signed on for his 11:10 a.m. quantitative math class, checking off the names of the 20 students, mostly 10th graders, on his attendance roster.
“How are you guys doing?” he asked. The students on his screen gave him thumbs up.
“Thank you for logging in,” he said. “I miss you.”
Vargas worried about his students, some more than others, being isolated for so long.
“School a lot of the time was the safe place for them,” he said.
For the first time, his team didn’t practice this summer. He encouraged players to work out at home. “They want to be here,” he said.
“Does anyone have any questions?” Vargas asked his students. No one did.
“I’m glad to see your faces,” he said. “You look so excited. I can see the joy in your faces.”
He suspected students will come back to campus with better attitudes, with an appreciation for what they’ve missed.
“Don’t stress out,” Vargas told them. “This is new for me as well. We just need to be patient. We’ll get through this together.”
At the end of class, Vargas logged off and said, “This is so not normal.” He can’t wait to get back to normal with students on campus and working math problems on the white board.
But he understands what is at stake. Vargas tested positive for COVID-19 in early July. The first week, he was tired and felt like he had a sinus infection. By the second week, he had a fever. He ached all over.
He was in bed for 20 days.
“It put me down,” Vargas said. “It was a like a heavy, heavy flu.”
He’s 60 and in good shape. Before he got sick, he rode his bike 20 miles a day. Now the most he can ride is seven miles. He still tires easily.
He wouldn’t wish it on anyone, especially not his students.
Principal, Miami Junior-Senior High School
‘We’re doing our best’
In the afternoon, Lineberry walked the empty halls, his footsteps echoing in the quiet. He dropped into classrooms to see how his teachers were faring.
He hadn’t been sure teaching distantly would work. But his teachers were making it happen. “They’re working very hard,” he said.
Sure, the first week was messy, with some technical and scheduling problems. But each day was smoother than the one before.
“In fairness, no one knows what they’re doing,” Lineberry said. “No one has ever done this before.
“We’re doing our best.”
The band director was teaching music history and theory and scrounging for music students can play at home together over Zoom. Football and volleyball teams may start practicing sometime in September.
“That’s important to kids,” Lineberry said. “Occasionally you have a kid who comes to school for geometry and fiveparagraph essays, but mostly they come for sports and extra-curricular activities.”
Art classes. Student council. Friends. This first week, more than 90% of students logged in. (Staff members check in with those that didn’t.) They were engaged, enthusiastic and turned in assignments.
“Everybody is hankering for normal things right now,” Lineberry said, “and school starting in August is normal.” at