It’s ‘a dream come true’

SCS middle, high school classrooms are open again

One year after Shelby County reported its first case of COVID-19, high school freshman Tyler Hoey walked into Whitehaven High School for the first time.

“I’ve always wanted to go to Whitehaven,” Tyler said before class Monday. “So this is a dream come true, you could say.”

Tyler is headed back to class with around 11,000 other Shelby County Schools middle and high schoolers, data shows, who haven’t been inside a school building since March 12, 2020, when the district closed its doors.

Survey results from last fall show that about 30% of middle schoolers and about 25% of high schoolers opted to return in person. That average holds at Whitehaven, data shows, where close to 370 of the school’s nearly 1,600 students initially opted to return Monday. About 40% of students in elementary and K-8 schools opted to return when those buildings opened last Monday.

COVID-19 restrictions prevent Tyler from having the exciting first day he imagined, when he thought about what it would be like to finally go to Whitehaven.

“And then bam — COVID hit, and they’re at home learning,” Tabitha Hoey said of her son’s last year. “It was a difficult transition, but now that it’s a year later, they’re kind of used to it, but I know that they’re happy to go back to school.”

Tyler, she said, was awake before

“You’re always going to have barriers in life, so you just gotta find a way to get past them, and that’s what we’re doing.”

Tyler Hoey

Whitehaven High School freshman

she woke up at 6 a.m.

“Make the best of it,” Tyler reasoned, “that's all we can do.”

Although classroom buildings are open for students, they'll be learning on their district-provided devices on Microsoft Teams, as they were doing at home. Where in the building students learn and whether they move to different classrooms throughout the day will all depend on each school, generally informed by how many students chose to return to class, district officials have said.

“It is going to be based on the school...(and) on the leadership of that particular school,” Angela Whitelaw, deputy superintendent over academics, told parents in a virtual meeting Saturday. “Again, our number one priority, we want to make sure that people are safe, even before we get to the instruction part.”

Even though it's different, Tyler, an optimistic and sociable 15-year-old, is glad to be back among his peers. He has family ties to the school, including his late paternal grandma, Linda Jones, who was a teacher at Whitehaven.

While Jones did not die from COVID-19 last November, the Hoeys have known other people who died from complications of the disease. Besides the practicality of wearing an uncomfortable mask, the loss has been one of the greatest challenges of the last year, said Tabitha Hoey. She felt some of the death could have been prevented if the

pandemic had been taken more seriously, and has been thankful that SCS didn't rush students back to buildings.

While she was hesitant about Tyler returning at first, her nerves have been assuaged.

“You can't watch other people's kids, you can only be responsible for yours,” Hoey said.

She's scheduled to get vaccinated later this week. At 15, Tyler is a year shy of being able to receive the Pfizer vaccine, but Hoey hopes her son can be vaccinated

by the fall. They had conversations about wearing his mask at all times “and wash your hands, wash your hands, wash your hands,” Hoey said.

Wearing his mask, Tyler stepped out of the car Monday morning with a baseball bat in his backpack — a regular sighting on any given spring day but a particularly welcomed one this time around. A student athlete, Tyler is also excited for the return of spring sports at Whitehaven.

It's a different high school experience

than Tabitha Hoey knew. But years from now, Tyler thinks he'll look back on the experience as any other obstacle to move through.

“You're always going to have barriers in life, so you just gotta find a way to get past them,” he said, “and that's what we're doing.”

Reach Laura Testino at laura. testino@commercialappeal.com or 901512-3763. Find her on Twitter: @Ldtestino

ARIEL COBBERT/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL Whitehaven freshman Tyler Hoey is ready for his first day of in-person learning Monday.

ARIEL COBBERT/THE COMMERCIAL APPEAL Whitehaven High School reopens on Monday for in-person learning for the first time since schools were closed last March due to the pandemic.