Where were you when you first heard of Covid-19? From what I can remember, it was a late night Twitter post that caught my eye. Here we are now and it has had major impacts on a global scale. Later, we heard of mass societal quarantines and other significant changes starting two to three weeks ago. For example, here in Minnesota MDE decided schools were going to stay open, while other states like Iowa were closing up shop. Wisconsin, the day after the decision MN decided to stay open, announced they would be closing schools starting Wednesday March 18th. THEN the next day Minnesota announced they would be closing as well. Talk about chaos through mixed signals!
Luckily, the principal at my school is a science guy. He has a background in physics, and has global connections due to his Turkish background. Interesting guy. Early on he pulled us all in for a meeting and shared with us that it is not a matter of if we close, but when we close. He has been very transparent about what is happening. Unlike so many around the world, we have been trying to be proactive, not reactive. He told us to start thinking about distance learning and coming up with ideas well in advance of school closures. Thankfully, we had a good start.
A little background on my school. I work for a Charter-Public school in the area. It is a S.T.E.M-school (Science. Technology, Engineering. Mathematics) aligned with Concept Schools. I wasn't fully MN licensed when I was trying to move to the area, but moving 3 hours away left me with not a lot of options to pick a job and get settled. Given everything that has happened, I am very thankful for my experience. My school does giant S.T.E.M projects school-wide every month. We have a 1:1 tablet to student ratio. This really came in handy. We have the top of the line flexible seating from Lakeshore, white board tables, and more.
Now I know I said this was a new school in my last post, and it is literally in its first year opening. There were a lot of delays getting into the school building, and once in, the problems only grew. Our student numbers were low to start, and in comparison to other schools; the numbers are still on the low side. This reason is why I got a waiver to teach Special Education, and we made a 2/3 grade multistage class. Challenging for any school to transition to, but it was going overall well.
So here I am currently the head of SPED. I dove into this experience and learned so much. I have a great team guiding me in SPED and I am very thankful. My mentor is a veteran SPED Coordinator and Speech Language Pathologist, and I am working with some of the best in the business. Not to toot my own horn, but she did say I'm doing a lot better than most first year SPED teachers. This praise did not come easy. I had to redo my data collection process 3 times before she gave me a thumbs up. AHHHH. Growth Mindset everyone! The power of YET!
So back to Rona... Over the weekend is when we got the news this was all going down. I got an email Sunday saying we were just going to be open Monday before the building closed to students. So here we are all panicking. Thankfully I asked about 50 questions Monday and after all the administration meetings were over, we are told we have 2 weeks to prepare for a fully distance education program, no need to rush. Still, Monday was crazy! Teachers were printing packets out in mass quantity. Luckily, I had already given a tutorial on Google Classroom and we just had to show the kids. We had an Ipad release form by the end of the day and we were sending them home with our packets already made. With SPED it gets complicated. I had some stuff made, but was told to hang on until we had all of our ducks in the same room at least.
We had no clue what to say to the kids. There was no time to prepare for what to say and how to say it, despite our early awareness this might come to pass. To be honest, I don't think too much was said. Very direct, “there is a virus and school is closing down for two weeks,” and what the suggested practices were. However, the news and social media has suggested it will be much longer. Many speculate it will go until the end of the school year. There are no concrete answers. This is something I feel can be said about the virus as a whole. It was very upsetting to see the kids go home. You would think they would be excited, an extended Spring Break YEAH! I will not lie. A part of me wanted a break, but when it came to it, it felt different. It felt ominous. There was Growth-Mindset Ms. Oas smiling no matter the circumstance, telling my students have a good break, we will stay in touch, hang in there and positive reminders all around. The students on the other hand were very gloomy, sharing a look of despair and confusion. Not everyone was going home to a happy house, and we all knew it.
Day 2 was still insane, no sleep.... We know nothing still. We are told to be at school from 9am-3pm. Not a moment to think. We are in rush mode trying to figure out meals, shelter, who has the internet, and what other needs exist. The first few hours were nothing educational, mostly focused on social responsibilities. Keeping things moving along I was able to meet with my mentor and get some direction. We had a more in-depth training led by yours truly on how to use Google Classroom and Google Forms. We had the rest of the day to work on our to-do list and get things ready for parents to come pick up the packets and Ipads. Our parent-teacher communication recourse Bloomz was flooded and was crashing regularly. Still is today. Thankfully we had the head start and everything was mostly ready to go.
Day 3 I feel the calm. This day was less intense. We were starting to see things coming together for distance learning. We are more relaxed knowing we have two weeks to prepare for distance learning, and we don't need to have it all figured out right away. SPED on the other hand is in limbo. There are all these rules...is it FERPA, BERPA, HIPPA, PIPPA yada, yada, compliant!? What CAN I do!? This day I felt helpless. I was hesitant to start anything in fear of being told I was out of compliance. This day I was on the phone with IT and getting all the SPED Ipads on their own Google User platform. Late this evening my friend who teaches in China shared that she is in her 7th week of distance learning, and the hospitals are still flooded. Mindset adjusted, we are going to be out for sometime.
Day 4 today. Most of the families have their Ipads and packets. We decided on a face-to-face app, Google Hangouts. We did testing today and did a school wide conference. We are a small school, so things moved along quickly. I have a SPED meeting tomorrow, so I scheduled a Google Hangout with them hoping all goes well. I now needed to start getting the whole SPED team on Google Classroom. This should not be that hard! I go to Google Classroom and add the Speech, OT, DAPE, all the SPED teachers as co-teachers... Unfortunately, they are in a different domain. Google does not support this currently. Luckily, my principal gave me temporary Google Admin permissions. This is not my first rodeo with Google Admin, as last year I was the Google Admin for my previous school. My next option is to get them all on our system, essentially getting them all new emails. No fun. I had to drive to a few houses to get signatures, but generally this day was productive.
What now? To be frank, we are taking it all day by day. I know most schools are just doing packets, but this is not distance learning. Other schools are only now just catching on to this. Back in LaCrosse, many people there have no internet. Things are complicated. Parents are asking me when we are coming back. My response is for now after Spring Break until we hear otherwise. I do tell them it is a possibility this could go until the end of the year. This is debated. Do we tell parents this is a possibility? Is that too much shared? What about panic? It is my personal belief to be more prepared rather than told at the last minute it's all going to change. My heart goes out to nurses and healthcare workers. They too are having to adapt to rules changing all the time. China came out with a handbook, so hopefully the U.S will adapt fast. Trump has invoked the Defense Production Act, so there is some hope there.
Next week I hope to get my students started on video conferencing. I need to set up the SPED schedule. How are we doing services? I can really start diving into my content. I am grateful I am still able to go to school. I already feel the impacts of social distancing. I am supposed to go out and see Brad on the 30th. I've mentally prepared that it isn't happening. I want to know what other schools are doing. Where are you at? Have you prepared to go weeks without school? How are you helping your homeless students? Parents, what are your challenges? Tell me people, how are YOU!? I know this is long, but it’s four days in one post.
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