Politz Day School - Mussia: 7th Grade Covid Reflection
This item originates from American Jewish Life.
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Politz Day School - Mussia: 7th Grade Covid Reflection
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When I heard we were going on zoom for two weeks, I was ecstatic. I thought “yay, we can eat the whole day, we can sit around and not learn anything!” Boy was I wrong.
It was an ordinary day, my mother and I were going on that last minute shopping run for supper. As we walked into Target, we felt the usual blast of cool air welcoming us into the store. The shelves were almost all bare, all of the toilet paper was gone, same with all of the canned and boxed goods. On the way back, my mother got an email from the school, we would be going on Zoom for two whole weeks!
The first day of Zoom school was fun, we got to go to classes late at night, the schedule was very unorganized. The next day was more or less how I imagined Zoom would be like. My father made us all go to our Chabad House to learn virtually, each of my siblings got their own classroom to learn in. There was a very strict schedule, Drive to “school”, plug in my iPad, log on to Zoom, eat lunch, afternoon classes, and go home. We had the same monotonous schedule every day. It was very difficult to be on Zoom, because we didn’t learn so much due to technical difficulties or something else.
Towards the end of the school year, I stayed at home with my younger two siblings instead of learning at our Chabad House. During the breaks we sprayed the trampoline with water from the hose and then jumped until our break was over. Summer came and went, and it was time to go back to in-person school.
The day we went back to in-person school, I was wearing my favorite outfit, a dusty rose colored ribbed shirt, a black denim skirt, and a black beaded choker with a pearl in the middle (I had made it in camp, and wore it every day). My mother had bought us each three masks, I was wearing a mustard yellow one with white polka dots, it was so itchy and hurt my ears. When we first walked into the school, we got our temperature taken with an infrared thermometer. I came into the classroom and sat down, it was really cold in there. I sat wiggling in my seat while my teacher talked about the safety guidelines, and fun activities we would do this year. After that we went through the rest of the school day getting reacquainted with the school building, friends, and teachers. A couple of weeks went by, and slowly Covid-19 began to become an everyday thing that we had to worry about.
One Sunday afternoon, we got the news. The whole middle school was to go on lockdown for two weeks. In the middle of those two weeks, our ELA teacher resigned, and for the rest of that time we wouldn’t have an ELA teacher. When we got back to school, Mr. Becker was our English teacher while the school found a new teacher. Finally after a month they found the right teacher for this school. After the quarantining, life became once again, what our new normal was. We continued to use the Owl (a camera that allows for you to see a 360 view of the classroom) for the online learners. Between that, President Joe Biden was elected, there were many protests, some more peaceful that others.
We are still in masks, and social distancing is still a thing, but things are getting better with the vaccine coming out. I hope that soon this all will be over.
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February 9, 2021
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Politz Day School
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New Jersey
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Cherry Hill
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