Oh, hi everybody.
So here are some updates from MattWorld:
- MARCH 2020 – L.A. on lockdown. Adopted puppy. Watched Tiger King.
- AUGUST 2020 – School offices re-open in LAUSD; schools remain under remote learning protocol. Returning to having to wear pants everyday again is one of the great hardships of my life.
- DECEMBER 2020 – I get COVID-19. (I know, I know, I didn’t abide the subject line of these OOC board posts…) I still don’t know how, or from whom, but for sure it was at my school, as that was the only place I had any amount of contact with other humans. I enter quarantine immediately and basically sleep 10-14 hours every day for two weeks, transitioning daily between a waking nightmare of angst and existential dread, and literal nightmares as the coronavirus saps my energy and attacks my organs. I am fortunate, though, in that my case can be classified as “mild”: I only had a fever for one day, I never had to be put on a respirator, never had to go to the hospital, and have (to all outward appearances) seemed to since make a full recovery.
- ALSO DECEMBER 2020 – Irony is the best word for it: the week I get COVID and am forced into quarantine is the day LAUSD decides to shutter all offices and go back full remote. Our school phones are shunted into an Amazon Connect pipeline, and for most of the remainder of the school year we are answering parent and community calls from a headset on our home computers.
- APRIL 2020 – LAUSD makes the decision to shift from remote to hybrid for the remaining 7-8 weeks of the school year. They announce this in… gosh, early March, I think? We scramble to get ready. I am really salty about this, because – as usual – it’s us on the frontlines who do the work to make this plan not-fail, while the suits downtown call the shots and have no skin in the game. … but, that said, we did make it work, and to see my kids’ faces and how happy they were to have even a shred of “normal” school back after a year and a half inside?.. you’d have to be literally made of ice to not feel something. I didn’t like the plan when it was announced, but… we did it, and it worked, we kept kids safe and we gave them a glimpse of the world they’d lost. That means something. That means a lot.
- JULY 2020 – After a mere 3 weeks (!!!) of summer break, I am back on the job. We are prepping now for a full return to in-person instruction. Despite the successes we had with our hybrid instruction scheme at the end of last school year… I can’t help but have misgivings now. Masks and distancing will be in effect, but how effective can it be with upwards of 30 kids in a classroom simultaneously, and no option for remote learning? We are looking at a mid-August start date and there are still many unanswered questions about logistics, scheduling and the basic choreography of mapping out the school day.