On March 12, 2020, the Edina Public Schools community received an email explaining the district’s decision to enact an extended Spring Break to prepare for the possibility of distance learning. COVID-19 was spreading rapidly and information about the virus was limited, while the impact of its contagion shut down the world.

Troy Stein (Activities Director, Assistant Principal – EHS): “I have a brother in the military in Okinawa and we had been texting and I think he had mentioned word of COVID-19. They had heard about it in the military and he had just casually mentioned that.” 

Ava Lainey Christensen (Student worker – Current EHS Junior): “It was exactly Valentine’s Day of 2020, and my friends were at Southdale. My friends were talking about [COVID], and it was like it wasn’t real yet—it didn’t make sense. I thought my friends were fully overreacting.”

Gretchen Gosh (High School Lead Nurse – EHS): “I remember [the beginning of COVID-19] vividly. I was in a meeting here at school with colleagues and it must have hit social media…We walked into this meeting in the morning and someone was like, ‘Did you guys hear about COVID?’ And at that time, I mean, my feeling was ‘Oh no, what is it?’ You know? And so I think initially, my feeling was like, ‘Oh, this will kind of come and go, it’ll pass.’”

Stein: “There were state tournaments that were going on and the high school league suddenly announced they weren’t going to allow the Girls’ Basketball tournament to continue to play. They had actually already started the game, and the girls were warming up on the court, and then an announcement came that the game couldn’t go on…There was a sense that bringing lots of people together for sports was now not going to be a good idea.”

Angela Kieffer (High School Counselor – EHS): “The first time I remember really realizing it was on its way here was March 12. We had conferences and the next day was a professional development day. It was Friday the 13th. We were all told to sit six feet apart and spread out [in Fick auditorium]. We weren’t wearing masks yet. And Mr. Beaton was telling all of us that we were going to have the next two weeks to get ready to teach online. We had that following week off [for] spring break. And so in those two weeks, we were told to get ready because Monday after spring break, we would be teaching online. I remember just being like ‘This can’t actually be happening’ It was like all these things were adding up and all of a sudden you realize the severity. There had only been minimal cases in Minnesota at that point, like less than ten. But you could definitely feel this kind of doom starting to come over.” 

Hayley Guevara (Language Arts Teacher – EHS): “My students were engaging in an escape room project, and in order to incentivize the participation I said that the groups that won would get a pizza or those giant cookies…so at the end of the school day I called Lunds & Byerlys and Domino’s and placed those orders for Monday. Then, of course, Sunday was the day that Governor Walz played the doom and gloom music and closed schools so I had to call and cancel these orders…I became really sad and I realized that I wasn’t gonna see these students in my classroom in-person again this year, and that kinda hit me.”

Ian Alexander (Edina High School Class of 2020, University of Minnesota Class of 2024): “Nobody thought that we wouldn’t be going back to school the next day. People were like murmuring about COVID… my friend described it like it’s the opening scene [of a] movie where something goes horribly wrong and this is the first part of it.”

Stephen Sanger (Science Teacher – EHS): “We have to lock this thing down. I think a lot of the nation was sort of rallied around that like, we were pretty good at first about social distancing and masking so I was all on board with that and my attitude was just whatever we need to do to just keep the ship afloat during this challenging time, we’ll all just do.”

Joy Dunna (Social Studies Teacher – EHS, Gustavus Adolphus College class of 2020): “The last conversation I had before we were all sent home indefinitely was with a professor… he was going to a meeting and it was Friday and I said ‘Oh but like I’ll see you on Monday,’ and he goes ‘Yeah I hope so,’ and I said ‘Do you really think we’re going online?’ and he goes ‘No, I still like, have hope,’ and literally two hours later, we got an email saying ‘go home, get off campus,’ and it was pretty heartbreaking.”

Guevara: “It was really hard because I didn’t have a workspace; my husband worked in the living room and my third grader was in the kitchen and my eighth grader was in the other space. I was kind of bouncing back and forth between my bedroom and the corner of the dining room. And so the one time I did a synchronous lesson I was in my bedroom, and I had my back positioned against the wall so that my students didn’t know I was teaching in my bedroom.”

Kieffer: “I had a senior and a junior in high school at the time. I just never fathomed that my senior wasn’t going to have a prom. We were not going to have a graduation at that point. We did know that my son’s baseball season had been canceled as a junior and so there were these moments of hoping we’d come back after a few weeks but also knowing that we really probably weren’t.”

