A Week Inside: Closed Schools, Shelter-in-Place, New Friends, and Family Time

This year, my two teaching jobs were supposed to take me through June 11. The long-commute to Daly City, on Tuesdays and Thursdays, after dropping Rebelle Harmony off at preschool (now closed) was a time for coffee-sipping and podcasts in the morning, and a time for phone calls with friends on the commute back home. That school year was scheduled to end in mid-May. My four-nights-a-week job in Berkeley was scheduled to run through June 11. All of a sudden the school year is likely over. Distance-learning attempts are being made, but our student population is not the most computer-literate population, and the fact that they are learning English makes online learning more tricky. The fact that there is no ready-made system for all of this makes a possible transition even more bumpy. I emailed my students a list of online resources and told them to reach out to me. I miss them…but I don’t miss the exhaustion of working and parenting..which I did while at less-than-full health for the last three months.

This is a time for the educational system to experiment and research. These next few months will be a mess, but they should be an opportunity for school systems to gain a deeper understanding of what is needed and for curriculum development improvements. Too many students are without reliable internet or computers at home. Too many students have no quiet place to work in their homes. Too many teachers have little online training. Too many parents think this whole thing should be…