[This text is machine generated and may contain errors.]

Casey Harwick
Interviewer

Elizabeth Harwick
Narrator

April 16, 2022

CH: (00:00)
Hi, I'm Casey Harwick, the interviewer, the interviewee is Elizabeth Harwick. The date is April 16, 2022. And the topic is COVID-19. So when did you realize that the pandemic was going to become the life changing event that has become? Well,

EH: (00:22)
I knew that something was going to happen, I don't think that I realized how long it was going to happen, or how monumental the change would be.

EH: (00:38)
I remember when the state made the decision to close our schools.

EH: (00:48)
Well, some of the bigger schools had already started to close. But because we're in a rural community, I think a lot of people thought that it wouldn't really impact us. But I remember my principal, Dr. Johnson came into my classroom and told me that we were going to close down for a week, and then we would come back. And I looked at him and I said, I don't think we're gonna come back the school year. And he was like, Do you really think that and I said, Yeah, I just, I just have a feeling that when we leave, that we're not going to be able to make a justification to come back, when so many people were dying. So I guess, to be specific, it'll be March 13. Of 2019. Is that right? 2020, maybe 2020. Because that was the day they told us to go home, and that we'd come back on Monday after they clean the schools. And we didn't get back the rest of that semester.

CH: (02:11)
So with so with that, what changes really were immediately felt

EH: (02:20)
cool. teaching the kids, we thought, you guys for two weeks, we were quarantined to stay in place, but they thought we were coming back. So we didn't have to teach the kids or anything. We were just kind of like after a hurricane, you know, that we just sit and wait for it to pass, and then recover and then come back. So we kind of treated it like an emergency, I guess. So we didn't teach and the school system wasn't ready. You know, again, like we're in a rural community, a lot of our people don't have access to internet still, a lot of the students don't have computers at home. So we just didn't have we weren't ready to go back. I mean, to do it. So after two weeks, they told us that it was going to be a month. And we had to make some kind of plan for the kids. So we just started. school I was in at the time, we started running off papers, there's so many papers. And we couldn't like we couldn't have the people come because we were all supposed to quarantine. So we all sat outside and had all the papers and boxes and the people would come through the driveway by the pickup line. And they'd have to yell out at us like what the papers were or like what class or kids ran. And we would have to bring the box over. Because we couldn't just bring them the paper because that meant that we touched the paper, because at the time we didn't know really how things were passing or anything. And so they would stay in the car, we'd run back, we'd get the papers, and then we'd run it over to them in the box. And then they would take it and

EH: (04:31)
it was when the kids would turn the papers back in. They would actually sit in the main office. Because at the time they thought that the germs would stay on surfaces for days. And so we didn't want the teachers to get sick so they would stay in boxes for a week before we could get them so we were always running the week behind and we wouldn't know that the kids didn't read realize or didn't understand what we were teaching until the week went that we could get the papers. It was ridiculous. I'm sure the bigger school systems were ready, more prepared that we were or their families where we did what we had to do. No, we eventually rolled out and computers and hotspots and all that stuff. It was kind of cool because like, the places that are very, very rural, that they don't have even internet office, internet service offered, that the churches and the fire stations and things would open up their internet access. And so you would see people coming out and let McDonald's open up their internet access. And so people would go sit in the parking lot with their kids, and have them work on the computers. So they would have internet access.

CH: (06:05)
So how did how did that external chaos affect your home life?

EH: (06:14)
Well, I'm a hermit. So it didn't affect my home life. If it made me a lot more relaxed, and happy, because my people wouldn't just be stopping by. And it meant that I could stay in my little bubble sorry,

CH: (06:49)
answer however you want. So I guess being a teacher in a rural area

EH: (07:24)
bad thing about the pandemic, for our area is that we have in our area, we depend a lot on tourism. And a lot of people's jobs were lost. Because of that, and the people that lost their jobs were the ones that were that already live paycheck to paycheck. And a lot of our students are from abusive homes that are isolated. And then they were even more isolated after the the quarantined in place. role. And a lot of us were worried about whether or not they're getting food, if they were being molested, they're being beaten, they're just being neglected. There are a lot more concerns than just their education. And they that's everywhere. But in our little rural area, we couldn't really keep an eye on everybody, I guess. It's been hard. Just like I say, it made me feel happy and safe. That everybody, but people couldn't stop by a lot of the kids also, I think felt safety in their homes. And coming out of that now has been very difficult for a lot of us. A lot of the students aren't used to the chaos of the school, they aren't used to having so many people around all the time, being so loud. You know, it's it's, it was hard for me to adapt. But I'm an adult and just kind of push through things. But the kids had a heart but are having a harder time getting through things.

