Return to School Questionnaire (post-COVID)

Will school start as scheduled in August?

Will school be delayed?

Will I work for months to prepare my classroom, to work from home?

Am I wasting my time painting my bookshelves?

Will I be required to wear a mask? Will students be required to wear masks?

Will I be in charge of students keeping their masks on?

Will Lost and Found be filled with masks?

If I find a mask on the ground, do I throw it away, because it’s filled with germs?

Will Johnny’s mom call looking for his mask, and be mad if I throw it away?

Will I be responsible for collecting all the masks left behind?

How will I safely keep students' masks separate if they are left behind?

Will this be a bad year for the Flu?

Will we have a Flu and a COVID season in our classroom?

Will they overlap, or happen at the same time?

How will I know if a student has a fever or the plague?

Do I now send a student home for a cough?

What if it’s just a seasonal cough?

What if my student has allergies?

What if the parent says, It’s allergies, but he later tests positive for COVID?

What if the student is infected, but shows no signs?

What if a student tests positive for COVID-19? Will the whole class be quarantined?

What will happen to my students if we have to quarantine for 2 weeks?

What if my class is quarantined for 2 weeks, and on the last day,, another student tests positive? What if I, the teacher, get sick?

What if I spread it to my entire family?

Who will teach my class when I’m gone?

Will my students have to quarantine if I test positive?

What if our class para gets sick?

What about classes that share paras?

What if the librarian gets sick? Will the school library have to close for 2 weeks?

What if our special needs teacher gets sick? Are we equipped to handle the needs?

What if too many teachers get sick? Will school have to close?

Do I send lessons home to students who are sick for 2 weeks?

Do I want paperwork back from the home of a student who was quarantined?

How will I safely grade papers from students who take home work?

What if that student doesn’t have access to the internet or a computer?

Will homework be a thing of the past?

What if a student is hospitalized?

How will my students cope with fear and worry for their fellow students?

How will I handle worry for my students?

How can I go days without hugging my students?

How can I give my students “the get back to work” or “stop it” look with a mask?

If they have to wear masks, will I be able to feel their emotions, or see sadness or happiness? How will I be able to connect to my students without touch or facial cues?

How will my students emotionally be when they come back after 5 months?

Will my students be worried or fearful from all they’ve heard while gone?

Will my students be happy to be back in the classroom?

Will my students be depressed from being gone so long?

Will my students feel separation anxiety from being with mom and dad for so long?

Will students still be on an educational track, or will they have fallen behind?

Will students have to be retrained to sit in class all day?

Will there be enough room in my class to spread us all out 6 feet apart?

Will schools provide desk shields, or will teachers have to buy them?

Will desk shields even work?

Do I call the janitor every time a student sneezes on the table?

Will I be responsible for sanitizing the tables during class, or for cleaning up?

Will there be a shortage, again, of hand sanitizer or Clorox wipes?

What if parents can’t find them in stores to fulfill their students’ school supply list?

Will we have recesses? If we have recess, will students even get to play together?

Will teachers have to sanitize playground equipment?

Will we have PE time?

Will every ball in the gym room have to be sanitized between every class?

What if the PE teacher gets sick? Will our whole school not have PE?

How will students be able to run and exert energy if they have to wear masks?

How can elementary students have zero contact?

Will each student have to wash up after each trip away from the classroom?

How much time will be spent daily washing hands and sanitizing?

Will students be allowed out of the classroom?

Will we only have one directional line down the hallway?

How can we make loops in single-ended hallways?

Will students and teachers eat lunch in the classroom? How will students' lunches get to the school? Will lunches run late, without cafeteria staff to deliver to each room?

Will teachers have to retrieve lunches for students from the cafeteria?

Will I have to clean up my classroom, like a cafeteria, after each meal?

Where will I dispose of the food if students eat in the school?

Who will pick up the trays? Is it sanitary to pass the trays around, or should we use plastic? Can the school afford to use plastics for every meal?

How will my classroom carpet hold up to all the dropped food and milk spills?

How do I keep 2nd graders from touching each other?

What if a student has sensitivities or allergies to hand sanitizers?

Will I have any high-risk students this year? How many times a day will I have to say, “Pull up your mask.?

How many times a day will gum get caught in a student’s mask?

Will masks become the new status symbol among students, fancy, personalized, cloth, etc.? Is it a school’s responsibility to provide masks?

Will teachers be buying masks for students who have none?

Will my students’ little faces get marked up from daily mask wear?

Will parents send their student to school knowing they’re sick?

What if a parent is sick, will the student have to miss school too? Will the school even be notified that Johnny’s mom tested positive? Will students panic when someone coughs?

What if I cough, ? Willt scare a student?

Will my anxiety be driven high with worry about the tickle in my throat?

Will I be able to take a drink from a water bottle that’s been sitting on my desk all day, without concern that it’s been contaminated?

Will my desk need a shield? How can I walk around to each student and lean over their shoulders to help them work through problems without carrying their germs to the next student? How are my online students doing?

Are they even “my” students anymore?

Are the online students getting a computer lab, music class, PE, recess time, two meals a day, and a built-in teacher for 8 hours a day?

Do online students count as part of our district's numbers?

Will our school lose funding if Johnny’s mom signs him up for another online curriculum?

If we lose enough students to online schooling, will teachers be cut?

What if we cut teachers and, by December, those students come back? Can students just go back and forth between online and in-class education?

What will the long-term effects be on a student who homeschools?

What will the long-term effects be on students who lose socialization?

How disruptive will it be to a student’s education if they start online and then return to school? How disruptive will it be for students in my class if online students come back mid-year?

