Two years.
It’s been two years since we packed up our loveys for a couple of weeks of online learning before spring break.
Two years since kids, backpacks stuffed to the brink with textbooks and worksheet packets and iPads and school supplies, flooded the hallway with the same kind of excitement and anticipation that usually greets winter break or summer vacation.
If only we knew how lasting this would be, we might have insisted on more closure. We might have brought our children together for one last circle time, lingered extra long in the hug-and-handshake line.
For the rest of that year, the only student contact I had came by way of a few work check-ins, and some optional game times on Fridays.
But I did post lots of videos for my students. Here was my very first one, encouraging students to “find their cozy place and write.”
Strangely enough, the second location is still where I go to work…
Soapbox: The Way I see Things 
20/20 hindsight. If we knew two years ago how learning and the world in general was going to change I think there are many things we would have done and maybe done differently. Comeback is slow, but we are getting there.
Slow, and definitely not always steady. More of the forward-and-back-mother-may-I-ish-ness of recovery…
I think lots of us still nestle into the spaces we created during one of the most disruptive seasons in modern history. The pandemic has taught us so much and so little. Thanks for sharing this reflections.
So much, and so little indeed. Thanks for your wise words. You’re 100% right.
Yes, two years ago, it was all strange. There was a rush to train students to work on Google Classroom and Zoom! Interestingly we held our first ES assembly last week, that felt strange too. The video of your initial work station is a great record.
Thanks, Juliette! Isn’t it weird to think about how we were learning the basics of Zoom and Google Classroom only yesterday? Now I can’t imagine my professional life without it. How was the assembly? We are still hosting all of our special programming on Zoom…
March 13, 2020, a date that will live in infamy…how does a thing seem so long and so short at the same time?? We went mask-optional last Monday. I realized I didn’t know some kids without their masks – having never seen their whole faces before. We had no idea how altered life would be — even now, how altered it is. I went maskless at a grocery store for the first time this weekend, and it felt so strange. But, we’ve all learned a lot about just how much we can adapt…
Going to mask-optional has certainly been a transition in our district as well. And like you, I’ve been experimenting around with taking my mask off. Trying to figure out where and when I’m comfortable, and to what degree. I think the kids are going through the same thing!
This post encompasses all the emotions that surrounded the move to remote learning. It is nice to see you again and I’m glad we both made it through. Those memories we will never forget. – Gail
Thank you for your kind words. And…unforgettable is *definitely* a word to describe the experience, for sure.
It feels like the longest two years of our lives and it’s still going. Though I’m back in the office, people have left oe relocated to other venues so it doesn’t feel quite the same even after six months.
I ❤️ the calm look of your writing/work area.
Thank you! It’s even more calm and wonderful when I’ve got one of my sweet dogs on the floor right next to me. Not so calm and wonderful when the younger dog gets jealous of my computer / book and keeps trying to nudge it away…