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DK Okay. Today is November 18, 2020 and this begins and oral history interview with Melissa Newcomer. I am Donald Koger I'm currently located in Piscataway New Jersey. If you don't mind just saying your name and where you are.
MNL : I'm Melissa newcomer Emmaus, Pennsylvania.
DK: The purpose of this oral history interview is to record and get a sense of people's experiences, thinking about the transition to work from home during the early days of the COVID-19 Pandemic. So, with your permission, I'd like to save our interview here. I'm going to use it in a public archive for a class project, but then it also will be it'll go to the Rutgers Library where it will be publicly available. I just want to make sure you're okay with this being recorded and the contents of our discussion today made public in in my archive project as well as the university library where it may be used in the future.
MN: Yes
DK: Okay, great. Could you please tell me where and what you do for work?
MN: I teach high school Latin. I teach in an affluent district, a very large affluent district. I teach tenth, eleventh, and twelfth graders.
DK: Out in Pennsylvania?
MN: Yes.
DK: And you’ve been out there the whole time since March?
MN: Yes.
DK: Who do you live with?
MN: When COVID first hit, I was living with my parents.
DK: Thinking back to March 10th, when the official COVID-19 Pandemic announcement was made by the World Health Organization, what are your memories from that time?
MN: At that time, I was teaching at two schools. That Friday before, which would have been the fifth or sixth, perhaps? There was an exposure at one of the schools at which I worked. So I had already been home for a day when schools shut down. I think, because of that, in some ways I was more prepared for that than other people. Thursday, March 12was the last day that we were in school. I didn’t get any work done because everyone was in a tizzy and students have trouble doing work when there’s other things happening. At that point, we thought we would be out of school for around a week but then we were out of school for three months. The gravity of it hadn’t really set in yet. I was feeling- like hysteria? Other people were not feeling that way, but I was. Every one of my classes, I was thinking “I can’t believe that we’re still in school. We all need to go home, don’t come near me. This is not a safe situation.” I remember thinking, “All the schools in Seattle staged walk-outs. I think we should walk out. If we’re here tomorrow, we should walk out.” Which is not the best thing to say, as a new teacher who did not yet have a contract.
We had meetings to prepare for it. The meetings were petty much “We don’t have any idea what’s going on but you should take all your teaching materials home with you every day.” That was probably Tuesday, and then Thursday was our last day at school. Then, probably two weeks after that, when the excitement of not having to get up at five AM every day wore off, then stress and panic set in.
My sister walked into my parents’ house and all three of us were like “What are you doing? Get out of here! Get out of this house!” So yeah, there was panic. My dad was buying his “last meals.”
DK: I assume you started doing online classes at this point?
MN: Yes.
DK: What was that like, teaching online?
MN: feel like that first Friday we were closed, so Friday the thirteenth, spooky. I don’t think we did any work that day. I think we probably had meetings with our department and our admin to talk about what we were going to do. I guess, looking back, how quickly we came up with a plan is pretty astounding. Like I said, I worked in a pretty affluent district. We had the resources to do that, all of our students, for the most part, had laptops already. I think with just the exception of our seniors, because we were doing a roll out and they didn’t have their own yet. We had enough laptops in our district, it was just a matter of getting them out to the students who still needed them. That probably happened within a week. I forgot what your question was exactly, so I’m just going to keep rambling and something will answer it.
DK: You’re doing great, this is exactly what we’re looking for.
MN: That first day, I feel like we just had some meetings. A lot of it was focused on the mental health of our students. A lot of our students, their parents travel around the world for work, which is why I think we had exposure before other places did our in our area, because of the traveling that was happening outside of the county. There was a lot of concern about our students being home alone all day, if their parents were still going to work, caring for younger siblings, or just not having a good home life and being stuck there. More so than my other teacher-friends that I have talked to about this.
Our district was very focused on mental health and I think that was a good shift. I think that one of the good things that came out of this, even now that we are kind of out of the woods as far as things adjusting, the shock has worn off, that’s something that our district is still very focused on. They were before this, because we have a high suicide rate in our county and in our district. So the first couple days, that transition was mostly focused on everyone’s mental health and having meetings to figure out things like what our new schedule was going to be and how we were going to get information to students. Nothing was mandatory, that was one thing they decided at that point. So our students didn’t have to do any of their work, which didn’t go well, obviously [laughs].
DK: It sounds like efforts were being made to support people in the transition.
MN: Yes, very much. Granted, that mostly fell on teachers. It as my responsibility, as a teacher, to not only figure out how to teach these kids virtually but to also figure out how to support their mental health.
