The
sound of silence was deafening. There was no laughter or students talking which
added to the realization that nothing was normal in this situation.
As
I entered my room, I took notice of my name plate outside my room. I hadn’t
seen that name plate for two months. My room was just how I left it on March 17th
with the chairs around the table as though I was going to sit down and teach a
lesson to three students. The words “The author talks about folktales, myths,
and legends,” were still written with black ink on the white board. I could
still see the date of March 12th at the top of the board.
March
12th, the day the world stopped at least for me as an educator. It
was the 5-month anniversary of my mom’s death and the first time I had worked
on the date of the 12th since September. That week in March had a
full moon and a Friday the 13th. All teachers were dreading that
week. I was just dreading the 12th. You see I’m a dates person.
Dates loom over me like a balloon following the one holding the string.
Dismissal
duty came and I was told, “Governor DeWine is closing the schools for 3 weeks.”
“Cool,
a 3-week Spring Break,” was my initial thought.
Then
the dreaded staff meeting after work caused my mind to switch from cool to worry
because I didn’t know if I was going to be coming back to school for the
remainder of the year.
Now
2 months later, I had only stepped in the building twice since the shut-down. I
was here to close up shop for the year. Luckily, I had sense to clean up and put
away all of my belongings on my last day. So, my mission was to get my
paperwork in order and to find my staff handbook. I was closing up the year
once again in unusual circumstances for last year we had the tornadoes. Then I
had to close up my room in the dark.
The
silence was deafening while I worked today because my room was missing one important
detail that I couldn’t bring in. My room was missing my students who bring life
to the room.
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