Pre-pandemic, the rooms and corridors bustled like a terminal at Newark Liberty Airport. Of course, that stillness was unsettling. Even the bag of pretzels and bite-sized chocolates for the class party we never had remained lifeless on the shelf. Everything was exactly as I had left it when we exited the building, when we believed we would return in a few weeks or at most a few months. While millions of covid deaths, a new president, an insurrection at the Capitol and a war in Ukraine - to name just a few events - forever changed our world since the pandemic began, my classroom remained unscathed. Rather, I felt that a room, frozen in time, welcomed me back. At first, the memories did not overwhelm me. Signs bedecked the teacher’s desk in the ESL classroom.Īnd yet I surprised myself. I wondered, therefore, what were my chances of emptying bookshelves and desk drawers, stripping the walls of anything that said “Merrill’s class was here” and then leaving the building without being a slobbering mess? And I’ve watched that scene a zillion times! What about the first note of that overture in a Broadway musical? I’m relieved the theater is dark, so that no one can see the lump in my throat and my teary eyes.
For example, I still cry when Lucy Ricardo tells Ricky that they are having a baby in an “I Love Lucy” episode. How would I react when I’d see my classroom? I wasn’t sure, but I had an inkling. Get The Jewish Standard Newsletter by email and never miss our top stories Thirty-one years of accumulated classroom materials awaited me.
As in-person classes resume, a new teacher would inhabit the room while I continue to teach remotely in the evening. Not only would I be seeing my ESL (English as a Second Language) classroom for the first time since March 2020 – when the pandemic was officially declared – but I also would be emptying it out.
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