Sanger: “There was a lot of discussion of ‘How do we even begin to [transition materials online]?’ because at that time, we hadn’t really learned about Google Meets. I don’t even think I knew Google Meets existed.”

Guevara: “So the first couple of weeks I didn’t put make-up on for the first time in my whole life. I would wake-up, drink coffee, and get my kids settled because they were also doing online learning…It was like a constant putting out fires, like I would open my inbox at around nine o’clock and there’s like 25 emails saying ‘Ms. Guevara I can’t access the video you linked’ or ‘I can’t open the ABA’ and so those first few weeks were very frustrating just trying to learn how to adapt to online, but then after that I settled into the groove of it. It felt endless, like the days were looped together and after a while I kind of lost all sense of time and such.”

Kieffer: “It was a lot to take and a lot to process. My job here shifted significantly because I couldn’t get a hold of kids, so kids that were struggling pre-pandemic really struggled during the pandemic because you just couldn’t get a hold of them…Because I think those became uncertain for people all of a sudden. And as a counselor, I really started to focus just on the kids that were really struggling. So what do we do to help you log into school? And make sure you can do work? I can remember coming here one day and getting textbooks and driving to some of my students’ houses and bringing them textbooks because it’s so hard for them to do school online that their parents thought if they had the book, they could get more done…The fun part of being a counselor was sort of gone.”

Blanca Diaz de Leon (Spanish Cultural Liaison – EHS): “All the restaurants were closed. All the offices were closed…so they were out of jobs from one day to the other one. They needed to pay rent. A lot of emotional domestic violence. Students didn’t want to get up to attend classes.” 

Kieffer: “Taking care of my kids while working at the same time was super challenging. And I was lucky that I had older kids…My kids at least were bigger, grown up and could take care of themselves. But you’re definitely torn. I could see my own kids, especially my senior become very, very depressed. And it was like, well, I care about you, but I really still have to do my job. And they would only have maybe an hour or two of school a day. But I still work for eight hours a day. So that was definitely really being kind of torn in two places, and seeing the toll first that it took on my own kids while knowing that’s what was happening to other kids.”

Stein: “Early on, there was enough flexibility…that we could take advantage of that and we could go outside and play, or we could do hikes and find time. But then as it continued on, there became more structure and there became more commitment to the distance learning concept. And it just started to wear on everybody.”

Kieffer: “I was struggling with loneliness, definitely. But I didn’t really let myself, because I felt like I had to fill everyone else’s bucket. I had to be okay so that the kids I was responsible for, whether it was my own kids or the kids here at school, were okay. So I felt like I always had to fake it. Fake it ‘til you make it, right? I had to be okay, so that everybody else could either fall apart or see that it was okay to not be okay. So I don’t know that I really let myself very often not be okay.”

Stein: “It was intriguing to me. I’ve been a lifelong educator. You know, I was a middle school math teacher, high school math teacher, so I live in the educational system, and it was still overwhelming to be a parent in that situation. I remember thinking: ‘If you’re a parent and you’re not in that system, how hard must this be at home?’”

Julie Greene (School Board Member – Edina Public Schools): “It was very challenging. And to know that the sense of normalcy was a bit lost for all of our kids. I will tell you, I mean, it would be impossible for someone not to be [lost]—I think all of us were at some moment. I wouldn’t be doing my job unless I was empathetic to the situation that everybody was in and, you know, it was challenging. I have always explained to my kids, my role is separate and tried to separate my roles and work as much as I can. I think they understand that.”

Kieffer: “It was so lonely. I think everybody experienced that when we were stuck in our houses, that it was just so lonely. Teaching students on a screen isn’t fun. You don’t reach the kids—that’s the rewarding part of the job. And so just watching colleagues really struggle with how to connect with kids was hard.”

Justin Garcia (French Department Intern – EHS): “So the first [lockdown in France] was very, very harsh and serious…From the perspective of French students, a lot of us live away from our families and our friends in order to study in bigger cities. And a lot of them ended up being alone in their apartments. They wouldn’t go to class because it was online, they couldn’t come back to see their family or stuff like that. So it has been very hard, very long. And we couldn’t even go out. If you wanted to go out for groceries, for example, you had to fill out the form and explain all the reasons. Your form had to be very precise and true, because if you didn’t have a good reason to be out, or if anything was wrong with your form, you could have a 135 euro fine for being out.”

