COLUMN: A long, strange view from my new classroom
.JPG "Ed Grisamore from his “virtual classroom.”")
I reported to school the other day without leaving my house.
I did not have to put on a tie or carry my briefcase out the front door. In between classes, I went for some fresh air and walked around the neighborhood. I made myself a sandwich for lunch in the comfort of my kitchen.
This past week, I have been teaching 49 high school journalism students while balancing a laptop computer on my knees and answering their text messages with my thumbs. I have been giving them instructions with a series of keyboard commands. I have operated online virtual classrooms, where I can look them in the eyes. They appear on the screen in tiny windows, like the opening of “The Brady Bunch” television show.
This is what is known as a “Distance Learning Plan.’’ Yes, it is new to my vocabulary, too. No, we are not driving our grandmother’s school bus. In a sense, we all are being home-schooled now.
We have watched the spread of the coronavirus as if we were a tracking a hurricane, with different models and projected paths to landfall. Now, we are rowing in unchartered waters in the eye of an uncertain storm.
As teachers – with two months remaining in the academic year -- we are planning our work and working our plan until the coast is clear.
The optimist in me believes everything will be OK, that we are staving off the perpetrator with common sense and self-induced quarantine. The pessimist in me wonders if we are simply living on borrowed time, that we must brace ourselves for the new norm of “social distancing” and be constantly reminded to wash our hands, something I haven’t had to be told to do since I was 5 years old.
Last week was supposed to be the beginning of the 10-day home stretch before spring break at Stratford Academy, where I have taught for the past five years. A talent show for upper and middle school students had been planned for Thursday. This coming week, teachers were to hold conferences with students and their parents to schedule classes for next fall. On Friday, more than 285 students in the lower school and preschool were to perform their annual concert for Grandparent’s Day, one of the most anticipated school events of the year.
Then came the announcement on Friday the 13th , a dreaded day on any calendar. Oddly, it arrived at the end of a week that included a full moon and a time change. Following the lead of the Bibb County public schools, an unprecedented decision was made to suspend all school operations indefinitely. By then, field trips, school plays and other activities already had been canceled or put on hold, including all varsity spring sports.
Students reported this past Monday for a half-day to receive online teaching instructions and to clear out their lockers, not knowing if they were taking home their textbooks for two weeks or two months.
Suddenly, classrooms were empty and the halls strangely silent. There was no chatter in the cafeteria or laughter on the playground. A pall swept over the campus. I’ve never experienced anything quite like it.
For the past month, my students have moved from passive to concerned to worried. It is the first time they have experienced anything going “viral’’ other than a YouTube video. They have talked openly about it in class. Since the beginning of the school year, I have had them write a daily blog for the first 10 minutes of every class. Recently, I have watched fear of the unknown creep into their personal writing.
Among the international students at Stratford are two Chinese exchange students. I have taught one of these young ladies for three years. Her parents have been quarantined in Beijing for much of the winter. I have tried to be sympathetic, because I know she has been worried.
We call her “Daisy.’’ She is one of my 11 seniors. I have had many of these 12th-graders in my journalism classes for all or most of their high school careers. As much as they have been afflicted by “senioritis” and have had one foot out the door for some time, my heart goes out to them.
The last few weeks of any senior year are filled with special moments of reflection. They are like victory laps in a long race. Now, there is a possibility there will be no prom night, no honors day, no senior picnic or baccalaureate service. Their senior projects, where they serve three-week business internships in hospitals, banks, law offices and restaurants, are in jeopardy. So is graduation at the Macon City Auditorium, one month from today on May 22.
Whenever the subject of 9/11 comes up in my classes, I always have to remind myself these students have no concept of how life changed after that day. Most of them were not born. In fact, this is the last group of seniors with anyone who was alive in September 2001, and there are only a handful of those who were born in the late summer or early September. They were babies when the world stop turning.
But this could be a 9/11 for every young person. It could become much more than a hardship, an inconvenience, and interruption of daily routines.
One day, they may tell their children and grandchildren to wash their hands, and the memories will come rushing back.
Ed Grisamore teaches journalism at Stratford Academy in Macon. His column appears on Sundays in The Telegraph.