CH: (09:22)
How, how do you feel that the return has been handled by the school?

EH: (09:29)
We do the best we could. Because I think we were really looking at you know, when the thing that people don't understand is like, Oh, they say, oh, last week you couldn't do this, but this week you can Well, that's because we didn't know anything about the pandemic. We didn't know anything about COVID So as we learn things, we change things. And that science, I mean, that's just part of it. You know, you have to learn and change and then grow So when we first went back you know, we did two days a week with Group A, and then there was a Wednesday and the schools were scrubbed down. And I remember we had to have posters off the walls, because they were spraying everything down with this disinfectant. And we would come back on Thursday to teach Group B, and everything was covered with this gross dust. Because when we were told at the time, that we need to leave that disinfect it on the surfaces to kill the COVID.

EH: (10:43)
Are they called not diseases COVID viruses virus? Yeah. So so then the Thursday group would have to clean up everything. And then then the only the biggest issue that we had was that with a month left of school, they decided to put all the kids back together again. So it was the most vulnerable volatile time of the school school year. And then to put group A and group B together again, in the classroom, even though we still had Wednesday's off. It really, in the classroom, we have a lot of hierarchy. And people don't realize that. So you have the alphas in the class. And then you have the quiet ones, they all kind of fall into their roles. And so when you put them together, you have a lot of bad link. And a lot of stuff that you don't see from the academic side of it is very much a social side. And our kids have grown dependent on social media even more than they were before, to kind of keep in contact. So now they're in contact 24/7. And then they were all of a sudden back in class together to seen each other face to face, it just brought up a lot of social stuff.

CH: (12:03)
I'm sort of related to that dependence on social media, have you seen any more usage of technology in the classroom, after using technology all the time, during this pandemic

EH: (12:16)
we are all required to maintain a Google Classroom now, which is something that's the online classroom, that the kids can get to see their assignments, we're supposed to post everything in it. And the thought behind that is that if we have another pandemic, or something like that, or an emergency breakout, then we can immediately shift to having online classes. So at the beginning of the year, we had, we were back in school with men with optional maths. And of course, we had this huge breakout, and two of our schools were shut down. So because of Google Classroom, they were able to continue on what they had been doing. And there was no break in education and that kind of stuff. But also, all of our students in the district are now one to one, where before it was just the high school that was one to one, then the middle school became one to one. But now all of our from pre K all the way up to 12 have access to computers and tablets.

CH: (13:36)
To clarify one to one is one device per student.

EH: (13:40)
Yep. And that high school can actually take their computers home.

CH: (13:44)
So I've also I was also curious, do you think that our area's familiarity with pandemic, not pandemic with Hurricane readiness helped in any way with being able to, like handle the transition to out of school?

EH: (14:05)
No, it was tougher. Because the thing with the hurricane, even though it was awful, I never want to go through one again. And I'd prefer they didn't really exist, that we had community that backs each other up. And, you know, you come out of your houses because it's so darn hot to stay inside because you don't have power most of the time and you're sitting outside and you're talking to your neighbors, and people are helping each other, kind of get through it. But this was different. You didn't have your community really that could get out and about and then you had people that felt, you know, with a hurricane, everybody's just trying to get through it and they agree. The way to get through it is to get power to get the roads clear to get the food to people. That kind of stuff. But with this, there were lots of disagreements and who and how to get through it. So you didn't have people that were just, you know, it wasn't a bonding experience.

CH: (15:11)
So more like lines of division.

EH: (15:13)
Yeah. It was just kind of sad. Yeah.

CH: (15:17)
And, sorry, go ahead.

EH: (15:20)
It was easier for me. Because of our little neighborhood. You know, people were, we would just go outside and sit on porches and yell across the yards at each

CH: (15:33)
sort of like Irene.

EH: (15:34)
Yeah. Just like one of the hurricanes.

