A Once in a Lifetime Experience

Hi, Since I am asking my students to blog about this experience, I am going to do a little bit of it, too. So let me paint a picture of what has happened. Back in November, a city, Wuhan, in China, began to have citizens complaining of flu-like symptoms, but it wasn't the flu. In fact, the origin of this strange virus was traced to a food market in the city. Soon, the new virus, called the coronavirus, which caused a respiratory illness called COVID 19, began spreading like wildfire. Not only that, but people began dying from it in large numbers. The doctor who was persecuted for trying to warn the outside world about it later died from the virus. Next, the virus began spreading to South Korea, Japan, and Italy. By March, the first case was reported in the U.S., close to home, in Seattle area. People began to die here. On March 13, our state governor ordered that our schools would close until at least April 24. On March 16, we had our last day of regular school. Now, it is April 13. We have been experiencing online learning for almost a month. It's been crazy, too, because we kept hearing different things. First, we were told as teachers that students would only need to do the online work provided by the district. Then we were told to provide 30 minutes of classwork per class per day for students starting the week of March 30. We still could not provide grades though. Meanwhile, my yearbook kids and I had to figure out how to finish the yearbook and meet our last deadline. We worked frantically to obtain last interviews, quotes from kids who were now "checked out" because they were not at school, and trying to figure out how to fill yearbook spring sports pages and other pages that required pictures and more interviews! That was not an easy task. I was proud of my yearbook editors who pretty much carried the rest of the yearbook burden themselves. We submitted the yearbook to the plant on Monday, April 13. The week of April 6-10 was "spring break". We were told on April 1 that school would remain closed through the end of the school year because the virus kept spreading in Washington state. In fact, in Tri-Cities, as of right now, there have been around 500 cases, and last I heard, 27 deaths. State-wide, we have over 10,000 cases and over 500 deaths. Now school continues to be online. We will see how that goes. I have been teaching my college students at Gather4Him via zoom since this quarantine began. That has been interesting! And speaking of zoom, it has been a God-send. Thank goodness, we have this technology at our fingertips. I have had about 10 zoom meetings per week between school, Gather4Him, church groups and so on. We have even had birthday zoom calls with family. Today is my daughter Rachel's 19th birthday. Some things we will never take for granted again: going out to eat, going to the mall, finding what we need at the grocery store (like toilet paper, paper towels, and flour). Some things I have enjoyed: sleeping in, cuddling with my dogs in the morning, drinking coffee, reading the news, spending time with God, spending time with my kids and family. Some things I miss: my students at school (most of them)!, being outside more, going out to meet people face to face, going shopping, going out to eat.