Five years ago today

Five years ago today was the last day I stood in front of my classroom as a teacher.  I saw all of my students- at least those who elected not to take advantage of the unofficial "senior skip day" they'd declared.  It was a Friday the 13th, the day before Spring Break, 2020.  I went to a post-work happy hour with some of my teacher friends, not knowing I would never return to that job- not knowing it would be a long time before any more post-work happy hours.  

Cas and I decided that morning to cancel our hotel reservation in New Orleans for the following week, since cancellations were free.  Heck, if everything blew over, we may get a better deal, right?  And Southwest Airlines let us apply the cost of our tickets to another flight later, so we could probably cancel that closer to take off, if we needed to.  

We needed to.  

Here are some things I remember saying on that day:

Okay, I want to show you guys how to get into Google Classroom and submit an assignment, just in case you need that information later.

Video calls with your class?  I think I remember something from grad school (searching files... searching files...) Yeah, it was called "Zoom."  You may want to check that out.  

For the love of God, if you vape, you gotta stop.  The thing that's going around is respiratory.  

I hope I'll see you all in a week, but if not, stay safe!

Those kids didn't get a prom or a regular graduation ceremony.  They each got a PowerPoint slide with their senior picture and some nice memories from their teachers written on it.  The District broadcast these slide shows at appointed times so loved ones could watch.  There was a drive-through parade where they were in cars with their caps and gowns- all in attendance stood at a safe distance and cheered for them.  

I was spending my last year as a classroom teacher, and I was actively seeking work as a school librarian, so I sprung for the extra autograph pages in my yearbook order.  I wanted to collect some nice memories from my last crop of kids at that school.  

I still have a blank set of autograph pages in my final yearbook from that job.  Me and my students stayed connected as much as we could.  They logged on to my Google classroom and completed some modified assignments from home.  I had been teaching mostly classes in Digital Media and one section of class in Journalism.  It wasn't going to be the same- I couldn't teach them to do animation if they didn't all have a computer to begin with.  And forget about audio and film editing.  We did lessons on photo composition.  They all had phones with cameras, and a bunch of them had Chromebooks- certainly not a powerful enough machine to do fancy film and animation projects.  Instead, they got to learn about the rule of thirds, s-curves, negative space- and they had to take and submit photos that demonstrated those elements.  It was the only thing I could think of, and the kids had it tough enough trying to learn to do calculus and analyze Hamlet from their homes.  

The last newspapers of the year would not make it to print, either.  We did a PDF paper with what we had then spent the last bits of the year journaling instead of doing journalism.  Seemed fitting.  

I spent just a little time today re-reading my blog for them and their blogs for my class.  The majority of us were both hopeful and frustrated.  I was pretty burned out in my classroom, and I was certainly ready to move to a school library job, but those were some great kids, and I really missed out on their last few months of school just about as much as they did.  

It was five years ago today.  It seems like a whole different world.  Here's to those hopeful (if frustrated) kids who are probably around 23 years old, now.  It was a resilient bunch- I suspect they're plotting to take over the world as we speak.  Good thing, too.  They were smart kids...