LYDIA DE LEEUW
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Being a (First Year) Teacher in the Year of Covid-19

a blog 

Week 2

4/6/2020

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  Some days are fine. Actually, some days are pretty great. I do a lot of things that I love doing that care for my body and mind and spend time with good people. I am incredibly lucky. After I started using my humidifier I stopped waking up with a stuffy face. Many of my fears were assuaged with this development. I continue to go on my walks, like a walk with Max's mom, a walk with friends Sofia and Zoe, and another walk with Ezra and Jacob. The intention is always the best social distancing, but I would be lying if I said we kept at least 6 feet away from each other for the entire walk. The only person I made sure to actually keep 6 feet away from was Max's mom, since people in her generation are advised to be extra cautious due to the higher risks that are associated with older age with the virus. 

Some days are hard. I woke up one morning to the news that the first person had died of Covid-19 in my county. My brain stopped for a minute. People had already been dying, but now they were dying close to me. The truth is that I didn't realize they hadn't already been dying close to me. Then another day I wake up and see a famous person has died. When the famous person dies their whole life story is crammed into a short article, covered by all the major and local news sources. If someone dies who was only famous to the few people that knew them, their name is not included in the article. 

The state of Michigan is on lockdown now. All non-essential businesses are closed. Restaurants can still do carryout. Grocery stores, pharmacies, and the post office are still running. 

There are two days where I just wake up sad. I just feel sad, the whole day. I don't want to do as many things. When I force myself to walk or play cello I feel better, but still sad. I don't get much done. There was no specific event that lead to these days. Well, nothing specific other than the perpetual reminders that our world is in an unprecedented health emergency. Then I wake up the next day and feel fine. 

I make some more bread. I freak out because there is a bug bite on my leg and I cannot tell what kind of bite it is. I destroy my roommates in poker. I read. 

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New York is getting hit hard. My family is not in the worst of it (NYC), but they are not that far away (Poughkeepsie). People I know through relation are becoming diagnosed, including parents of childhood friends. I'm worried about my parents going to the grocery store. 

Friends from New York start sharing articles about the increase in gun sales. They share pictures of long lines outside of gun stores. So far, most of the reactions I have seen from people in the midst of the crisis have been things like teachers sharing resources, families finding new ways to connect, friends checking in with friends, and invitations to mutual-aid pages and meditation groups. I've been feeling good about the state of humanity. But reading all the comments on gun posts of people with shared experiences, seeing long gun lines. terrifies me. Maybe I am in a naive bubble, and the gun-buying toilet paper-hoarding America is the more accurate depiction of humanity in crisis. 

I'm scared. 

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Being a "specials" teacher is hard. It means I am not the one responsible for checking in with students or communicating with them. Parents are supposed to access our "weekly lesson plan" through the district wide specials website, which the classroom teachers include in their weekly communication. But instrumental music, although a "special", is only a 5th-grade special, and therefore is not included on the weekly calendar provided in the district. One of my colleagues says his daughter, a first-grader at one of our schools, has never received the specials link from her teacher. 

It feels great to see students submitting things and writing us messages. But the reality is that only 35 or so students out of 350 are submitting things. Submitting things is not required, so they could be doing things and not submitting them. But data showing 10 % of students are engaged doesn't feel great. 

I didn't sign up to be a teacher to make lesson plans, send them out, and have no communication with students. It doesn't feel like teaching. But I don't want to overburden students and assign them too much for my own benefit of validating myself. 

So I text Joe and tell him I want to create a bingo board for our students. He's down. I can't wait for our video meeting to get my ideas down so I start creating the squares. "Take a silly picture of you practicing your instrument and submit it to the Silly Picture Challenge," "Play the Gravity game on the note-reading quizlet and screenshot your high score," "Teach a relative how to hold the bow and take a picture." I'm excited. Joe joins the fun and in the end we have something like this: (ST)RINGO. 
I post it to a string teacher Facebook group and people seem to really like the idea. It feels great. Almost as good as actual teaching. 










 
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Saturday: Walk Around the Empty Eberwhite Elementary

4/2/2020

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Things that didn't used to feel scary now do. I have been waking up with a little bit of a scratchy throat and stuffy face. This is quite normal for me, but even the slightest signs of illness are terrifying. My chest is the slightest bit heavier, maybe? That is one of the warning signs, so I have to know, but I am probably just over thinking it. Probably. I am not coughing, though. People say the cough is the giveaway symptom. So as long as I don't start coughing I am okay. Plus I feel fine. I'm going on long walks and not winded or anything. But people say it can be very mild. Even if I do get it very mild I will probably be okay. But I could still spread it. Am I doing enough to be socially distant? I'm probably not sick or anything. It's just the stress of it all, that's it. 

I drive out to Madison Heights to get more of my things. I'm not sure if I was expecting the roads to be completely empty or look like normal, but neither was true. There were still plenty of cars on the highway, just not as many as normal. Where were all these people going? Were they all essential workers? I mean I wasn't, but I am guessing most of these people are not driving between homes to gather belongings. 

My room is just how I left it. My roommate and her boyfriend could have not moved since I was there last week, except that they were sitting on a new couch. Huh. A new couch. I wonder how that got there. Are they being socially distant enough? Can I trust them to be cleaning everything well so I don't catch anything while I am here? Can I trust myself not to be spreading anything while I am here? Should I be wearing gloves? I don't have gloves. I could have asked Max's uncle for gloves. I washed my hands, that should be fine, plus I am only touching my things, and door knobs, but they are my door knobs. 

I leave with another four trips to the car worth of things, some of the highlights of which are my humidifier, four of my six plants (sorry Trenton but you are very large and were not doing that well anyways), a collection of cooking items I had come to miss, and the 7 rolls of toilet paper I had stored. I wrap a garbage bag around the base of the plants and carefully place them on the floor of my car. At the first turn one plant immediately falls over. Me too bud, me too. 

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Back in Ann Arbor, I set off on a solitary walk to the neighborhood elementary school. I am struck by how empty the neighborhood feels. I am used to seeing more people out, enjoying the sidewalks and front yards as one of the last things people are allowed to enjoy outside their home. But as I stand in the middle of a five-way intersection at the heart of the neighborhood and slowly turn my body in a full circle, I see not a single person or moving car. 

I look in the abandoned elementary school. Emergency lights are still on, classes are still setup, and student work is still hung on the wall. I start to take a closeup video of the perimeter of the school, zooming in on the classrooms that are begging for students to return to them and the plants dying in the beds outside the windows. Some kids come racing into the adjacent playground on their bikes. A family starts playing together on the basketball course. I don't film this specifically, but it is in the background. I turn the corner of the school and a group of adults are playing on a climbing structure, no kids in sight. The sun is setting and the reflection of the hues of twilight are perfectly reflected in the windows of the school. I feel like I have some amazing footage to start our BRIGE film. 

Then my phone just shuts off. I try to turn in back on, it shows I have at least 20% battery, I open my camera app, and it shuts off. It is only when I get back home and charge it do I notice that almost none of my footage was saved. 

I wish I could say I found something beautifully symbolic about not being able to capture the trance of an empty school and the life that persisted around it. But no. It just kind sucked to lose some good film. 


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    Lydia de Leeuw is an educator and cellist in Southeast Michigan. 

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