Remember January 1, 2020? Were you one of the many people like me who was really excited for 2020 because things were just falling into place for you and you knew that it was going to be an awesome year?
Joke's on us, huh.
A couple of times, I've wondered what my life would be like today if it hadn't been for the pandemic. I think I know ... I have a pretty good idea where I was headed -- Then I just shut that line of thinking down. It doesn't matter. It's a moot point. It ain't happenin'.
So here's where I am. A LOT has changed since exactly eight months ago tonight when schools across the state started closing like dominoes falling in a row.
Starting with the big change right up front: I un-retired and went back to teaching. The abrupt loss of subbing in mid-March + some big car repair bills = a need to go back to work. Not sporadic subbing. Steady work. Plus, there was no point in being retired if I couldn't do the two things I wanted to do, which was go to Québec (the border has been closed since March 21) and pursue music-making opportunities (just about non-existent).
But I'm not at "Falcon High School." They had two openings in my department. I applied and didn't even get a courtesy interview. They were right up front with me that they wanted someone younger. And of course they're entitled to pick whomever they want, so that closed that door for me. I was upset for a while, then started looking to see what other opportunities were out there.
It didn't take long to find something. A small high school with an excellent reputation posted an opening for a full-time French teacher. The ad said they were seeking someone "with a true love of the French language." Hey, that's me!! And I was really impressed that enthusiasm about the subject matter was important to them. Finding out that the principal was someone I had participated in a leadership workshop with and was really impressed by sealed the deal. I applied. A few weeks later, I had an interview on a Monday morning. A second interview followed on Thursday morning. By Friday afternoon, I had a job offer at what I will call "Raider High School." Whereas "Falcon High School" thought my age was a liability, "Raider High School" thought my experience was an asset.
So this is a week in my Life 2.0 in pandemic-land. My new normal. It's very possible that absolutely no one will read this to the end. That's o.k., I wrote it mostly for myself. I want a record of what this life 2.0 is like.
Starting on Sunday, I play guitar and sing a song for a Zoom church service for a small church in western Maine whose minister is a college classmate of mine. Then at 9:30 I participate in an online Zumba (like what used to be called aerobic dance) class from one of the area YMCA's. In both cases the faces have become familiar, even through Zoom. On many Sundays, those are the only people I talk to all day, and I can't remember the last time I saw family or friends on a Sunday, or any weekend day for that matter, in person. I do laundry, and on my drying rack along with a row of underwear and a row of socks is a row of masks. I write lesson plans for the week and try to get it all done on Sunday. It takes a lot longer because of the new circumstances, especially having some students in each of my classes who are 100% remote (an option available for families who wanted it). I've made myself very available to help those students by e-mail or Google Meet (like Zoom for schools), but they generally don't respond. Indeed in a few cases, I have no idea what they even look like. Every activity and every assignment has to be something students can do independently at home, or at least online since we've been asked not to use paper in school if we can help it. Furthermore, even the students I see in person are only in school two days a week. Half the students attend Monday and Tuesday, and half on Thursday and Friday, to enable social distancing. So school prep takes me several hours. I try to wrap up by 8 p.m. to watch a TV show online from Québec that is like 60 Minutes but live, and very timely. If something big is in the news on Wednesday, they will have the parties in the studio on Sunday night to be interviewed. It helps me keep up with Québec news and with my French.
On Monday my alarm goes off at 5 a.m. and I meditate or just get my thoughts organized before heading out the door at 6 a.m. My outfit for the day, laid out the night before, includes a color-coordinated fabric mask. My lunch for the day includes an extra bottle of water since people at school are discouraged from using the fountains (and can't take a drink straight out of the fountain at all, can only fill a bottle). And my getting-ready-for-the-day preparations include taking and recording my temperature, required by the school. My commute is 45 minutes, nearly all of that on the Maine Turnpike. I thought that would be a hardship. It isn't at all. It's a nice drive and a great way to warm up for the day by listening to the music or the news, and a great way to unwind on the way home in the afternoon.
