At our school this year, we do a “grab and go ” lunch in which students can grab a packaged hot lunch and take it home, or eat it in a classroom. We did this to avoid using the cafeteria due to COVID. To make sure students don’t get hungry earlier in the day, we give them a mid-day snack.
We discovered early on that some lunches were more popular than others: chicken nuggets and french fries? There would be a frenzy of students and not a single meal would be left over. Fish and green beans? We’d end up with 50 leftovers. (Unfortunately the healthier the lunch, the less popular it is. Luckily we had a teacher who took the leftovers to a food pantry where they were much appreciated.)
To get our lunch quantities right, I assigned myself the job of visiting the cafeteria kitchen every morning. I chat with the staff, learn what they’re serving, and then together, we make a lunch estimate so there’s minimal waste.
Like all public high schools in New York City, my school is operating remotely. Overall, it’s going well, yet it’s also easy for students to disappear. 
For some students, remote learning has been a hurdle while for others, it’s transformed their lives for the better. Today I’m going to focus on the latter.
I’ve always liked talking to students, even if they’re “in trouble.” I find it healing for me and for them. I “channel my inner 
We’re in our fourth week of remote learning after schools were closed for COVID-19. Thinking back to last month, I am still amazed by what we accomplished in three days: all teachers learned how to create Google Classrooms, film themselves teaching, and run videoconferencing “office hours” with students. We created a plan for a reasonable student workload. We distributed over 260 Chromebooks to students in one day, and created a “Student Connectivity Team” to help any families that struggled with internet access.
It has been a surprisingly rich week for me to work in a public high school. I saw my staff’s dedication in a new light, and I saw what school means to kids with the very real possibility of schools being closed.
When I was a first-year teacher, I thought my second year of teaching would be unimaginably easy. By year two, I reckoned, I’d have it all figured out: a year’s worth of lesson plans and perfect systems for grading and classroom management. As a result, I’d have all kinds of free time on the weekend.
Classroom 325 