DK: Prior to this transition, having to teach online, did you have a dedicated office space in your home?
MN: No. At that point, I just stayed at school late. So I just did all my work at school. Unless my recliner in front of the TV counts, because I did do work there.
DK: Did you have access to go to the building to do your classes?
MN: No. When we started up again this year, our first four weeks were all virtual. At that point, we were teaching from school, but that did not start until fall of 2020. In March, all the teachers were home. Like I said, in our meetings, we were told to bring everything home with you, “You will not be allowed in the building.” There was probably, about two weeks into distance learning, we were allowed to go into the building. They had scheduled very specific times and you had to personally request to go into the building, it’s not like you were immediately offered a time. As the school year was winding down, they scheduled times for us to go and pack up our classrooms. One of my principals, which I think was just so cool of him, emailed everyone and said “Admin is in the building,” I don’t know which point they drew that line, if it was just the principals or if their administrative assistants were allowed in the building, I don’t know where that line was. Obviously custodial staff was, but one of my principals emailed everyone in the building and said “I’m in the building Tuesdays and Thursdays at this time, fi you need anything from your classrooms, tell me where it is and I will go get it and I will meet you outside by this door and socially distantly hand it to you.” Which is cool, because he did not have to do that. That was a big deal that he did that, I thought.
DK: Where were you doing your lessons from?
MN: Both of my parents worked through the pandemic. I pretty much had the house to myself. I have an Ikea table that’s beautiful and it folds up, so I could adjust the size of it. I had that set up in my bedroom which was horrible because my bedroom is super small. That table was twelve inches from my bed, which created a lot of struggles. Sometimes I would go sit at the desk and I would just look at my bed. I had that table in there and some shelves to put my books on.
DK: Did you have that table already or was it something you bought specifically for this?
MN: I had it already. It’s my craft table.
DK: Did that put a hamper on any of your crafting projects?
MN: On occasion, because it was so full of textbooks and I didn’t have the space for it. I didn’t really have time for crafts at that point anyway. It was more time that affected my crafting, not the availability of a table.
DK: Did you find that work took up more of your time than normal?
MN: At first, absolutely. We had a couple phases, as I recall. Phase one of distance learning was all optional and all enrichment, well enrichment and that other word, that will come to me in a minute. It was all reviewing material for students who didn’t remember it; or needed extra support; or challenging students who had mastered the material. I wasn’t allowed to teach anything new. It was probably two or three weeks into distance learning that we were allowed to start teaching new material. What was your question?
DK: Were you working more hours than normal?
MN: The first three weeks, absolutely not. I put up, my favorite assignment was, I told my students “What if COVID-19 became so strong and potent that it could make you time travel to ancient Rome? What would happen? What would it look like?” I had students make videos, some wrote essays, some wrote plays, oh my gosh; it was amazing. A lot of those first two or three weeks was just fun random activities like that. Watch this video answer some questions. Because, sixty percent of my students were not doing it. But then when we started doing new material, I taught for five weeks before COVID-19 happened, so I’m new to this. I have no flipping idea what I’m doing. Then, all of the sudden, I’m teaching new material online and I don’t even feel comfortable doing it in person yet, and now I have to do it online. I have to learn all these new tools that I hadn’t been using previously, I don’t even know how to take attendance yet. So the first three days of phase two of distance learning, when we started doing new material, I was working from 7:30/8:00 in the morning until 10:00 at night. I did that three straight days. I took a break for two hours in the middle of the day to eat dinner and go for a walk with my mom for two hours. I did a lot of that, I think a lot of people did. I was losing my mind. Twelve hours, no what’s that, fourteen hour days? With no human interaction. I’m online doing work but my students don’t show up for our calls because they’re not mandatory and I’m just sitting in this corner at this desk in my tiny room so I can’t even get comfortable in my desk because I’m squeezed in it.
At that point, I was pretty much like, “This is not sustainable. It’s not healthy. My students aren’t getting the best of me because I’m miserable.” So at that point, probably after the first two weeks of phase two, I was like: “I need to not do this.” I took a step back, I found three or four online tools that worked really well for me. I used those tools, which was probably really boring for my students, but I couldn’t – I didn’t know how to do more and I emotionally and time wise could not do more. Like I said, we were really focused on mental health. Once I stopped spending fourteen hours a day on my computer, I made sure that I spend more time checking in on my students if I hadn’t received work from them, making sure that they were okay, calling parents, which was another weird thing to do. I don’t have a work phone at home, so I had to star sixty seven, is that what you hit? So they don’t know your number? So they couldn’t call me, and I know, obviously a lot of teachers were doing this. I know one of my friends who teaches, she forgot to hit star sixty seven, and now has a parent texting her and calling her at odd hours, which is so not appropriate or okay. Did I answer your question?
