My first day of school in the new normal: Taking a glimpse in the windows of others | Opinion

• Michael Bell is a Freshman at Central High School in Memphis, TN.
• Peer Power Foundation, a Memphis-based nonprofit organization that recruits and trains high-performing college students to tutor and mentor in high school classrooms, sponsored a Shelby County Schools district-wide Summer 2020 Creative Writing Contest to encourage storytelling. The students wrote about how they perceived the school year would play out with COVID-19. Peer Power works in partnership with SCS and University of Memphis.

Editor's note: Peer Power Foundation, a Memphis-based nonprofit organization that recruits and trains high-performing college students to tutor and mentor in high school classrooms, sponsored a Shelby County Schools district-wide Summer 2020 Creative Writing Contest to encourage storytelling. The students wrote about how they perceived the school year would play out with COVID-19. Peer Power works in partnership with SCS and University of Memphis. The following essay is from one of the winners:

At the age of 34 my mother decided to return to school via online every day. For four months, she would turn on her camera and remain still. She could not fidget or turn her camera off because she would be removed from the class or worse have been given the gift of attention.

The problem was not sitting still--any one can remain one spot. The real problem was that her class began at 10:00 am and ended at 5:00 pm. 

When my first day of school arrived, I was more afraid than usual. It was school but it wasn’t at the same time, and I know that regardless of these extraordinary circumstances I’d be expected to perform, and to give the performance of a lifetime to a teacher not wearing a badge or pants. 

My first day in the new normal

I logged on to school and started my first class of the day. The teacher shared loudly that she thinks that the government is to blame for all of this and that she shouldn’t have to be here, before giving a monologue about how this will get better and we will get through this together. 

During the first period, I stared off to the side, studying the mocking bird that rests outside of my window pecking at the glass trying to break inside. 

I noticed that each little box is like a window into someone else's life. Each window became a looking glass. I felt bad for staring at some people, but it was hard to look away. I spent most of class diving in and out of people’s lives.

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10 minutes was spent watching a girl argue with her mother, on mute, an argument that she clearly lost because she said goodbye in tears.

15 minutes was spent watching a boy trying to stay focused, while feeding his baby sister lunch. The last few minutes of class was spent laughing at a girl, who decided to go pee, forgetting that her mic was still on. 

I enjoyed the entertainment and pleasant distraction that people brought from the teacher’s monologue.

I can't even tell you what the first period was about. I can only tell you how to make a six-year-old eat their vegetables and the importance of securing your mic. Maybe these people would become my new teachers.

Maybe I could take more away from these stories than anything I could have learned in class. 

I clicked off, legs fully asleep, and began to sign into my next class. 

Michael Bell is a Freshman at Central High School in Memphis, TN.

Peer Power Foundation, a Memphis-based nonprofit organization that recruits and trains high-performing college students to tutor and mentor in  high school classrooms, sponsored a Shelby County Schools district-wide Summer 2020 Creative Writing Contest to encourage storytelling. Peer Power works in partnership with SCS and University of Memphis.