Greene: “I got COVID in April of 2020. We had a board meeting while I was in quarantine with COVID. And at that time, I wasn’t public about it. Some people knew, but at this point, testing wasn’t readily available and I think the significance and seriousness of what all of us were up against, kind of hit home. I remember particularly in that meeting really trying to balance being human.”

Dunna: “I was counting down the days… literally I felt like I was just sitting on my phone. All the time. If I wasn’t reading about George Floyd, I was reading about [COVID].”

Stein: “I think back to that spring when we delivered diplomas on buses to seniors. We didn’t have a graduation ceremony, so the admin team got on a school bus, and we had routes set up. We spent an entire Sunday delivering diplomas to the first senior class and I think of how hard it would be for a senior to lose that opportunity that they thought was going to be that moment where they walk across the stage with all their classmates.”

Alexander: It was partially fine because you were a senior and you were kind of leaving and it kind of sucked that you couldn’t dot the ‘I’s and cross the ‘T’s but also like there was certainly unfinished business but it was like ‘oh, we’ll get to that eventually.’”

As the 2019-2020 school year came to a close and summer began, many remained locked down as COVID-19 continued to upset plans. The hope for a two-week break from school disappeared as social distancing, testing, and masking became the norm.  

Guevara: “I felt like [during lockdown] that I just slowed down and really valued the relationships that I had with my family and the friends that I had. I went to online trivia night with the English teachers, and that was really fun because those were the things I might have blown off before COVID, like I would have said ‘I don’t have the time for this’ but I just found myself making time for like little moments and really valuing them in a different way.”

Sanger: “In the summer of 2020, my family and I stayed pretty locked down the whole time. Luckily in the summer, the weather’s nice so you know, meeting friends and stuff, we’d just meet outdoors and there were a lot of walks, we went camping a few times. I definitely socialized less than normal and when I did it was always outdoors.”

Stein: “I remember the tipping point of the summer that sticks out was right around the Fourth of July. Because I think we had started we had started allowing sports to continue after sports shut down all spring. And then come about mid-June, the governor had given the okay to start youth sports and so some of that was happening. Around the Fourth of July, there was a really big spike in positive COVID cases, which was affecting some of our summer programs—not Edina High School, but some of the summer programming offered through the community. So we were fielding those questions and calls like ‘What do we do and how do we manage this?’ And I distinctly remember, it was after the Fourth of July, it was like the fifth or sixth of July or somewhere around that. I remember I was picking wild black raspberries. And I remember I was on the phone all day long, talking to health officials, in terms of what the protocols are because there were no protocols that were really known in terms of establishing close contacts. ‘How long they would have to be out if they tested positive, or you determine a close contact, and then what’s the process? Where do you report it to?’ Then families were asking questions. So I just remember, I was on my cell phone all the time, and looking to find out and because I was on the phone so much. I was like ‘Well, I don’t have to sit in my house to do this.’ I remember just trying to be outside to do it.”

The start of the new school year brought hybrid learning, a new teaching model which separated the student population with alphabetically organized cohorts that went to school on specific days. The new system seemed to be a step in the right direction, but an unexpected spike in cases forced the school back to distance learning. 

Christensen: “I did have a moment of wondering if this was the right job for the time because, you know, not knowing what school was gonna look like the next year, I didn’t know whether I would have to be in person or whether I could be online. I didn’t know what any of that was gonna be like. So I didn’t, I couldn’t ensure that my safety protocols that I take myself would work. But I, I feel like during the summer, I don’t know that I was worried about COVID and stuff. But I also knew that we get tested at The Waters. When [COVID] was really bad a couple months ago, it was every week. But now I think it’s every other week or something. But we do get tested. And I do know that the people there are very on top of it. I personally was willing to take responsibility and be very on top of my personal hygiene and protection on that side of things.”

Sanger: “I definitely wasn’t anticipating things to drag out quite as long as they have. That first half year was really just kind of an emergency mode, I feel like. It hit me more the following summer when it was revealed we’d be coming back to in person learning and doing this hybrid model. And that was much harder for me, I guess, mentally and emotionally… knowing how these things spread and knowing how many kids are in the building and how much kids interact with each other and how many kids move from classroom to classroom, I just thought ‘this is going to spread like wildfire.’ I even wrote to the school board and said ‘this is a terrible idea,’ but I think in hindsight it’s actually worked out really well.”

2020 ended and 2021 began with the promise of vaccines. On February 16th, students returned to school in alphabetical cohorts after weeks of distance learning. As spring began, students were able to return to a somewhat normal schedule: four days of in-person learning with asynchronous Wednesdays.

