Remember When We Thought it was World War III?
February was crazy.
Do you remember when we thought we were on the brink of war when North Korea was testing missiles? Almost every 18-35-year-old female was like, "Oh, I'm no longer a feminist because I do not want to be conscripted!" Not to mention the rise of TikTok and the odd flex of showcasing how 'useless' Millenials and Gen Z would be on a battlefield. It was simultaneously entertaining and concerning.
Yeah, we took WORLD WAR III so lightly that karma hit us with a reality shock in the same month.
Governments were confused. They went from preparing for a possible war across seas to suddenly fight an invisible war in their homelands. Suddenly, it wasn't about taking up arms, it was washing up to our arms more than once a day. Eventually, things started to close down and we were counting down to the inevitable: a worldwide lockdown.
But week in and week out, there I was in a classroom with fewer and fewer students waiting for the announcement. I remember sitting in my classroom and the Headteacher came in to see if I was sticking around through this 'unprecedented time'. So, chronologically speaking, this brings us back to...
Why did I stay? After the depressing two months so far, why didn't I take the opportunity to head home?
Simple: it was easier. Staying meant I didn't have to pack up again. I just got here.
By the time February hit, my backbone was so thick I couldn't recognise the girl in the mirror. I was different. To this day, I don't who that b*tch was, but I can still feel the numbness that she went through when I remember my early days in the UK. That version of me was a robot. I was so unfeeling that I was in the school building by 7:30 am and left at 3 pm. I came in so early I didn't see anyone until lunchtime. I would talk to people, but I kept mostly to myself. By the time the half-term hit, I was just working to distract myself from the hell I was living.
When the news turned from declaring war against a superpower to declaring war against a super virus, I felt like Robin Williams in The Bicentennial Man: I was becoming human again. Yes, 'the new normal' was emerging, but it was very clear that I was a caterpillar getting ready to build a cocoon. This version of me was about to disappear alongside normality.
As the news flooded facts about Covid-19, conversations in the classroom changed from content to our context. From a teaching perspective, I was fortunate to be in a school that was technologically advanced that online learning would be simpler than other schools. Regardless...it was about the when not if.
It was through all this talk that I saw some humanity from the very people I feared. Suddenly, a global pandemic saw the stifling system breakdown to remind everyone that we teach people not content. But the delay on schools closing down was very slow. It was so slow, we still held a parent-teacher evening before there was an official announcement. It was three painful weeks before we closed down. I remember ending the last Friday with five students sitting in my classroom and watching a movie. There was nothing else to do.
Regardless, the announcement came and my cocoon came in a form of my blanket and the best sleep I had in weeks.
Little did we know, it was just the beginning.
Next: Lockdown Birthdays