Summer of Babies: A day that will go down as...anti-climactic (A Memory for my daughters about Covid 19 Quarantine)

I woke up early as usual, got my coffee, turned on Alexa for the news and started typing away. That was pretty typical in my position as an Innovation/Technology specialist at Anderson Elementary. I woke up because I needed to make some tweaks before I sent out my "masterpiece" for others to take a peek at, having no clue what a big deal it was going to be for me and I clicked SEND to a few Instructional Support Coaches and my boss. It wasn't really a masterpiece, so much as a format that I wanted to share with my teachers on what their lesson plans might look like if we were to move into e-Learning.

The Toilet Paper we got from HomeDepot

The signs of Covid 19 started in the months before. Covid was in the news, but we had heard it before from SARS, H1N1, etc. Tony said that masks were being hard to come by at Home Depot. Our friend who, sold dental equipment mentioned that he could't keep mask in stock cause they were all shipping to Washington State. A friend at work who said she had some insider information, said that she knew that schools were going to be closed. Then Auntie Kaylee, a Sophmore at ISU, was told not to go back after Spring Break. Just the Wednesday before "Covid Day", I had booked a $200 round trip flight to San Francisco at the end of April to see my new baby niece. Then of course, there was the "run" on toilet paper at the stores...Luckily Tony had gotten a new shipment at work, and I told him to pick some up cause our Amazon shipment said that they would not be fulfilling it. My mom was currently in California waiting for my sister to have her baby girl and I was nervous for her to get stuck there.

Friday, March 13th, will be the most influential days I think that I will ever have in my teaching career and ironically that was the day that my niece was born, so I will always remember. After my tweaking, I got to school and found every single 1st and Kindergarten teacher that I had not yet gotten a hold of and said that I wanted to get their students into a program that we call SeeSaw, to get the students ready to use that tool independently. It was a "hail Mary" but I needed to know that if we had to go remote learning that these students "kind of" knew how to do that.

It was becoming around 11 and I got a 630 number, so I answered it. It was our Teachers Union president, he said that he needed me to come down to the Administration office immediately and that I needed to keep it quiet. My heart was racing and my adrenaline was pumping. I casually got my stuff and said that the needed me in a "meeting". On the way, I called my mom and told her that I thought that they were going to bring me to the Superintendent and "rip me a new one" for causing panic to the masses by sending my "masterpiece" ideas along to 20 teachers and ISC's. I assumed that this would be a small room with a few people. Not a small room a big room...The Board room. I turned the corner and was met with applause and cheering. My upper lip started quivering and I almost started to cry. The room was filled with Admin and, Instructional Support Coaches from all grades, people that I had admired throughout my 14 year career and they were grateful for ME! This group had been brought together to create the very plan that I had already started. My name and work was brought up when the task came at hand, and it was suggested that I be brought in to assist.

I felt like we were in the "situation room" at the White House, we were planning and "what if"ing tweaking to make a more robust document for our teachers to plan instruction for 2 weeks and was to be sent out to teachers as soon as it was ready. While I was creating with these ISC's, Anderson Elementary and the rest of the district, was being told at noon, by email, that they needed to send all Chromebooks and essential supplies home and that the students would not be back for 2 weeks. Looking back on this now, I am very grateful that I got to "be in the room where it happened" but guilty that I wasn't there to help the teachers, or get to see the students one last time. The day ended at 430 and when I got home the Governor had announced that schools would be closed till the end of March.

My last day with Kindergarten Teachers

The weekend will full of creating and planning and thinking. . Monday morning at 7am, I was at Anderson and ready to help those teachers to show them every single tip and trick that I could think of to make this two weeks be as successful as it could be. I taught See Saw, Screencastify, Google Meet, Google Forms, Google Classroom, you name it...I felt so needed and loved and appreciated, but did not leave till about 530 that night with maybe just one pee break. That night I took the girls to Sam's Club because I had a computer monitor on my wishlist, so that I wasn't having to stare at my little screen while working. I made this an essential item for these 2 weeks and I honestly think it was the best purchase I had make in 10 years.

I woke up on Tuesday ready for this exciting day of e-learning and to get some energy in me, I drove to the Gym, but it had already been closed down for the foreseeable future. So I headed to Walmart to get one last cord for my monitor and for some reason a cute pair of shoes...not knowing that that would be the last time that I stepped in a store in 68 days from today.

I enjoyed being home for a bit... I like sleeping, I liked my commute up the stairs with a cup of coffee. I do take a shower, get dressed, put on makeup, just to have a sense of normalcy. I have been so grateful during this remote learning time that I have been able to be helpful, not only to my teachers but to teachers and leadership across the district. I was even more honored when they asked me to assist with professional learning to help them with those tech tools that they needed. It has been very rewarding for me to feel so needed and appreciated. I have absolutely loved my work that I had contributed.

As for the world....its a roller coaster. People being told to stay home and Netflix it out. 2 weeks was fun, but had I known that I would have stretched my Tiger King binge for a few more weeks. Schools were closed through the end of the school year, so as I write this we are at March 70th. With Restaurants closed, we try our best to eat out local as a family 1x per week and I have been making it a tradition to go to Big Apple Bagel every Monday morning from Bagels and Coffee. Reagan's 9th Birthday was a huge success with ordering out for dinner and a surprise Birthday Parade with all her friends and family. I hope she always remembers that.

Tony's work has been very busy. Being a disaster relief store, people are using that to paint their house, work on their garden and many other things that people need to do to keep busy and not bored, not exactly essential, but I understand peoples need. Unfortunately, they are also giving their employees lots of paid sick time, so they are short staffed, which makes every one of Tony's' work day "Black Fridays". He is tired.

Reagan has her school work, she gets it done, but needs an extra set of eyes on it to make sure it is completed properly. Braelyn has a folder of papers that we give to her, 2 per day and usually a video from the pre-school. I am so lucky that they are old enough to just need me sometimes, and for the most part they know that when I am working they are to go be bored and go play. We made a rule that at 9am you will be off the iPad, dressed and ready for school. I had high hopes that the school work would last all day, but Reagan is usually finished by 11am. Reagan and Braelyn are getting along pretty well considering that they have to be each others best friends till whenever we can break out of this.

Each week we look forward to choosing a local restaurant to eat out at. Easter is usually full of people and good food hosted at our house but that weekend we kept busy by creating drawings on about 20 of our friends and family's driveways and then ding dong ditching them, if we didn't get caught. We had a nice breakfast of creapes and Mimosas and Tony smoked a ham and Mac and Cheese. We look forward to Zoom calls with our friends every so often. The strangest thing is drinking while Zooming and then getting off and realizing you were actually alone the whole time. Thankfully the girls have also keep connected with family and friends through FB messenger and phone calls. They have even come up with a way to play hide and go seek. The girls got caterpillars that will turn into Butterflies so that is something to look forward to. They miss their Grandparents, so on day 60ish, we snuck out and had a driveway party with Baba and Grandpa and then the next day Grandma Deb came for dinner outside.

We are so so so fortunate to be riding this out with food on our table, warm beds at night, a large house to spread out in, a WHOLE lot of alcohol, and knocking on Springtime. We know that not all families are as lucky as ours. We hope that this will bring us and others back to the simple things in life. I like to be a optimistic that this will allow people to connect to their families, value education, value their health, value receiving a paycheck, value work, value freedoms that I do think that we took for granted.