Almost A Year of the Pandemic

In a few weeks, it will be a full year since I posted regarding our remote learning, initial lockdown situation. It's hard to believe that we've been navigating this "new normal" for almost a year. So many educators have made major adjustments to the way they teach and connect with students via whatever technology we have access to. In the arts, we've made due with not sharing supplies, not collecting physical artworks, and translating traditional media into digital projects. We've consoled and comforted our students via e-mails, google meets and virtual workshops. We've hosted virtual Art Honor Society ceremonies and upped our YouTube following because of all the tutorial video's we've now created. We've sat in classrooms, behind our desks, with our masks on, not circulating the room, with our students placed six feet apart. We've seen family members, friends, students and colleagues get sick from Covid, deal with loss of their loved ones, and  still come in to work to forge ahead. We've started to get vaccinated, we've started to allow sports to open back up, we've started to allow some students to come back full time if the social distancing  can accommodate it. We give air hugs and air high fives. We walk in one direction in the hallways. We try to address the tumultuous  political, socio-economic, racial, and environmental issues we're facing, that students are questioning, through self-expression and creativity. We've endured hardships and struggles. It's been hard to muster up the motivation to get out of the car and into the building in the morning but we slug back some coffee and pull up our mask and do it. Through it, we're still innovating, creating and being role models for a group of young people who are going to have a mess of stuff to clean up after and hopefully the tools and energy to make the changes we need to see. I'm proud of us, educators. We've got a ways to go, but we've got this. 

-Danielle