This week marks the last full week of summer break. My last week of summer before I embark upon my 18th year of teaching bilingual students at Bullock Elementary. If this coming year held any bit of resemblance to my last seventeen years, I would have already been in to my classroom, quietly and slowly getting things organized and set up. I can think best when no one is around and the building is silent, so I always find a way to get in to the building at least a week early, if not two weeks, to get my classroom ready. Then when everyone gets there the following week, I can feel free to socialize with anyone who comes by or I can get started on plans, activities, and copies for the first week of classes.
I would have a notebook already filled with notes about how I wanted my classroom to look, creative ideas about how to manage things a little differently, something new I want to try out, etc. I also would have made a few small purchases for my classroom, likely at garage sales, the Dollar Tree, and Big Lots. And perhaps I would have a few digital documents saved and ready to go for the year.
On the home front, now is about the time I might start to panic over losing my last bit of free time and control over my schedule. Is there anything around the house that still needs attention that I haven't gotten around to? Any last minute appointments I need to make? Any friends or family members that I want to try to get together with for a quick lunch break? Any last fun outting I want to attempt to squeeze in with my boys?
But this year looks a bit different than most years. Okay, different than any year ever.
No one is allowed in the building, so there's no early classroom preparation. In fact, though staff development starts a week from tomorrow, we haven't even gotten confirmation regarding how and where that week of staff development will actually take place. When classes start the following Monday, they will be 100% virtual for at least the first four weeks. Teaching rules and procedures won't look anything like it has in the past. Rather than practicing how we line up and enter/exit the classroom, beginning procedures will be about how to properly access digital assignments and lessons, how and when to mute the microphone during virtual meetings, and finding ways to become a community over a screen. Once the kids do actually come back to the classroom, there will be a whole new set of procedures and routines to teach, mostly regarding safety and teaching what this new way of COVID learning looks like. We'll be wearing masks and face shields, we'll sit far apart rather than in groups and clusters, we'll each have our own materials stored at our desk rather than the community way we've done for years. Who knows how long we'll have to go without using any playground equipment, share manipulatives, sit on the rug together, or have buddy-reading time on the beanbags. Everything about school will be foreign to all of us. Everything that my students tell me they love about my classroom and the way I teach and manage things won't even exist, well, except for the way I tenderly love each of them. Community won't look anything like we've seen before. Yes, we'll build it. It's just going to look and seem pretty foreign for awhile. Kinda feels like I'll be dropped off in another country again to learn a whole new culture all over again--except this time they're aren't any natives to learn from because we're having to build this new culture one day at a time. Though I don't know how many students will actually be back in the classroom (since they had the option of choosing remote learning for the whole year), I do look forward to the ones that do come back because this group of students was my very last group to teach in Pre-K, so it will be my second opportunity to teach many of them.
So, my bank account is a little fuller, as I haven't purchased a single thing for my classroom other than a few new colored pens (an attempt to at least get into the school spirit). My "school" notebook isn't filled with new ideas or classroom set up plans this year. Instead it's filled with notes from trainings about teaching in the digital world and working with kids from trauma (as I'm sure we're going to find out just how traumatic this experience can be on a seven-year-old). I haven't created a whole lot of digital files, though, until I get trained on the new digital platform our district will be using this school year.
I did fill my teacher planner with a ton of positive notes, survival strategies, and Scripture verses that I scrambled to write while attending a virtual teacher conference geared toward Christian teachers called Teacher, Be Still. God knew how much I'd need that conference to empower me for the year ahead. Since my planner goes everywhere with me during school, I'll have those notes of encouragement whenever I need them. Reminders that my school is the mission field God sent me to and equipped me for seventeen years ago. Reminders that the safest place to be is in the center of God's will.
On the home front, that looks quite different, as well. Instead of family outtings and adventures, we've turned to bike rides, outdoor coffee dates, and Netflix. All. summer. long. We haven't gone on trips, I still refuse to visit with people indoors, and darn it, those dentist appointments just didn't happen (I hate going to the dentist!). I can't say I've gotten anything accomplished in the house because we're just all there all the time, so it's stayed a constant mess most weeks. Juan and I thought about painting the cabinets in the kitchen, but we just never got around to it. Home has rather been our safe haven, and without the "luxury" of being able to freely invite people in, no one on the outside had to see the mess, anyway. Lol.
I've soaked up every minute of time I could/can with David before he leaves for college in just a few weeks (so far, that hasn't changed). Life really won't ever look the same again, and I am sure his absence will hit me hard. I didn't even get any preparation/practice time to let him go (like sending him to camp in Colorado or to Africa for two weeks on a mission trip). I wonder how many bike rides and outdoor coffee/lunch dates I can convince him to go on with me over the next week. :)
It's going to be a whole new way of life ahead in so many ways. No matter how I try to imagine it, it's all still just too surreal to take it all in.
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