Stein: “So my best experience is right here. This is a Lego set that was purchased for my kids and me during that second pause from November through the holidays, and so this Lego set was put together by my three daughters and myself. So this was our little family project that we worked on during any downtime. [When] we were done, my wife was like ‘what are you gonna do with it?’ [I said,] ‘I don’t know. I’ll get it out of the house, so I’ll take it to school.’ But now every time I look at this still today I like to think of that moment and how much it brought us together, and all the time that we spent together that we wouldn’t have had the time before [COVID].”

Sanger: “The most stressful was when I just lost track of some kids, they just stopped showing up, they weren’t turning work in. I would send emails: ‘Hey what’s going on, I haven’t seen any work in a while,’ and then you just don’t get a response and you feel really helpless as a teacher. How do I reach out to this kid, how do I just have a conversation with this kid? I can’t just wander over and say ‘hey what’s going on’ and a lot of times when you eventually find out what’s going on with that kid, you’d realize there’s a lot of challenges that [are] happening there. You feel powerless as a teacher to help and that’s a pretty awful feeling…There’s a sense of powerlessness because you just don’t have the tools to do what you know you should be doing and then to see that impacting kids in a way you can’t really help.”

Dunna: “The day the vaccine actually made it to Minnesota, they sent the first shipment to the VA hospital, which is significant for me, or to my life, because my dad works at the VA hospital and they gave the doctors their vaccines. And so I always think about ‘How cool was that? He was one of the first people in Minnesota to get the vaccine.’”

Gosh: “I’ve never been happier [than when the vaccine became available]. I actually remember that I was FaceTiming my friends and some of us were crying on the phone. We were like, ‘There is going to be a way out of this.’ Because obviously as nurses, we studied the science and we believe in the science and our foundation is based off of the science. And so it was never a question of whether public health nurses would trust vaccines. It was like, ‘When can we get these and when can we get them for our staff?’ So to me, that was a huge pivot in the pandemic and I think that was the first time where I was like, ‘I see light. I see light at the end of the tunnel.’”

Kieffer: “Teachers were one of the first groups of people to be able to get a vaccination. So once the health care professionals and the elderly have been taken care of in like January, February, it started opening up to the staff. It was a lottery. And it felt intense…I can remember sitting here and I got the email that I could go in and make an appointment and I got super excited… It was at the convention center. I stood in line amongst thousands and thousands of people. It was bizarre. And then when I got the vaccine, I broke down and started crying. I was like, I didn’t even know that I was carrying all this around inside of me. But it was such a sense of relief. I remember driving home and I called my husband bawling and I don’t even know why I was crying. I was just so relieved.” 

Garcia: “At first, to be honest, I didn’t really want to do the vaccine because I felt like I didn’t really need to do it because I could go out without it. I don’t know if it was the same here but in France, at some point—they said that the vaccine wasn’t compulsory. But if you weren’t vaccinated, you couldn’t go to the cinema, restaurants and basically all social activities. So the government was saying that we weren’t forced to be vaccinated, but if you wanted to basically live a regular life, you had to be vaccinated. And in addition to that, I had to be vaccinated to come here. So I got my main vaccine, but I did it during the summer just before I came here.”

Sanger: “We were really excited to get this shot because we’d been coming in every day with no real protection other than our mask and distance from this virus so to have that was just such a huge relief.”

Gosh: “I remember exactly what I was wearing [to my vaccination appointment]. I remember I set my alarm two hours early that morning [because] I didn’t want to sleep through my appointment. I remember taking pictures after and honestly celebrating like I just turned 21— not drinking, but it was like I just turned 16. Like it was such a milestone for me that it is a day I will never forget.”

The summer of 2021 was a hopeful time for many as case rates dropped and vaccination rates rose. The Delta variant wasn’t prevalent as summer began, and normalcy seemed within reach.

 Garcia: “I was just living my life in the most normal way I could and just waiting for it to just stop because even though you don’t really care about it, and you try to keep going with life, you can’t. It’s still a big part of the world around us.”

Stein: “Normal is always relative. But [at] each stage, it just feels like you’re getting closer and closer to it. And for me, this is the first day that I didn’t wear a mask. And, for me, this is another mental step for me to move forward and say, Okay, I’m gonna I’m going to personally move on with this. And I would say that in another four months, there will probably be another phase where I feel like ah, this feels more normal, right?”