DK: Yes.
MN: Okay.
DK: It’s a good transition into my next question. A lot of folks are using personal equipment for work at home in this time. You’re using your own phone, did you have any trouble getting any equipment?
MN: I had my school-sanctioned laptop. Like I said, they told us multiple times: “Bring all of your materials home with you.” Since I had been traveling between schools at that point, I did already do that, because I had to bring it from school to school. Luckily, I didn’t run into any tech issues with my laptop at that point. I know our school did drive-through tech support every other week to help people with that. I didn’t have to print anything because everything was online but I did have a printer at home. There were a couple things that I had forgotten at school. Maybe two things, like my planner, which I was sad I didn’t have, a bunch of notes I had, like content notes about latin stuff, that I had forgotten at work. But I didn’t have trouble getting the resources I needed. Again, I worked for a very affluent district, so I had access to those resources. The district had access to those resources. Other school districts were not as lucky.
DK: What was the drive-through tech support?
MN: I never had to do it. It was more for students than teachers, although I’m sure teachers did use it. My understanding was you drove up in your car, handed your laptop out the window, and then you would come back the next day and pick your laptop up. I’m assuming, because I’ve had tech issues this year, that they would give you a replacement laptop in the meantime. So I guess you would trade laptops out the car window.
We did a similar thing when students had to return textbooks. I helped with that, physically went to school and helped with it, which was terrifying at that point still. Because I was close to people and handing them things, but all the students had to put- I mean all, they were supposed to, put their textbooks in plastic bags. Then we took the plastic bags out of the trunk of their cars. They drove up like a drive through and wrote their name on a list, checked off what books they handed in, and then we quarantined those books for four days before they were sorted and given back to the teachers they belonged to.
DK: You mentioned earlier that your dad was buying what you called “his last meals.” Were there any immediate changes in the kitchen in your household?
MN: Honestly, those changes were all good because you had to think ahead. My uncle was very informed and conscientious and prepared, so we were like: “If Uncle Chuck is doing it, we better be doing it because he knows what’s going on. He’s smart and I trust him, so we’re going to stock up on food and toilet paper.” We did online grocery ordering and picked up curbside mostly. You have to plan ahead to do that because at that point, you had to wait almost three or four weeks to pick up the order, so you had to think ahead and you had to be conscientious about what you were ordering. You can’t order too much produce and meat supplies were low, somethings were out of stock. There was certainly more creativity but I don’t follow recipes anyway. Since I had more time, I was home more, I was cooking a lot more than I usually. I don’t believe recipes as I do about essay prompts in that if you need them, you probably are not capable of writing a good essay or cooking a good soup. I think there was a flexibility there because if I didn’t have arugula, had to come up with a different, maybe less delicious green to put in my soup. I don’t think our eating habits changed a lot.
DK: Were there any items you had a hard time getting or things that ran out?
MN: We never ran out of toilet paper but there was a fear of it. There were definitely times that we ordered it and didn’t get it. Arugula would be one of those things, why did they sell out of arugula? I was really upset becuase I wanted to make this super delicious, arugula pizza? I don’t even know. I didn’t get arugula. Cottage cheese and plain yogurt, plain yogurt happened a couple of times and that’s a staple in my diet. I was pretty sad I didn’t get plain yogurt, and cucumbers. Other than that, it was pretty much like just weird random things that weren’t in stock. We had cleaning supplies. I can’t think of anything else that was a repeat offender.
DK: Did you make bread?
MN: Did I make bread? No, I didn’t make bread. I made a lot of casseroles and soups.
DK: We covered a good amount here, and I appreciate you sharing. Is there anything else that you want to add or anything you think we might have missed?
MN: I don’t think so. Sometimes I worked outside. I had office hours every day so I had to be on a Teams call every day at a certain time, but literally twice a student showed up. So I sat outside on a Teams call and pretended I wasn’t on one.
DK: Did you use any of the virtual backgrounds? Maybe to hide the fact that you were outside?
MN: Oh no, I absolutely told my students. I had bright blue sunglasses with eyelashes. They knew I was outside. [laughter]. Sometimes they were outside. There were a couple times where I would get on a call, maybe three times, I had students and they would hop on the Teams call just to say hi, which warms one’s heart, and I would end up being on the Teams call for an hour talking with them. We would often sit outside and to that.
DK: Thank you again for taking the time to talk with me.
MN: Of course.
DK: I appreciate it.
MN: Any time.
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