optimism

Welp… Here we go, y’all. The girls helped me put this together last night. It doesn’t look quite like this anymore, mostly because they have been fighting over who gets to write on the board. As we speak, they are arguing about whether coat starts with a C or a K. So I think we can cross phonics off the list for today?

Assuming they finish their get-ready stuff (aka “Morning Things”), we should be heading out on a walk soon. After that, we’re going to try some of the Scholastic online resources for our school time. And we’ll do Aunt Abby’s FlipGrid assignment! Our field trip is a virtual visit to the Cincinnati zoo.

Oh, and we’ll also attempt to NOT DIE FROM THE LITERAL PLAGUE.

In other news, the latest Bitmojis are really on point.

Life in Limbo

To my sisters who have recently become online teachers-

There are no definitive answers in Montana today. My close personal friend The Governor just announced four “presumptive positive” Covid-19 cases in The Last Best Place.

As we were called together Friday afternoon during our last recess for an emergency staff meeting, I realized the scenario felt familiar. Seven years ago (almost to the day), I was called into an emergency staff meeting on a Friday afternoon to be told that my school building was closing. Today, as I sit with the “will we/won’t we” anxiety, I’m considering which school-closing scenario is more stressful.

Then (closing a building due to recently discovered structural issues):

• Sudden. No time to anticipate, worry, plan, etc.
• Clear plan and timeline in place.
• Relatively short “chaos period.” Back to some version of business as usual in just over a week.

Now (waiting to see if we’re closing a building due to a worldwide pandemic made worse in our country by a president who fired the entire pandemic response team in 2018):

• Absurdly drawn out anticipation phase.
• Sense of inevitability.
• No forecasted return to normal.
• Conflicted snow day vibes? A part of me is rooting for cancelled school but then I stop and realize that’s pretty messed up because, well, PANDEMIC.

Our family has a pretty epic crisis response ability. It’s like a superpower, I think. Crisis scenario? We’re your people. We will get things done. I mean, read that article I linked above- even I’m impressed with how articulate I managed to be less than an hour after I learned that our school was being shut down. I packed my entire classroom in a matter of hours the following weekend. I unpacked a few essentials into a closet (no classroom for me) in a new building and transferred everything else into storage at another school. All while also attending rehearsals for a community theatre musical and while coming down with one of the worst sinus infections I’ve ever had. When classes resumed, I trekked from classroom to classroom and sang Three Little Birds with 250 elementary students over the first week.

“Don’t worry about a thing, ’cause every little thing- gonna be alright.”

Bob Marley

Like I said, good in a crisis.

Something about the dragged-out anticipation of a coronavirus school closing has stunted my ability to transform into Crisis-Mode Abby. Maybe I don’t get to hop into the phone booth until we’re officially closed, and it turns out that Limbo-Mode Abby is pretty useless. Do I have online lesson plans for next week? No. Do I have regular lesson plans for next week? Also no. For now, I’ll just keep watching for the Bat-Signal. (I’m confusing my superhero references; I’d better stop writing.)

With love from limbo,

An Experienced School Closer

Greetings from Quarantine

What a time to be alive. COVID-19 is taking the nation by storm, and not in a good way. This is day 2 of what is expected to be a 28-day suspension of reality. I went to my regularly scheduled therapy appointment yesterday afternoon, and I couldn’t figure out what to even talk about. Everything has just. Stopped.

Life was relatively normal through Wednesday. On Thursday, schools started implementing some restrictions, like eliminating large events. Church cancelled Sunday services. By the time I rolled over in the middle of the night, sometime around 1 am Friday morning, the governor had mandated that schools close until at least April 6. We have spring break the week of April 6, so this will be a 4-week closure for us. Or maybe it will be more. Who even knows.

Technically, this isn’t really a quarantine, I guess. None of us – so far as we know – have caught the virus. This morning my usual allergy/asthma cough has been a little more present than normal, so you can assume I’ll be panicking about having coronavirus for most of the day. The girls both have run-of-the-mill stuffy noses, and Aaron’s got cold symptoms as well, so if I’m coming down with anything, it’s probably whatever they all have. And, technically, we can still leave the house. Most businesses are still open. Grocery stores are still a thing. But it feels funny. I don’t feel free to leave. We are supposed to be practicing “social distancing”. What’s the point of cancelling everything and shutting the world down if we are going to all go out and about? I hope everyone else is staying put, too, at least as much as they reasonably can. The federal government has been worse than useless, so I’m grateful for a state government that is taking charge.

Will we survive 28 straight days of all being in a house together? Unclear. Here’s hoping.