Class of 2020

By Ashley Arvind

 

The class of 2020 will have many distinctions, and for every student enrolled somewhere, whether you were graduating or not this year, alongside your achievements, it will most notably be known for the pandemic. It feels like a photo of COVID-19 has been snuck into every yearbook, with its spikes resembling a corona, looking every bit a troublemaker, and winning the title of “most unpopular.”

School closures were first ordered by local government in the U.S. in March to stop the spread of the virus. The familiar images of students sitting at row of desks while teachers walk between the narrow aisles, college lecture halls filled in the hundreds, noisy cafeterias with kids sharing lunches, or the rowdiness of recess, were all suspended.

There will be no caps tossed into the air and a crowd of supporters cheering graduates this year. There will be no crossing the stage to take the diploma or shake the hand of the dean or principal of the school. It’s one of the many sacrifices to ensure public health and a sign of how Coronavirus has affected every sector of society, right down to tradition.

Instead, teachers have moved their classroom to a virtual space and are facing new challenges to educate students with schools closed early since the spring 2020 school year. I spoke with my friend Tara, a high school teacher at a public school in the Western suburbs of Chicago. She has been teaching in public school for 12 years.

 

Ashley Arvind:  When did your school close due to Coronavirus?

Tara:  March 13 was our last day.

 

Ashley Arvind:  Did the school notify you before that, or was it sudden?

Tara:  It felt like it was pretty sudden, because on the day before … on the 12, they said let’s have this emergency meeting. But their plan was not to have large gatherings—which is hilarious, cause school is a large gathering. We’re not going to have prom, we’re not going to have graduation, so that was a shock in of itself. But they said we’re not going to cancel school. As long as we can still have school, we’re going to do it. If [Governor] Pritzker closes things, if CPS [Chicago Public Schools] is closed, we’re going to be closed.

Friday the 13, we went to school as usual, and the last period of the day, the principal came over the intercom and said ‘just letting you know the governor has closed the school and we’re not going to come back until after spring break.’

 

Ashley Arvind:  How did the school notify the parents?

Tara: We have a call system for messages on the phone in English and Spanish. We have over 60 percent Spanish-speakers, so everything goes out dual language. They put it on our website. But again, the plan was e-learning. Our school’s kind of unique, we already had e-learning in place. We’re really lucky because we randomly were chosen—this was three or four years ago now—to test it out. So, if there was a snow day or a cold day, which we’ve had a bunch, that we could not have to make up the days , and kids could still learn on those days. And they’ve worked really well because it’s still a day; kids can work at their own pace and they can check in when they want. It’s not a regimented school day. The good news is our kids already knew how to do that.

 

Ashley Arvind:  Your husband also works at another school.

Tara:  He is a technology specialist at another district. His district, it was just a fiasco. because they had nothing in place. His first two weeks of this was hell because everyone was like, ‘I don’t know what to do, help me.’ He was working from seven in the morning to ten at night trying to help people. We’re glad that that’s over with. My district, at least my kids know what to do.

 

Ashley Arvind:  What subject do you teach?

Tara:  It’s English 2, which is the basic English for sophomores. I teach the lowest level, so it’s not honors, it’s not enriched. Then I also teach a class called Lab, which is for the students who have just exited ESL and they still need a lot of help. So they come back to me one period a day and get lots of help. That’s such a nice class because it’s my only small class—I only have 14 kids. All my other classes have 30. And Creative Writing. I have only class of that per semester. It’s only seniors.

 

Ashley Arvind:  What was your students’ reaction to the school being closed, at least through spring?

Tara:  We thought it’s only going to be two weeks of e-learning and then spring break. So, it didn’t seem horrific. Then once when you get into it, you’re like, this sucks. No human interaction. You’re at the screen all day long, which none of us is used to, so it really takes its toll. The kids, they absolutely hate it. I would say a couple of my kids on my last day were crying. They don’t want to go home. They don’t want to be in a place that’s not a good environment. But I’d say they don’t like it because there’s no social aspect now.

