Packet Purgatory (Part 1)
By: Waiting For The Short Bus
Tags: Special Education, Covid 19, Coronavirus, Covid Diaries

School bus picture I took while on Bus Duty at my school.

I used to be an inspirational teacher. While in graduate school, I was also teaching PK-12 at the time. I was in a cohort with some wonderful ladies. We took night, summer, and weekend courses. Some of us also had additional jobs. Mine was in the cosmetics department at Macys at the Clinique counter. We encouraged one another and would all chip in together to order pizza for our late night classes. We learned from some really innovative professors. Some of them were at our campus and some were professors that we followed online to stretch our thinking with regard to digital media.

I was fortunate to be one of the teacher/grad students who was able to study at the University of London and Barcelona for a TransAtlantic Study Abroad Program. There I met other amazing teachers from all over the world who we pushing the limits with technology in their classrooms. This was a program for cultivating International Leaders in Education Technology.

I share what I did in my classroom. I taught middle school special education English & Language Arts. My students and I created a classroom blog. This was a pilot study for me. At the time, I noticed that many of the girls in my class did not speak up around the boys. As such, I geared the blog for supporting the social emotional needs of girls. When I saw the impact of the change in my classroom and my students being able to find their voice more and use it, I was inspired.

Like today, when I started teaching special education in 2003, often special needs classrooms do not have adequate books or supplies. Fast forward 17 years to 2020, I am teaching special education in a rural agricultural community in Northern California. We do have some curriculum in my classroom. However, I was told my students are not allowed to write in their workbooks because we will use them year after year. I made due and taught the best way I know how. Teachers who speak up with often not be rehired back and I don’t have tenure. Therefore, I learned to somewhat mute my professional teacher voice along time ago. I still have yet to earn tenure in California.

We have been on shelter-in-place for a month now. Before the shelter-in-place, my husband and I visited friends and jokingly did footshake greetings. We saw the movie The Invisible Man. We ordered Beer and Milkshakes at the concession stand. The theater was near empty in Mountain View. We joked that we could each take a spot at each corner of the theater. We were cautious, mindful, and tried to keep a good sense of humor about the unknown. We weren’t sure if this was going to affect California at the time. We worried about our elderly loved ones who were in other states.

My husband commutes to Silicon Valley for work. San Francisco was the first city to shelter-in-place. Santa Clara County was next. I was thankful when I heard that he did not have to go back to the city and could do his work remotely. About his last day in the city before the shutdown, he said it was like a ghost town. He ordered pizza and the restaurant tables were blocked. He was able to support a community restaurant and take it to go.

I was back home 2 hours commuting distance, preparing my lessons for the next week. I still had to go back to school.