There is no point in arriving before 7 a.m. because everyone has to have their temperature taken (yes, again) as they enter the building, and 7 a.m. is when it starts, so that is when I put my mask on and get out of my car and head in. The principal himself, a very gregarious guy, is out there himself with the forehead scanner which looks like he is aiming a water pistol at my forehead and that of every student and adult who enters the building. Then in I go and have about a half-hour of quiet for getting ready for the day. My classroom is at the end of a wing and I'm the first one there, so it's quiet, all right. As the students arrive, they are not allowed to go anywhere they want in the building as they were in normal times. Their choices are the auditorium, cafeteria, or gym, with socially distanced seating. Then at 7:30 a.m. they are released to classrooms one group at a time, single file in the halls, six feet apart, masked. They come into the room and take seats which are in fixed positions six feet apart. Because with the cohort system we only have half a class at a time, my smallest class has three students and my biggest one has 12. Class is all either me talking or them on their laptops; no group work allowed, no sharing of materials allowed. At the end of each class, they are each given a sanitary wipe to wipe their desk and chair, and the principal summons them to leave and proceed to their next class, one wing at a time, single file in the halls, six feet apart, masked. At lunch time the students go to the cafeteria and sit not at cafeteria tables but at regular student desks, six feet apart. Teachers eat in our own rooms alone; that's all we're allowed.
At 1 p.m. the students are done for the day and they HAVE to leave; no detention, no after-school help. They are dismissed one wing at a time, single file in the halls, six feet apart, masked. Sports teams (the ones allowed to play) and the drama club have to come back later on their own. From 1-2, teachers are expected to be reaching out to remote students. Let's just say I'm trying. Then our day ends at 2 p.m. If we want to stay longer, we have to be out by 3:30.
Monday nights I Zoom into a University of Maine course, my first since 1978: poetry of Québec. Not only is it a topic I'm really enthusiastic about, but the professor is Québécois and did his dissertation on this very topic. This is about my only opportunity to carry on a conversation in French any more, 5-7 p.m. on Monday nights.
Tuesday from 5 a.m. to arriving home looks a lot like Monday. The evening is spent in another Zumba class and getting ready for Wednesday teaching ...
Wednesday is all remote for students and teachers alike. Only custodians are in the school. Each class is allotted 45 minutes. Our assigned game plan is to teach for 30 minutes, then stay on 15 more for questions or giving help. Students may leave at the 30-minute mark if they don't have questions or need/want help. Then there is a 90-minute lunch break, during which time school buses are delivering student lunches around the district. Then a half hour of online advisory. Those of us with freshman advisories are trying to come up with ways to get acquainted with our advisees. Then an hour of office hours from 1-2 p.m. like on the other days, then our day ends. I will see a different group of students on Thursday and Friday, but their lesson plan is all done since it is the same one I used on Monday and Tuesday. So Wednesday and Thursday evenings are pretty relaxed. Just me at home, though, or taking a walk, or practicing guitar. No family or friends contact unless you count social media. Over the past few weeks I've gotten back into the small fitness studio where I used to go work out a few times a week. He can only have one client at a time now. Over the summer I took a 7 a.m. slot, but once I started school I couldn't do that any more, and other people had already taken the afternoon slots. Eventually a 2:45 p.m. slot opened up on Wednesday, so that's mine now. Once a week is better than nothing. He stays in his office so his clients can work out without a mask, and I have to be out 15 minutes before his next client so he can wipe everything down.
Thursday and Friday school days look like Monday and Tuesday but with different kids.
Friday afternoons are my other rare opportunity (in addition to Wednesday workouts) for face-to-face human contact outside of school. I alternate back and forth with a bodywork session with the same practitioner I've been going to for 18 years now I think (polarity therapy, it's like acupuncture without the needles) which has been consistent because he never closed, and on the other Fridays, a guitar lesson. I insist on keeping music in my life in some way, and right now solo guitar performance is it. I sing a Sunday morning song as mentioned above, I have a guitar lesson every other Friday, I play at home for my own enjoyment, and every now and then I video myself doing a song and post it on Facebook. I did a couple of Zoom open mic nights but have let those go as I got busy with school.
Friday nights have become my time to do grading. Since the students are on a couple of different schedules, my across-the-board schedule is that I post the assignment on Sunday and it's due Friday at 1. I was doing it Sunday, but since prep is taking more and more time, I moved grading to Friday night. - followed by going to bed early the second it's done.
Saturdays I insist on one day not working. So I drive up to my little piece of lakefront property (undeveloped) in eastern Maine. I have to be a lot more selective now about where I'll stop for road food or the bathroom; most of my old regular destinations are too casual about masks for me to be comfortable buying food there, so I just bring food with me now. Then Saturday night I start my work for my college classes and finish it if at all possible. That's another thing I was doing on Sunday that I moved elsewhere in my schedule because school prep takes so much time.
And then back to Sunday and starting the weekly routine again.