 

Ashley Arvind:  Has that been the case for some of your students? For people who come from abusive homes, it’s not a good situation to suddenly have to be at home all the time. School was the place they could be away from that.

Tara:  For sure. I would say it’s still the minority, but there are kids that it’s either like that situation, or, it’s an unstable household. It’s poverty. I think the thing that’s getting most of my students is that if they’re the oldest sibling, they’re having to care for … three or four or five siblings at home, all day long. Then they’re exhausted, then they have to do their work at night. That part has been really hard for some of them. Some of their parents are still going to work, despite the lockdown. Or they own their own landscaping business. A lot of them have a lot of pressure on them.

Ashley Arvind:  What is your typical day now? How has the schedule changed?

Tara:  One of the very small blessings in this, is the day hasn’t changed. It doesn’t matter when they do stuff. All teachers are supposed to post their assignments by eight am. I do it at night because I’m not a morning person. So I’m up until two in the morning posting stuff. I’ll post it the night before and they have to take attendance and check in with each of their classes by one pm. Then they’re expected to complete the work by midnight that night.”

 

Ashley Arvind:  You post assignments for them to complete that same day.

Tara:  On Fridays, I give them until Monday because I feel like I’m not going to grade it anyway over the weekend. The most time-consuming thing is that they’re expected to do thirty minutes of work per class, each day. That’s a lot. The challenge for me, is how do I modify my lesson when everything I do is in partners, in groups, discussion? Now I just to have it all on them. That part’s really hard. Now I have to make all these models. I basically have to do all the assignments with them. I highlight it, I label it. It’s time consuming.

 

Ashley Arvind:  Describe what a typical lesson that you post looks like.

Tara:  Luckily, for English it’s less of the live video teaching, because they can read something, annotate it, highlight it, and then do something else with it. Once or twice a week I make a video, telling them this is what you’re doing this week, this is what you can expect. I have my own YouTube channel, I just do it that way. I think it’s easier. That’s one thing I do to let them see me. And then I do optional hang-out sessions for Zoom, either a group session or individually, they can sign up with me if they need extra help. So that’s been really nice.

But usually what the assignments look like—in Google Classroom there’s a spot for the title of the lesson and all the instructions. I write out all the instructions, in depth, and then I attach the attendance form. And within the one hand out … I usually put a bunch of links: One link would be to the answer key; one link would be to the model that I wrote. Right now, they’re studying “memoir,” so I write what they’re expected to produce and then they try it. It’s a lot of modeling.

 

Ashley Arvind:  Have you had video conferencing with them and have everyone see each other?

Tara: We have to make those optional. You can post a video and expect that kid to watch it and learn. Especially for math and science, where you lecture and show them how to do a problem. But we can’t force them, or it can’t be worth a grade for them to check in because again some of them are working or babysitting. So, we don’t use video as a mandatory thing. I do it optionally. I was just doing the optional hang-outs with my English students and creative writers. A couple kids check in each week.

 

Ashley Arvind:  What has your school and the city decided in terms of the rest of the school year?

Tara:  They’re taking it month by month, since this is so unexpected. They canceled through spring break and after that, at the end of spring break they said we unfortunately cannot go back, at all. Which was, of course, the worst news for all the kids. Our school year ends really early this year. It ends on May 22. So it wasn’t like we’re going all the way to June. Bu it was still really hard on everyone because they expected to go back and then they we’re told we’re not coming back.

 

Ashley Arvind:  Some places were talking about starting school again in June or July to make up. Is Chicago doing that?

Tara:  I don’t know what CPS is doing, but at least for West suburban public high schools and schools, they’re just finishing the school year and hopefully starting up again in August or September. The scary thing is that they’re already talking to us is that we need to prepare that we’ll start like this in September. So, yeah, it’s awful. I can’t even imagine, especially like starting your freshman year of high school and you can’t even meet your teachers and see your classmates. It’s hard to fathom.

