Part II (June 2020-August 2020)

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.”