Adventures in Quarantine

 Back to Work Today is my last day at home, at least for now. Tomorrow, I will drive back to the high school, march up to my classroom that I have not set foot in since March 18th, and get to work. Or, march up to my classroom and be totally immobilized by anxiety and overwhelmed by the enormity of it all. Or have a panic attack? Or maybe all of those things. The thing is, I don't know what is going to happen. It is a strange feeling, suddenly having your chosen profession thrust into the national spotlight. A job I've been quietly doing for 15 years is suddenly at the center of our national story. And everyone has an opinion. There are a lot of hot takes out there, from a lot of angles (from the virus angle about why schools really  need better ventilation, or what community transmission rate makes it safe to open, to the education angle about how schools have been increasingly left to solve all of society's problems while remaining underfunded and underpaid, and how unfai...

Day 142 I'm wondering about even numbering the days anymore...142 days since school shut down, we sheltered in place, and my world stopped. But slowly life has opened back up, and in a few weeks we will head back to school in a hybrid model. Maybe I'll find a new ways to count the days once school starts again? Anyway, "The Hard Days".  We've all had them. It is hard to really comprehend the enormity of what we are living through.  But when I'm stressed, and anxious, and ready to scream at the kids, and just when I'm at the brink of exhaustion and anxiety and I'm reeling with uncertainty... I think of my Grandma Millie.  Alfred and Millie before World War 2: It was March of 1945. My Grandmother Millie lived in a small apartment, in Attleboro Massachusetts.  Her husband, my Grandpa Alfred, had just been deployed in the Pacific. She had two small children, a 1 year old and a 3 year old. She was pregnant with her third child, who would be born in July.  S...