Here in Minnesota, we are in our sixth week of distance learning. I can't believe that Friday, March 13th was our last day of school in person with our students. I never anticipated it to be this long. As a Behavior Interventionist, I was worried that Friday the 13th was going to influence the student behaviors that day. It turns out that it ended up being the least of my concerns.
As the school week of March 9th arrived, and as each day happened throughout the week, more and more changed. The biggest change that made everything real and take it to the next level that week was the evening of Wednesday, March 11th. I remember that the talk of Coronavirus was really heating up and on March 11th, that was the night that the NBA became the first professional sports league to suspend its season. I remember laying in bed about 8:30 p.m. CST and I was looking at my phone. I had seen on Twitter that the NBA was going to suspend their season after that night's games. I immediately turned my television on and went to ESPN, who was showing NBA games that night. The game that was currently in action was still going on. The announcement came in the second quarter of that game. I watched the rest of it, and the play by play announcers were calling it like it was going to be the final game ever. This was the first time I really felt uncomfortable with the Coronavirus, or COVID-19. So that game I was watching came to an end, and there was to be one more NBA game on ESPN before the season was suspended. So I tuned in, and sure enough it was cancelled because one of the NBA referees had been an official at a game a few nights earlier where the first NBA player who tested positive for COVID-19 had played in. This announcement changed everything, and everything fell like dominos after that, including moving the Coronavirus into the A topic on all the news channels.
I remember going to work the next morning, on Thursday, March 12th, and my principal, who was out on medical leave, was communicating often about the changes with school that seemed to be changing hourly at that point. By the time Friday, March 13th, had arrived, our school staff was told to take home things that they may need long term. At that point, long term was translated as a week or two. I didn't think we would be here on May 4th saying that we are still in distance learning and we will be doing distance learning for the remainder of the school year, which goes until June 9th for our school.
Early on when all these changes were happening so fast, as an educator, I really didn't take time to stop and think about it too much. I mean there was so much to be done in a short amount of time. Our school only had student Chromebooks for the last couple of years. The school I work in is a public school that is located in a residential treatment facility for adolescent males and that is why we just started integrating more technology within the last couple of years. It was a blessing in disguise. We had no idea that we were silently preparing for distance learning.
As a Behavior Interventionist, the meat and potatoes of my job is to be an out of class support to students as well as to be on the front lines when a crisis or behavior issue is taking place in a classroom. A lot of my job is to build student relationships, build trust, help create an environment of feeling safe, which all of my coworkers and I helped make happen. We also focus on developing and practicing healthy life skills. I also coordinate a school wide behavior level system, which all of our students participate in. The obvious question that I asked myself was, "How I am supposed to do this all over a computer from a distance?" It's a variation of the same question that all the teachers were asking about the curriculum they were going to change and provide. For the support staff, the most underrated piece of the whole education picture, what was going to be their role from a distance? Thankfully in Minnesota, the Governor gave Minnesota schools two weeks to plan for what distance learning is going to look like. For our school, our spring break happened to be the first week of the two week planning period, so our school pulled everything together in just five days.
We modified our behavior level system and the goals that we score the students on. We also still had them earning school dollars (not real money) for each point they scored on the level system to keep them bought in. Then, we began distance learning with our students on Monday, March 30th. Throughout the whole planning process, I just continued to do instead of stopping and thinking about everything because I didn't want to get overwhelmed. If I just focused on one task at a time, I only had to think about things in pieces instead of the whole situation that was going on and changing so often.
So, like I mentioned, we are in our sixth week of distance learning. I think it is safe to say that it is way more difficult and way more stressful than I could have initially thought. As a Behavior Interventionist, controlling the environment is important. With distance learning, the only environment is what you can see on the screen. While in person, I can be there on the scene, process with the student and encourage them to make a safe and positive choice to get more support in my Refocus Room. Now, I have to rely on the fact that they will log into my Zoom Room at their designated time. If the student isn't in a positive place, then it is easy for them to push the support away or not log in and get the support, and that has been mentally draining. Our school really goes above and beyond when it comes to distance learning, because the more school they have, the more safe and structured their day is. So, some of our students have six 20 minute Zoom sessions a day and some of our students have eight 20 minute sessions per day. Our students also participate in a Restorative Practices Talking Circle once a week, and the have additional times where they can visit my room, the Refocus Room, during a 30 minute block every day. Each teacher is paired with a paraprofessional and they also offer two 30 minute blocks of Zoom office time for assignment assistance with students daily. It is a lot, but necessary with being in residential treatment.
I feel bad for the 2020 seniors of all schools who will probably have a virtual graduation. They also missed out on prom and will be missing out on an all night grad party at the end of the year. However, it is necessary. Just a couple of weeks ago, the federal government was anticipating the Coronavirus killing 60,000 people in the United States throughout the course of the virus. We are currently over 65,000 deaths nationwide, and things don't seem to be slowing down yet as testing is continuing to increase to a level that is still catching up to where it should be. The talk of our summer school session, or ESY, being offered through distance learning seems to be almost certain. Now there are a lot of talks about things in the fall being different, altered, changed, or postponed. That is the other tough part of all this. What started out to be a mindset of adjusting for a couple of weeks has now turned into months, and now there are some reports that social distancing may be necessary for up to two years. When you combine that on top of the stress that distance learning has already provided, it feels scary.
I am blessed that I am working at a school that has great leadership in the building I work in. I work with a team of staff who supports each other and focuses on problem solving when things get tough instead of turning on each other. They also know how to laugh, and that is extremely important these days. I have recently participated in some webinars with other school officials and have heard the horror stories of the intense conflicts that have taken place at other schools between staff members just because of distance learning and that just doubles or triples the mental exhaustion. Distance Learning is not the way I want to be working with students, but it is the way that it has to be right now. I have to remember how important self care is when going through this process, and that would be my words of wisdom or advice to everyone right now. Part of my self care is writing and doing this blog. So, take care of each other and most importantly take care of you. This will get better. Maybe not as quickly as we want, but it will get better.
Be Kind To Everyone.
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