CV19: Storm brewing, March 2020

Last post I said something about a cloud becoming a storm. It was a slow build but build it did.

March was meant to be an exciting month for me. I had two trips to Adelaide and another to Brisbane booked as part of researching my case study schools for my PhD. I was also finishing the final aspects of a professional development course I was going to be running in April and had booked a weekend at the Hunter towards the end of March to meet with my co-presenter.

It started with a very social week. I had Book Club at the Central Coast, an event with a friend in the city, I met up with church friends and we celebrated my brother-in-law’s birthday at a top notch restaurant.

Even though I am a full-time PhD student, I supplement my scholarship funds with casual teaching (Years 7-12) at three different private schools. During the second week of March I worked at a school for four days. It would have been five days but I attended the funeral of a friend’s Dad on the Thursday.

At the funeral we greeted each other with hugs and kisses on cheeks, guiltily aware that we shouldn’t be, but at this stage it was just advice, not mandated, to maintain a distance. Following the funeral, I was at a bar to farewell a new friend who was returning to Germany after her three week stay as a university exchange student. I was slightly aware that we were standing rather close, heads bent together as we discussed the answers for pub trivia, and our arms around each other for the photos to signify the occasion. Turns out, they were the last photos taken on my phone showing that kind of closeness with friends.

One reason I was needed at the school that week was due to the training sessions teachers had to attend to learn about Microsoft Teams in preparation for the day they transitioned to online. Some teachers embraced it. Other teachers thought it was an over-reaction and didn’t like being forced into learning yet another new thing. However, after they were trained up, all the teachers I spoke to felt that the training was done well and that it was going to be manageable. The hardest part then, was the unknown of when it was going to happen.

The students were a bit unsettled and were frequently using hand sanitiser, even refilling their little bottles from the school supplied bulk containers, but other than that, classes ran as usual. Though I did think it was odd early in that week that an assembly was held in the usual circumstances, meaning the students were in close contact with each other. Later in the week the mass gatherings were no longer happening and instead of an assembly to announce the imminent move to online, Microsoft Teams beamed the principal and the school captains into each classroom during Home Room time. It was an effective and fun test that geared up both teachers and students into how the software could work. By Friday it had been decided that the school would move to online after the weekend.

The following Friday I was working at another school, back at the one that had all the hand sanitiser at the start of the school year. By now, many of the classrooms had empty bottles but the students carried their own. Staff in management at this school were cursing the other school for jumping to online so early and thereby putting pressure on them to do the same. It was also mentioned that the Federal Government was threatening to withdraw funding if schools closed down.

I overheard a group of teachers from one faculty, meeting over lunch, talking about how they were coping with their online preparations. I found the mood to be more positive than the other school. They were feeling uncertain and under prepared but they were realistic and practical, saying that they could only do the best they could and everyone would learn from the experience.

It had been announced that week that parents could choose to keep their children at home from the following Monday, as long as they signed a form stating that was what they were doing. The students chatted a fair bit about the situation, many saying that their parents were going to send them to school since they didn’t pay the huge fees just so their kids could learn online. The students themselves mainly wanted to come so they could see their friends.

The students also told me about some of the teachers I was replacing. One teacher was due to finish working at the school that day and a farewell party had been planned, so the students were sorely disappointed that they weren’t going to have all that sugar and a bludge lesson. The teacher was moving overseas so when the borders started to close and international flights reduced, he jumped on the first flight he could to his new home. Another teacher took the first available flight to be with elderly parents in London, basically throwing her job away in the process.

Over the weekend, more social distancing and isolation announcements were made by Scott Morrison but he was adamant that schools wouldn’t close. Gladys Berejiklian, the NSW Premier, said she would make an announcement about schools on the Monday morning.

On the Friday I had caught the train to the school. Normally the trains were crowded with barely a seat left. I let a few trains stop and go without boarding because I was waiting for an express train. Each train was less than half occupied. When I finally stepped on a train, I was able to sit by the window without any other passengers beside me. Every time I touched a pole or a railing I was conscious of all the nasties that could be there and kept using my hand sanitiser.  At the coffee shop I frequent every morning before working at this school, people kept their distance in the eerie quiet, no hubbub of conversations happening, everyone collecting coffee and departing.

By Monday, I was too nervous to catch the train. My husband was working from home since someone in his large office building, someone he had no contact with, had contracted COVID-19, so the whole office tower was closed. I asked him to drive me into the school and pick me up at the end. I still bought my takeaway coffee. The dress code of patrons had dropped significantly and one enquired about the purchase of beans. I had noticed beans for sale but they didn’t have the particular flavour the man wanted.

Over half of the students turned up on the Monday. They were hanging out to know the result of the Premier’s announcement. At the announcement she implored parents to keep their children at home unless it was absolutely necessary for them to be at school. The students were a little rattled because they didn’t know what that meant for them.

I was on playground duty in a quiet grassy area at lunch time and observed the Principal speaking to a camera (proper camera lights and all). There weren’t many students in the area but those that were I tried to keep apart, particularly because they might appear on camera. One group of girls started performing dances to play up for the camera in the distance. When it became really silly I stopped the girls in their antics, a little guilty for spoiling their fun for the purpose of marketing. The Principal then spoke to all the Year 12 students on the front steps, around the corner from where I was on duty. I couldn’t hear all of what was being said.

