It became very clear that for some of our students, particularly kids with learning differences or students that really need to be engaged with caring adults,
that the virtual platform is challenging.

In our classroom, our curriculum is mostly functional life skills, communication skills, social skills. And these are all very challenging skills to teach at home with your parent. That was the hard part, is sort of looking in the mirror and going, hey, this is not working. We cannot pretend everything’s fine. The staff right away was like, woo-hoo! Yes, let’s do it. But then as like it became reality, of course, there was concern about safety and health, and are we doing this in a way that’s going to be continuing to build the trust that we have established with our students and families? I did feel a little bit anxious, but also excited. I’m ready to be back in the world, and I think that the students and families felt pretty ready to be back in the world. It was considered to be safe from a public health perspective if you followed a myriad of protocols that you could bring together small cohorts of 12 students and a small cohort becomes
its own bubble.

So, if somebody got sick in one of those cohorts, then that cohort could stay home and quarantine, but the rest of the school could continue to operate. When you walk up to campus, you’re scanned for your temperature. You are also screened for your health. We immediately ask students to go to the restrooms which are open and wash their hands. Soon as they even walk into the classroom, there’s masks available. There’s hand sanitizer, soap and water, paper towels. We spaced out the desks and the first day, we kind of made these borders around each desk and we had each student kind of name their personal space. It was awkward at first,
I’m not going to lie. It was a little bit weird. It’s so hard when your school of hugs
and high fives and playing games together— to be social distanced.

So we are doing a lot of learning by doing at the moment as teachers. Just kind of learning as we go, like, when to clean, what to clean, how often to clean… that’ll come with getting used to the classroom environment. I’m glad we’re coming back
with this soft start. It helps us gain some ideas and foresight into what might be issues in the fall. We’re calling this a pilot and trying to make sure we learn from every single question. It’s definitely more challenging when you have to wear a mask all the time and wash your hands. But it’s all worth it in the end because I just see how happy the parents are, how happy and engaged that the students are. You know, I just asked them, where would you rather be at home or here at school? At school.