I hope this post finds you in safe and dry settings. School is out for the rest of the week and I can’t help but wonder “How are we going to start all over again?” Procedures, classroom expectations, and schedules on repeat for teachers and students alike. But not only that, how are we to account for faculty/staff/students/parents/stakeholders mental state at this devastating and traumatizing time? The schoolhouse provides so much normalcy for our children and for us, the adults, too.
Q1: What was the scenario for you Friday, August 12 as you learned school was being closed?
Q2: Have you had any contact with administrators, fellow educators, parents, students, etc.? What has been the response?
Q3: How can we as educators continue to provide stability to our community as we always have, although our own lives have been drastically affected?
Q4: Does anyone else see the uncanny similarities to Hurricane Katrina? If children and teachers have to be displaced, how can we welcome them into our school climate?
Please comment below how you feel. I need this dialogue so much.
Sincerely,
Jalissa Bates, M.A.
The Young Scholar Society 
We were on our way to school when a parent notified our bus driver that school was cancelled. I have been contacted by friends asking if I’m ok. I’m thankful that my friends and I are ok. I honestly any easy way that we can rebound from this. We should just come together as a community
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I think one of the most important aspects of a recovery of the magnitude is a giving mindset. We have already seen this in the rescue efforts by our local communities and the massive support for shelters and repairs.
As educators, (or soon to be in my case) we need to remember how important education and schooling is to our students and communities. Just like Jalissa said, we play a stabilizing role and provide a sense of normalcy.
It is hard to provide stability when your own life has been quickly and terribly destabilized. I think for our teachers who have been affected by the flood, delving into the good work you do as educators and into that stabilizing role can help in turn return a sense of normalcy to your own life.
A quote from Anne Frank comes to mind, “No one has ever become poor by giving.”
As our schools begin to recover, our students need empathy, support, stability, and compassion. Our students will need outlets to express their experiences and feelings. The more they express, the more we will learn how to process our own emotions and experiences. This all happened so quickly, and we all need outlets to process and work through our individual experiences in a collaborative form.
Fellow English teachers, perhaps we can include readings from Katrina and other disasters to help forge connections between our students and other students who went through similar tragedies. Maybe we could assign a writing assignment on their experiences.
Poetrysociety.org has a section of poets called “Remembering Katrina,” so there may be some useful content there. I think it’s important to have our students looking back and looking forward. Creative writing assignments could do a world of good.
For my graduate research, a visual and media literacy blog, I plan to replace a weekly discussion topic with a personal discussion topic, where the students will express their experiences with the flood through collecting and mixing media.
If any teachers would like to collaborate on readings, projects, lessons, or just to talk, my email is mlevin1@lsu.edu.
I send my love to all of you and wish the best for everyone during this process. Our students and teachers deserve the best, and as long as we all work together, we will most certainly rise to the occasion.
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Hi Jalissa
I have had some response to my blog with some people outside of Louisiana who are interested in sending some book to some of my students who are still teaching in the area.
My email is steven.bickmore@unlv.edu
Let me know if you have ideas on how to facilitate this when you are a bit drier.
Thanks
Steve
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