Part I (March 2020-May 2020)

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.’”