How are the students feeling?

How are the parents feeling?

Are some parents unable to homeschool, but deeply fear sending their students back?

Will there be more helicopter parents than ever due to fear?

Will parents call more, want conferences more?

How will I do parent-teacher conferences?

Will a student have to go to the office for sneezing or coughing?

Do teachers need to have lesson plans months in advance, just in case?

Will we have regular classroom holidays anymore?

Will we be allowed to have classroom snacks anymore?

Is it worth the time to make hallway murals if we’re just going to spend all our time in the classroom?

What if I spend months decorating my classroom, and then schools close down again?

Do I order holiday classroom supplies now or wait?

Will we even be in class come fall or winter?

If I wait, and we have class, will everything beback-orderedd?

Should I save on my budget and not have extra funds, just in case?

Will I have any extra funds? Do teachers even have a budget?

Will teacher funds be used for sanitation purposes and not educational purposes?

Will I spend more out of my own pocket this year to help sanitize my classroom?

Should I spend money, out of my own pocket, on extra sanitary needs for the classroom?

If I spend extra on sanitary items for my class, will I have anything left to spend on educational items? Is there a grant I can fill out to get more laptops for my classroom?

Can I trust students to take laptops home when I can’t even get books returned?

Can parents be trusted to return technology items?

Will students with higher family incomes do better in class because they have technology advantages at home?

Should teachers help students who don’t have technology at home?

Should the local school district or state help students who don’t have technology for online classes?

How will online learning affect students?

Will introverted students actually strive and do better with online classes?

Will students be unsupervised at home because parents have to work?

Is it a teacher’s responsibility to worry about online students?

Will I worry every day if at-home students are being fed?

Will students at home study enough?

How can I not worry about students who are working from home?

What is best for the students? What is best for the parents?

Is anyone asking what is best for teachers?

What do I do with my classroom community bins of erasers, crayons, markers, etc.?

Will students lose basic kindness efforts by not being able to lend a helping hand or pass things? What about my bookshelves, filled with books; can students still read books?

What if a student coughs on a book, how do I sanitize paper?

Can students still take home books or other items from the classroom?

How will we safely grade take-home papers?

Is homework going to be a thing of the past?

How can we safely pile up worksheets from every student, grade, and then pass them back out?

How many times a day will a student touch their face with a pencil or put an eraser in their mouth? What about wall pencil sharpeners?

What about water fountains?

What about community restrooms and hand towel dispensers?

What about the student who just doesn’t wash his hands, or didn’t use soap?

What about hundreds of students a day that walk down the halls, rubbing the walls the whole time? Just how long will our class lines be, if we all have to stand 6 ft. apart?

Will we have to stagger lunch times between classes?

If we stagger lunch times between classes, will some students not be eating until 1 pm?

How will we pass out papers now?

How do we decide between health and education?

Will there be a vaccination for COVID this year or next?

Will the vaccination be safe? How long before the school nurse tests positive?

Will we have a Christmas program?

Will we have Thanksgiving dinners at school with our students and their families?

Will we see a rapid increase in cases after the holiday breaks?

Will teachers have to do fever checks on students to enter the classroom?

How much extra time will it take to test the daily temperatures of every student, teacher, and staff member? Will thermometers be provided for every teacher?

Will we leave for Spring Break next year, and not come back again?

Where will students sit if they have a fever until their parents come?

What if Johnny’s parent is at work and can’t come pick him up?

How often do I have to sanitize all my reading buddies?

Can I even have reading buddies?

Are we taking away the basic comforts in a classroom?

Will all this make my classroom feel sterile and uninviting to students?

Will my classroom environment be conducive to learning?

How can I work on group projects in class?

Will we be able to work on a fair project this year?

Will we even have a county fair this year?

Will we celebrate the Veterans this year?

Will the Veterans be able to come to their annual assembly?

Will we have school assemblies?

Will I need to prepare for a Valentine’s party?

Will students be allowed to bring Valentine's to pass out?

What about hands on projects, even when the students take turns, they’re one right after another?

Will we be able to celebrate student birthdays?

How will I get 25 2nd graders to sit in their seats all day?

Will the firemen be able to come visit during Fire Prevention Week?

Will our school allow visitors?

How will the PTO stay involved if visitors are not allowed in the building?

Is the PTO group considered visitors?

Will homeroom parents be allowed or considered visitors?

If we’re social distancing in the classroom, but Johnny’s brother plays high school sports, are we all really separating?

What about school dances?

If a student earns AR points, will they not get their end-of-the-year party?

What about being trapped in a small classroom with 25 students breathing in the same air for 8 hours a day? What about herd immunity?

Does herd immunity work?

Will this even matter in 6 months, or will it be 10 times worse?

What about homecoming? What about students staying 6 ft. apart, but backpacks hanging inches apart? Will our class go to the pumpkin patch?

Will our class go to the science museum?

What about class pets, can they get COVID, can they carry the virus?

How many sick days would I have to burn if I were exposed?

Why can’t the president, CDC, state school board, and leading health officials all give the same guidelines?

What about school field trips?

What about bus rides? Is the bus driver safe toting around students from every class daily? If we are keeping classes separate, but intermingling on the school bus, did we really do anything? Is the office staff safe; they have to see the public, teachers and students from each class daily?

How will students spread random acts of kindness during Kindness Week?

How can teachers comfort parents when we don’t even know what to expect ourselves? How can I tell a student running at me for a big hug to “Stop!” How can teachers social distance themselves from elementary-age students?

#thewearyteacher