What do you do with a room of about 30 unemployed ESL teachers and the managers who had to deliver the bad news?

Sounds like the opening of a good joke….if only I knew the punchline.

My colleagues and I gathered online to hear the latest updates for when face to face classes can resume, what those classes are going to look like, and when we expect to get new students.  As you can imagine the news on all of these points wasn’t really good.

Yes, we will get back to the classroom part time in about five weeks.  The amount of safeguards are going to be quite stringent and they will take some getting used to.  Having to teach while wearing a mask and having the students do so as well doesn’t really sound all that appealing, but better than the alternative–which I suppose is either infection or unemployment.

If there is any Perfect Moment to this, it can be only one thing.  It was fun to see all my colleagues–and based on the tough reality of the future, I should address some of them as former colleagues–in one place.  I wish a few of them had stuck around for a chat afterwards, but they probably had their own things to do.  Their non work routines might have become quite solidified by now.

This time last year, I was working a lot and thinking about a cycling vacation somewhere.