I’m honored to turn over the April Superintendent Blog to Mrs. Suzy Ryan, English teacher at Valley Middle School. Mrs. Ryan was selected as the Valley Middle School Teacher of the Year for 2019-20, and was one of three finalists for the 2020 District Teacher of the Year award. A well-respected educator and team member, Mrs. Ryan is also an accomplished author. Thank you to Mrs. Ryan for sharing her thoughts below.
Stay safe out there!
Dr. Ben Churchill, Superintendent
School’s Out for Summer
By Suzy Ryan, Valley Middle School Teacher
When I was in the sixth grade and school was out for summer, students cheered Alice Cooper’s “School’s Out” lyrics and celebrated the freedom from the constraints of “pencils and books.” Similarly, after our school principal’s announcement over the loudspeaker, notifying students of our district’s abrupt closure at the end of the school day, my sixth-grade students applauded their early spring break.
From the start, that dreary Friday the 13th, which became our last day of school before quarantine, emerged surreal as torrential rains drenched my Southern California students, who are never prepared for a deluge. They flung themselves into puddles of mud and stomped through rivers of rainwater on their way to class, arriving in their seats as if they’d just been swimming. To make matters worse, the internet happened to be down district-wide the entire day.
Educators have become more dependent on technology, so across campus teachers scurried to switch from laptop lesson plans to trusty, but archaic paper and pencil ones; ironically, foreshadowing the coming patience required for teachers to teach in their new homebound virtual classrooms.
With the remaining hours before our extended break took effect, I trudged the students to the library, but with no internet, the librarian was relegated to the old fashioned, yellowed and ink stamped library cards for book check out. At the end of the school day, as the bell buzzed for dismissal, cheers crackled throughout Valley Middle School’s campus.
Weeks later, those shouts of merriment turned to murmurs of melancholy as some students shared their fear and discouragement from being housebound. As Groundhog Day repeated over and over, students woke up wishing for a pre-coronavirus normal.
Now that our original anticipated date to return to school has passed, teachers are scrambling for savvy virtual teaching methods and students are sighing at being cooped up at home. The privilege of attending school has begun to awaken in students. Earlier in the fall, our curriculum included Salva Dut, a Lost Boy of Sudan who fled his South Sudan school at gunpoint. It also featured Malala Yousafzai, a young girl who was shot on a Palestinian school bus simply for going to school. At the time, my students never contemplated being denied their right to attend school. After all, this is America. But in this new normal, students throughout the Land of Liberty are learning to live without their right to physically be taught in the classroom due to the Coronavirus. Sadly, this virus is quickly becoming their generation’s Great Depression as they live history in the making.
The coronavirus has changed everything. When I connect with my confined students on Google Meet, we work not only on assignments but also search for blessings in this dark unknown. Students seem to be finding an appreciation for school as their depth of compassion has been stretched, molded, and transformed by sheltering in place. This understanding is making them more grateful and has given them an awareness beyond their sixth-grade maturity. Adversity does that: what once was an entitlement, students now know is a privilege.
Just yesterday on Google Meet, students shared the first thing they look forward to when their isolation is over. Answers ranged from hanging out with friends, playing sports, and eating at a fast-food restaurant. Surprisingly, some of the kids even answered-- returning to school. They never realized how much they would miss it. Alice Cooper got it wrong. When school is a gift, “pencils and books,” or in today’s vernacular, Google Classroom and Chromebooks are not something to dread but to look forward to instead. Students will get through this, and they will tell their children and grandchildren how they overcame the unknown and became more appreciative and thankful human beings. As a teacher of sixth graders, my good fortune from teaching at home during COVID-19 is being able to see the virus through the eyes of my eleven-year-old students. It keeps me grounded in reality. That is my blessing.