I can live with this. I'm teaching again in a really good school, so I have a purpose. I feel as safe as possible given what's going on in the world.
But ... no performing music in ensembles. No concerts or plays or sports events, except the final home girls' soccer game at Falcon H.S. because the coach, in an incredibly compassionate gesture, invited me. No eating in restaurants, not for me, anyway. No traveling up to eastern Maine and getting a hotel room; I make the round trip in a day on Saturday. No trips to Québec; the border has been closed since March 21 as noted, and Canada doesn't intend to reopen it anytime soon. I haven't even been out of Maine since last December. And almost never any in-person time with family or friends. Falcontown friendships have fallen away even though I left out of necessity, not rejection; people are busy with their own lives and just self-isolating at home -- not that staying home during a pandemic is a bad thing. And social media is a shallow substitute.
And out in the world beyond, the times are very dark. Pandemic. Racism. Climate change. Wildfires. The 1% and the 99%. Government by a fascist dictatorship led by a corrupt madman whom everyone feared would cheat his way into a second term; he tried, but he didn't succeed, thank God. I gave up on TV news long before the pandemic. I rarely read COVID-19 news anymore as nothing seems to change or improve. I did vote, though, but any positive change the outcome may create will be slow, and solving the list of problems above will take years. And closer to home, there seems to be more bad news than good. As I write this, three people in my immediate circle are seriously suffering: one from COVID-19, one from a life-threatening condition with a life-changing procedure pending, and one new baby whose mother is on day 3 of labor in the hospital as I write this, labor which isn't progressing. Maybe the baby is seeing and hearing what's going on in the world and is thinking "Nuts to that, I'm not going out there, I'm staying in here." (Update: the person close to me who had COVID is better, the baby is here and both mom and baby are fine, and no word on the other friend yet.)
So I've become an involuntary introvert at home, doing two kinds of schoolwork, teacher work and college student work, and playing guitar and singing so as not to let music completely disappear from my life. My poetry writing has been silenced; no inspiration. The one pandemic poem I wrote is so depressing that I don't want anyone to see it.
But I'm not depressed. Nor am I anxious like I was in the spring. I sought treatment for anxiety in April and it was successful. So my mental health is fine. I've grieved the parts of my life that are gone, and I've learned the art of acceptance as I wait to see whether any of them will return. I miss doing things with people out in the world, and I don't like spending so much evening and weekend time alone. Social media is not a substitute. Zoom is a substitute, to a point. I don't count days until the vaccine is available, because who knows. I actually try not to think about the future at all. Staying in the present is plenty for right now. One thing that provoked my anxiety last spring is feeling like I was living in a dystopian novel. Again, I've forced myself to just shut those thoughts off. It may be true, but it's unhelpful.
UPDATE: My school is now closed as of Monday 11/9/2020 and we are teaching from home five days a week until November 30 -- although with cases rising all over the state, who knows if we will go back on that date. I won't be a bit surprised if we're out for December as well.
Teaching from home: an hour's more sleep in the morning. No need to prepare an outfit or a lunch or a mask or extra water bottles the night before. Neat hair and dressy clothes from the waist up, sweat pants and slippers from the waist down. Talking into the green camera light on my laptop all morning as most of my students turn their laptop cameras off. Long lunch. Early end to the day. I've gotten all kinds of cooking and cleaning done with the extra time. This really isn't affecting my actual teaching all that much; I've been conducting business all year knowing that this was likely to happen at some point. Indeed with the numbers of cases rising so far so fast, I believe that history will tell that we attempted to go back to normal too soon.
But I'm grateful that at least I got a full September and October with my classes to get to know them. As with Falcon H.S., I have great interactions with the kids. I will never be "D-Whit" at Raider H.S. like I was at Falcon H.S. It's a different school culture. But it's a great fit for me. I'm the only French teacher and love teaching all the levels of French, which I never got to do at Falcon H.S. I'm in a department with the music teachers. And the school leadership is top-shelf.
If I can't have Québec or live performance in my life, at least I'm glad I landed in a great school with a great job. Yes, even under these circumstances, it's a great job at a great school. French teaching at Raider H.S. is not a bad way at all to spend Life 2.0.
*****
p.s. to anyone who made it this far and wants to comment: I heard after my last few blog posts that people tried to comment and couldn't. I've since learned that you have to have a Google account to comment. If you don't, then please feel free to comment on the Facebook post where you saw this posted, or contact me privately. Thanks for reading the whole thing!!