The 2021-2022 school year began with a return to the five-day learning model. Masks were required until Feb. 23, after the school board voted to change the requirement to a recommendation. This step was encouraging to many at EHS who hope for a return to a more typical year. 

Stein: “If you look at the Fall sports, they were mainly outdoor sports with the exception of swimming and diving for girls, but you have soccer outside, tennis outside and cross country outside. We weren’t allowed to use locker rooms. People were coming to just practice and they were going home. We were trying to limit any team gathering. I remember following the case counts for 10,000 and seeing things continue to rise. Specifically with sports, I remember we were shutting teams down because of the number of close contacts. And so you know, while the fall started really well, by November, we started to feel the impact of it being hard to keep up with the number of kids that were testing positive and or the number of false contacts related.”

Tommy Molldrem (EHS freshman): “It didn’t feel real when it happened. We’d been rehearsing our musical “Mamma Mia!” for three months. We were all ready to go. It was so exciting. And then it was kind of just like a downhill spiral the week of the show because our opening night got canceled because of the snowstorm. On Sunday, someone said in our GroupMe that they had COVID, and they were like, ‘We don’t want to worry you guys’, ‘We still want the show to go on’, and ‘It was so much fun getting to work with you.’ We thought we could still [perform the show], but like people were starting to get tested and I didn’t think I didn’t even worry about it. I know I probably should have gotten the test I was like, but I didn’t have any symptoms. I don’t even think I was [near] that guy during rehearsals. I mean, I’m vaccinated, nothing’s gonna stop me. But then that day more people got tested. And there were like 10 people that were like, ‘Oh, I COVID too,’ ‘I have COVID too,’ ‘I have COVID too.’ So then I went and got a rapid a COVID test. I remember I was sitting in my basement waiting for my results, and my mom is like, ‘Tommy, don’t be stressed out, but you do have COVID.’  I just sat in the basement for 10 days and I mean, I didn’t have any symptoms. I was fine. I just didn’t want to get other people sick obviously.”

Guevara: “I don’t think I was afraid [to fly out and see my family] until my dad got COVID last fall and he almost died; he was in the ICU. I think that was the moment that really hit me, that you can lose someone that’s really important to you even if you do all the right things and even if you are vaccinated and boosted. People in your sphere can still get sick. There’s nothing you can do to help it and you feel helpless.”

Greene: “I think our comprehensive approach, which is what we tried to do at the beginning, really to plan and to be thoughtful, served us very well this year. I mean, we’ve been able to keep kids in person this whole year. That is not true for neighboring districts or even other private institutions. And I give credit to the administration and a supportive board, and that is definitely just what our goal had been in the beginning. It’s just, you’re going through the mud to get there.”

Rodriguez: “There’s a lot of articles and research that was published in the last year about the effects of online learning on [English language learners]. What they found was that learning online was harder for students who are new to the country and new to the language, and also for those who are from a lower socioeconomic class. They were supposed to be in Google Meets, and they were not there. Turning in homework was very hard because they didn’t understand the teacher. So it was harder for this particular group, maybe than for any other group. Including some Special Ed students too. So yes, second language or multilingual learners were probably the most affected group by online learning.” 

Sanger: “I used to worry that teachers were going to take the path of the travel ants and just become completely obsolete and that we could just be replaced by an online system. My experience last year completely put my mind at ease that we need teachers. The social aspect—the interaction between teacher and student—is so important and that’s an affirming feeling that it’s really hard to replicate what happens in a classroom.”

Dunna: “I didn’t even know that some of them had braces, right? Those little things are just like, knowing that I had braces and I can connect with them on [those] silly little things are just how I’d describe COVID and the pandemic and my experience with it.”

Sanger: “I absolutely love the fact that I no longer have to say ‘Can you please pull your mask up?’ Just in terms of my own sanity—that is huge. I don’t have to deal with that part anymore. I’m cautiously optimistic that we’re not going to see it spread in the school and if that’s the case, then I’m all for it.”

Alexander: “I have a theory. I think this is like God or the universe or whatever… This is like our ‘warm up’ crisis and I think it’s scary how badly we handled this one. Like this one was supposed to be easy, this one was not very hard. I think in the future, the challenges we as a species are going to face, and as a community are going to be way worse.”

Dunna: “My hope for the future is that students do get to experience high school without any limitations. Like go to the dances if that’s what they want to do and do all their sports if that’s what they want to do. I want to support them knowing that they are safe and healthy.”