CH: (15:37)
Yeah. So did you see that sort of division also reflected in the schools? Like, beyond just being in the community, the duty like that, and students as

EH: (15:51)
well? You mean, like,

CH: (15:52)
the disagreement and how to deal? Oh, gosh, yes.

EH: (15:56)
You know, but they're just, they're just imitating what their parents say. But then, you know, the big thing that, I think, is that we had parents saying that we were abusing the students by having them wear masks. And, you know, some were saying we were being irresponsible with a student's health because we forced them to wear masks. That mean that we wouldn't mask optional, so we couldn't win either way, but with the kids, I think the biggest thing is that all the parents that kind of first and first and first and first so much about maths, if they could just come into the school and realize how many kids just didn't care about having to wear a mask, you know, sometimes they would pull them down from their nose or something like that. But for the most part, there wasn't this huge, like anger or pushback from the kids or anything, you know, it was just, they just took it like that's what they were supposed to do. So they did it, they didn't want to go back to online learning again. So they just did it. But then the parents just made such a big deal out of it. And a lot of time with the parents, the ones that we couldn't get in for parent teacher conferences. So it was really frustrating.

CH: (17:21)
So one of the things like that I really wanted to ask about more as a fun question is what seems normal now that you would have thought was really weird before the pandemic?

EH: (17:36)
What seems normal now?

CH: (17:39)
Or like, what was normal during the pandemic, that before that point would have been very strange?

EH: (17:46)
Well, the mask of course, you're really strange. Because you see people with masks now. And you don't think anything of it. Even though masks aren't required anymore. But before if you saw somebody with a mask, you would think that they were like, deathly contagious, and why were they even out in public? And there must be some kind of weirdo like, you know, like, when Michael Jackson start wearing his mask everywhere, they thought that he was so strange. But, like those KPop star, yeah. But now you see people in there, you're just like, okay, they must have like a cough or cold or something like that. I mean, I do. I think that anyway, some other people may still think they're strange, but I think

CH: (18:31)
it's useful when you don't want people talking to you. So is there anything else you'd like people to know? This is going in the archives at Joyner.

EH: (18:49)
that it's not the first time we've been through something like this. People forget that. I mean, if you look back through history, the Spanish flu, they wore masks. You know, and people thought it was terrible then too. But we just we did people talk about vaccinations. were vaccinated. I mean, it just I I think that the whole pandemic thing. When it became political, it became much worse than it could have been it should have been. It did not it was not a health thing anymore. It turned into a Democrats did this the Republicans did that kind of thing. And it started really fueling people's anger. And so instead of trusting you know, we did those pictures when we back into those pictures from the 50s in this area, when they were first doing their thing It's not the polio vaccines, but the maybe the Mars Mars, no mops, vaccinations chickenpox maybe. Anyway, people just did it, because they saw what would happen if they didn't have the vaccinations and then people died. And so they just went and did it. But then when it became political, it became something that you were turning your back on your political party or your beliefs or something, if you decided to go get it, or if you decided not to get it. It was, you know, it shouldn't have been that way. We could have looked back in history, and we could have seen how they handled it. And of course, we're different because we have access to different things now. But it's not the first time. And I think that's when people start to really mess up is when they think that we're unique. We're not unique, these things have happened before. So we have to look at history, and we have to go back and see what worked and what didn't work, and then improve on it. And that's how we grow. If we just keep saying that. Oh, yeah, this is us poor us look at this is the pandemic. Well, I mean, all it takes is just a basic working knowledge of history, to know that we have handled this kind of thing before and now we're supposed to have access to so much knowledge. But I think people are interested in the surface knowledge. They like to read headlines, but they don't actually like to read the science behind it. And so, you know, a lot of is like kind of mass hysteria, and it brings on this craziness that people stopped listening to logic, and they stopped listening to, or looking back at history to see that, you know, we will be okay. And, you know, people were saying that, Oh, we are you know, we're training these kids to wear masks. No, we're not. We're just trying to get through a pandemic. I mean, I really think that that's the biggest thing that we need to look at, you know, we as people have survived. So long 1000s and 1000s and 1000s and 1000s of years. And throughout that time, we have faced a lot of adversity. So if we weren't able to look back through history, we can see how we handled it and improve on it. But I think that's the only thing

CH: (22:51)
thank you for joining us interview with me.

EH:
You're welcome.

[End of Recording]