As the dominoes begin to fall...

Yesterday it started. We got an email announcing a staff meeting after school next week to discuss our remote learning plan. The last time we called a meeting like that was March 11. The very next night, the news broke that all schools in Michigan would be shutting down. Thus far, my school has avoided any positive COVID cases, but looking around the greater U.P. metro area, it’s clear that the dominoes are falling.

We all knew it was only a matter of time before this started happening (and if you didn’t see it coming, where have you been for the past six months?). As I write this, I can think of seven schools in the U.P., just off the top of my head, that have shut down for some length of time, updated their safety protocols, or postponed sporting events. There may be more that I’m missing or just don’t know about, and we can be sure there are more to come.

Anyone who works in public education knows how we got here. The real questions are much more complicated, and maybe even unanswerable:

“Now what?”

”How long?”

”Who’s next?”

Be ready. As ready as you can be. The Titanic was the spring. This time we’re on the ships that sailed afterwards. The ones with enough lifeboats and better precautions. Despite all the planning, we probably still find ourselves scrambling, but one thing is different this time around. This time, we’ve done it before. This time, we know what we're up against. We may not yet see the icebergs, or know how massive they are, but we know that this time we’re not sinking.

Sooner or later, we’re all going to find ourselves in the same boat and it’s going to be all-hands-on-deck. But these hands have the calluses of experience. These are not hands that make mistakes a second time. These hands will not let the ship sink.

Be ready. The time is coming, but we're in this together. Stay strong.

Stay educated.