Uncharted Territory

As I sit here at my “home office” desk (AKA a tiny table with a computer atop it in the corner of my bedroom) I reflect of the journey I’ve been through over the course of the last 16 weeks. COVID-19 entered our lives in a big way on Friday March 13th when the local officials called for the closure of schools. It had been rumored that it was a possibility; closing the schools. But would it really come to that? It all seemed so surreal! With Sara and Christi (our Co-Directors), we crafted an email announcing our pending closure and we waited. Then, with heavy hearts and anxious minds, we sent the email off. “School canceled for at least three weeks due to caution surrounding the Coronavirus” (remember when we were calling it that?).

I could have never imagined that I’d be sitting here at this desk in my bedroom embarking on the 17th week of "our school being cancelled”. There have been highs and lows and glimmers of hope amongst the mostly devastating messages being hurled at us by the media. One main “glimmer” being that, thus far, young children are amongst the tiniest percentage of those effected by this scary new sickness. So, we do what humans do and resolve to carry on. Is that what humans do? I guess it’s what I do ! Anyway, onward we go moving toward the reopening of our precious preschool. I’ve been following the blogs of fellow directors and teachers that have stayed open during this time, I’ve attended webinars and public health addresses, I’ve written into local child care licensing authorities to ask questions and pick apart their proposed policies and procedures for optimal safety within the childcare setting. We’ve sent our parent surveys and developed plans, we changed our schedules and our teaching teams, we already purchased boat loads of PPE and sneeze guards, and antibacterial antiviral cleansers, we’ve hired new support staff to clean and sanitize our indoor and outdoor spaces with new electrostatic technology sprayers (WHHHATTTTT????) and are investing precious monetary resources in new safer, more sanitize-able (is that a new COVID-era vocab word?) hard flooring for our space. The teachers are set to attend multiple online trainings modeling how to teach while being physically distant, setting their classrooms up for individualized play areas, communicating with parents through new virtual platforms rather than face-to-face conversations, and of course, how to sanitize the heck out of everything that anybody might possibly touch or breathe on throughout the day. And with all that, I still don’t know if we’re ready!

Are we ready to reopen our doors to these tiny and delicate (yet ever-resilient) humans? Are the teachers ready? A few of them are supportive and optimistic, I would say. Are the parents ready? A handful of exhausted and/or working parents are putting on a brave face while asking countless questions regarding all the ways we will be SURE to not let their little one get sick. Are local public schools ready? Not seemingly. Teachers are pushing back on opening in any kind of a regular capacity and administrators are spending their days trying to convince both staff and parents that the data says “it will all be OK”. So what about us? Is LPJ really ready? And if we’re not yet ready to step back into the classroom setting, then WHAT are we all going to do? In the words Pixar’s oblivious yet wise Dory, we “just keep swimming, just keep swimming…”.