After lunch I was on a double period of a Year 10 class and I had to take them to the same front steps towards the end of the first half. The Principal announced that the school was moving to an online mode the next day and that there would be no face to face classes at the school but they could come if absolutely necessary. She was very positive and upbeat in her manner but was also frank and direct about the importance of isolation. The students were told to maintain the standard 1.5m distance from each other on the steps, making it hard for the ones up the back at the top of the stairs to see and hear. Plus, latecomers bunched a little close together. It felt futile because in the playground it was virtually impossible to stop teenaged girls from being close to each other. There was time allowed for students to ask questions. One asked if there was a chance they were going to have to repeat the year. The reply was basically that it was up to them to keep up with the classes their teachers were running and prevent any need to repeat.

At the end of the school day, after I had completed my admin requirements, I was walking out of the school grounds passing scenes of Year 12 girls hugging each other and having a mini celebration of what was probably their last day at school together. Ever. Tears whelmed up so I put my sunglasses on.

As I waited for my husband to pick me up, students were waiting for parents to pick them up because they were laden with the contents of their lockers. One student had several plastic bags of fish in water from the Science department. The moment was a little surreal. 

The next day I drove myself. The traffic had been incredibly light the day before but I still left in plenty of time in case parking was difficult. It was easy.

The school had asked three casual teachers to come in to supervise the students who had come to school. They had no idea how many to expect. Rooms had been measured to assess the areas needed to maintain social distancing and consequently had plans for up to 300 students to be supervised in three different spaces. Ideally, though, 145 students was what they thought to be the maximum manageable and conducive to learning.  Less than a dozen showed. I supervised four Year 12 students in their study space, and the remaining students spread out in the library.

One of the Year 12 students who had been in the study room with me went to her teachers who were running their online lessons from their classrooms. Two of the other girls noticed from the video lesson that this student was in the room with their Maths teacher and speculated that they should go too. In the end they decided to stay in the study space. I was concerned if students on the school grounds went to the classrooms with their teachers, students at home would feel the ones at school had an unfair advantage for the HSC and gradually all of them would be back in physical classrooms. Overall the students seemed very at ease about being online. They laughed at one who had a large booming voice while contributing to her online lesson but they were all using headphones or earbuds so it wasn’t much of a bother.

I had been slated to work the next day but due to such low numbers of students it was cancelled. I was called to come in on the Friday and then the next day that was cancelled too. By Thursday there were less than five students turning up.

Working at the schools felt odd and each day the cloud of COVID-19 felt thicker and gloomier. However, it was my Adelaide trip that made it feel more like a brewing storm.

Between the two school stints I was in Adelaide for my first official observation of teaching and learning in enterprise education for my PhD. I usually stay with family when in Adelaide but I thought they might be a little nervous about me coming with all the news about airline passengers carrying COVID-19. I was right. My offer to stay in a hotel was accepted and this was without mentioning that I had been working in a school environment.

I had never seen airports so vacant and be so quiet. It was creepy. I had two days to kill before going to the school so I holed up in my hotel room reading, doing some work and way too much time on social media and news outlets tracking COVID-19. Breakfast was included at the hotel but that meant I had to go down for it. It certainly wasn’t packed at each of the breakfasts but still, I was always seated closer to other people than I would have liked. I should have said something but I feel for hospitality workers and the demands placed on them by customers and managers. One morning the Newcastle Jets (soccer team) were also at breakfast, happy and perhaps hungover from the win the night before. It was one of the last matches played in front of a physical crowd and a week later the competition was suspended altogether. Further down the track it was announced that one of the players had contracted COVID-19 and I wondered if it was one of the players standing next to me at the breakfast buffet. This virus was moving closer to my world.

At the school where I was conducting my research, it was almost as if COVID-19 didn’t exist. There wasn’t much talk of it and nobody was social distancing except for the lack of shaking hands. When I flew home the plane was less than half full and I suspect seating was arranged for social distancing as much as possible. That night I emailed the uni to cancel the trip booked for two weeks later. My supervisor said it was a wise decision.

A visit to meet my contacts at a case study school in Brisbane was only a week away so I was hoping to still go on that trip. It had taken a long time to nail down this school to a commitment and to schedule a meeting so I wasn’t going to toss it in lightly. I was supposed to stay with a friend and her family so I discussed with my friend how she felt about it. She said she would prefer that I didn’t stay with them since her husband was on medication that makes him immune suppressed but if it was too hard for me they would make it happen somehow. So sweet!

Two days later all interstate travel was banned by the university so I cancelled the Brisbane trip. I also cancelled a stay at the Hunter that was supposed to finalise plans with my co-presenter for the professional development I was running in April.

The day after I had my last day at a school, I went to my university office and packed up everything I thought I might need to work at home. That was the 25^th March and I have been self-isolating ever since, hunkering down and waiting for this storm to pass over.

Next post will cover self-isolation.