My teacher, Mr. Casey, told our class it might happen. I don't think anyone really believed him. Why would anyone want to close our school and have us start learning from home using our computer? He set up a web page on the weekend of March 7th and 8th. In class on Monday, March 9th, he explained how it would work if he had to teach our class online. He would post a video to provide what he called explicit instruction. Then he would post the reading and writing assignments for our 7th grade English Language Arts class. I'll admit that I never thought we'd use it. Little did I know that by Friday, March 13th, our school, along with almost every other school in the Santa Clara Valley, would be closed due to the Coronavirus.
When my mother first told me about the school closure, I thought it would be so cool to have two weeks at home to sleep late, play video games, maybe get together with some of my friends at The Great Mall, and stay up late every night. Before dinner on Friday night, however, my father sat me down to explain what was happening and why. It was scary to hear about the spread of the virus, but I still thought it was happening only in other places, not right here in Silicon Valley.
So I didn't do much that weekend. I stayed home, slept late, and played video games, but my mother wouldn't let me go to the mall. She said it might be safer if I just stayed home for a few days.
On Monday, Mr. Casey posted an assignment for us to do. I had to read a chapter in Paperboy, a book about a boy who had a stuttering problem. Then I had to answer three questions about that chapter and email my responses to him by 3:00. I followed the instructions and finished the work with relative ease. As we were getting ready for dinner that evening, my father was watching the local news on the television in the family room. As I walked into the room, my father said, "Sit down and listen to this."
California State Governor Gavin Newsom was speaking. It took me a few minutes to realize what he was saying. Then I just looked at my father and asked, "Is this for real?"
"It's something we need to do, Marcus. This Coronavirus thing is out of control -- not just here, but in many other countries, too."
"I thought that was just happening in China. Is it really something we have to worry about here?" I asked.
"Apparently, yes. I'll be honest with you, Marcus, I don't know much about it. I know a lot of people have died in China, but now reports are coming in that the virus is showing up across America and in other parts of the world, too. It's really bad up in the Seattle area, where your Auntie Clare lives."
"Is she going to be okay?"
"I certainly hope so, but at this point, we just don't know for sure. There's a lot we don't know for sure," he said. "So what Governor Newsom is saying is that he's ordering a shelter-in-place for everyone in the State of California for the next three weeks, meaning that we can't leave our home at all."
"We can't go outside... AT ALL?"
"Well, if someone needs to take care of an essential task, something like going to the grocery store to get food or going to the pharmacy to get meds, that's okay. Everyone else is being asked to stay home to slow the spread of the virus."
"Are we gonna stay home, too?"
"I suppose we are," my father responded. "From what I heard the governor say, if everyone does their part, we have a chance of slowing down the spread of the disease. If we don't do this, he predicted that so many people would get sick that there wouldn't be enough hospital beds in the state to take care of them. This is serious stuff, Marcus."
"Are you scared, Dad?" I asked.
"Hmmm,... scared? I'd have to say no. Not at this point. I am concerned, though. This could be really bad if it gets out of hand."
"So when do we have to start staying inside?"
"The governor said the shelter-in-place would begin at midnight tonight. So we won't make any plans to go out tomorrow,... or for the foreseeable future."
I sat on the ottoman processing what I had heard. Three weeks at home. I don't think I've ever spent three weeks at home. I have a pretty active family. I play soccer, basketball, and baseball throughout the year. My father plays in a recreational basketball league on Wednesday night. My mother goes out a few times every month, either to play Bunco with her friends from work, to meet up with another group of friends for drinks and dinner, or to watch a movie with my father. We eat dinner at local restaurants about twice a week and we go to church together every Sunday morning. We're not the kind of family to just sit at home and do nothing. Well,... we weren't until now.
Today is Monday, March 23rd. I don't have to do school work today, because our teachers were scheduled for a faculty inservice day today, so we had the day off on the original school calendar. I guess my teachers are doing their inservice using Zoom. My father uses Zoom for his work sometimes. That's okay with me. I got through the first full week of what the teachers are calling distance learning, but I'm grateful to have a day off today. I am concerned, though, because on the news last night, I heard the reporter say that schools may not open for the remainder of this school year.
I'm a pretty independent learner. I'm okay with all this new distance learning stuff. I check Mr. Casey's web page each morning, as well as the pages of my other teachers. I make a list of all the stuff I have to do that day. Then I just do it. I take breaks, like we do at school, around 10:30 and again around 12:30 for lunch. On most days, I'm finished my work by 2:30 or 3:00. What I don't like about this new way of doing school is that I don't get to hang out with my friends.
I've got a tight group of friends at school. I've known most of them since we all started kindergarten together. We haven't always all gotten along well, but now that we're in seventh grade, everyone's cool with everyone else. One kid, Jason, used to get picked on in fifth and sixth grade. There were a couple of guys in our class, and one girl, who seemed to enjoy making him cry or getting him angry. At the end of last year, JoJo and I confronted those kids and told them to stop picking on Jason. At first, they tried to say that they didn't pick on him, but JoJo, the biggest kid in our class, sort of got in their faces and said that we'd have Jason's back in seventh grade. When we returned for school in August, everyone was cool. No one messes with Jason now. In fact, a few of my classmates seem to go out of their way to help him with school work or to include him in their group for class projects. He even got invited to a couple of birthday parties earlier this year. It's really cool to see.
I have to admit that I'm not looking forward to tomorrow. Distance learning just isn't the same. I'm learning stuff okay, but, as I mentioned, I miss my friends. I miss hanging out with them during recess and lunch. I even miss some of my teachers. Wow. I never thought I'd say that. The scariest thing of all, though, is not knowing how long this is going to last. Will we be able to return to school after our spring break or will we actually do distance learning for the remainder of this school year? I just don't know. No one knows. The only thing I do know is that we're all in this together -- and we'll get through it.
©kmc2020