 

Ashley Arvind:  What about your seniors? There will not even be graduation ceremonies.

Tara:  Unfortunately, our seniors, all of the special things we’ve planned for them, have all been canceled. That part is devastating. I try not to think about it too much. Each teacher, I feel, does a lot for our seniors. But also they had “seniors honors night,” where we recognize them. We do a senior barbeque, a breakfast their last day of school, and then obviously we do graduation and prom. They missed prom, too.

 

Ashley Arvind:  So their diplomas are being mailed to them, basically?

Tara:  Yeah. We haven’t decided exactly what we’re going to do, but we have to do something for them. So we’re thinking, some type of virtual thing. The principal and all the administrators have been trying to figure something out, where we can get at least signs or posters or something made and put on their front lawns. Just a bunch of small things that we can do to at least honor them.

I have a feeling it’s too much to plan, too soon. I don’t think they’re really even going to be able to do much with that, aside from reading off all the names. Something simple like that. The seniors are done May 14. They only have two weeks.

 

Ashley Arvind:  Having done this e-learning for a while, what would you like to see happen if the virtual school continues? Are there ways you would like to see it improve?

Tara:  If schools are ever closed again like this … I think schools need to be prepared. Again, that’s one way that we’re already ahead. But a school district that: a) doesn’t have laptops for its kids. (We have Chromebooks for our kids,) or b) they don’t have a plan for this; the kids are blindsided.

A lot of our poorer students don’t even have Internet access, so how are they expected to do anything? For our school, we have hotspots that the kids can check out and take with them. We were definitely set up. With the kids, they didn’t know it was coming but they know if an e-learning day is needed, we were warning them already. ‘In case the school does close, which we don’t plan on it, but if it does, make sure you check out a hotspot, make sure you get your Chrome book fixed.’ We also have a technology program where the kids can help fix the laptops.

Just to improve, we need to figure out what the expectations are. Right now, since this was unexpected, we couldn’t tell the kids anything in advance. We’re making it so that any work that they do can improve their grade. And if they don’t do the work, their grade can’t go down. Which is fine, but obviously there are kids who aren’t doing anything—and that’s going to hurt them so much when they come back.

 

Ashley Arvind:  What about your own challenges? How different is this workload than your typical day when you were in school, physically?

Tara:  I’d say it’s basically doing a 180. It’s the opposite of the way of how teachers normally work. It’s almost double the amount or work because you can’t just walk up to the student and have a conversation. Everything is in email, or their videoing it, or you’re calling them. Every single step takes double or triple the amount of time.

To me, it’s completely unnatural to sit in front of a computer and just be idle all day sitting there. Because normally, we’re so busy we can’t even pee or eat lunch. And yeah, that’s a problem, but that’s how we live, and I’m used to it. My body’s used to it. At first, I felt like absolute crap for the first two weeks. I think my body is slowly getting used to it. … The reason you teach and you love it, is the energy of the kids. When that’s gone, it just feels like you’re throwing lessons out there and you hope someone does them, but that’s kind of as good as it gets.

 

Ashley Arvind:  As a teacher, you’re working from home. How are you dealing with the pandemic?

Tara: I don’t know how you feel. But when I am at home, I can kind of forget about it for a while. Especially when you’re working, you’re just busy. When we go on walks, it’s still weird. Just when we go to the store, that’s when it hits me. I get so depressed. Going to the store is such an ordeal now, where before it was like, ‘I’m going to Target on my way home.’ Now it’s like, when are we going to the store? Let’s get everything ready and then [the] disinfecting.

For me, there is one sense of normalcy. You work your ass off Monday through Thursday, and you do feel the relief on a Friday, because I don’t have to be up posting stuff Friday or Saturday night. So, I do feel better on Friday. I’m like, okay seniors, we have eight more lessons to crank out. With sophomores, it’s 14. May 21 is the last day of school.