The Return Continues

I cancelled my small groups and spent the first day back in the building cleaning the trailer with the supplies that I brought with me.  I actually found myself mentally marveling at the Lysol wipes I had "scored".  I cleared out as many shelves, desks and closets as I could and stacked everything on one side of the room until I was ready to start dragging it to the dumpsters.  I scrubbed down everything, the blinds, inside drawers, window sills, even the walls at times.  I was really behind on other things that I needed to do, but could not exist in that trailer in the state it was in.  On top of it, though the kids have not been officially called back into the building, they were coming in for testing starting the following Monday.  I am on the schedule to test different groups of kids nearly everyday until the end of March.  In that trailer.  The thought of my students having to sit in that filth infuriated me and motivated me to try to make the thing livable.  

I really avoided going inside the building.  The two staff bathrooms we have are closet-sized and shared between countless people.  I discovered that our key cards weren't working anyway, making it difficult to even get into the building if I wanted to.  I questioned how many days I would be able to not pee for like, nine hours.  

Late in the day, the former occupant of the trailer stopped by.
"Hey, I know I should have gotten on this sooner.  I'll start carting all my stuff out, it'll be gone by Friday."
"Awesome, thank you!"  I was beyond relieved to not have to drag all of that stuff to the dumpster.

"Hey, is this really all the sanitation stuff we are supposed to get?"  I asked pointing to the Dollar Tree air freshener, rags and pack of wipes. 

"You're supposed to have more than that!"  he exclaimed.

"That's my old air freshener, you're supposed to have the hospital-grade spray!  They gotta bring you that!"

The intercom came on and interrupted him.  

"THIS is making me mad!"  he burst out, pointing at the intercom.
"She is making me mad!"  he went into a bit of a tirade and I agreed with everything he was saying.  And then, I realized his mask had come off while he was ranting.  I stepped farther back and hoped he would leave.  

I returned Thursday morning.  When I opened the door, the two bags of trash from the previous day's clean up were still there and the carpet had not been vacuumed.  There were also no additions to my "sanitation station".  I took the trash to the dumpster and started trying to teach my classes.  The desktop in the trailer does not have a camera and we are obviously required to have the camera on while teaching.  I have a work-issued Chromebook, but it is such a piece of shit that I usually just use it as a second monitor and use my personal laptop to do all of my school work and teaching.  I noticed problems immediately when I entered the video-call of my first class.  Lagging, sound going in and out, images that weren't showing, teachers getting kicked out of their own classes.  Our building did not have the bandwidth to support all of us teaching online from the same location.

"Didn't have this problem when I was teaching from my house...."  I heard one teacher say.

"I upgraded my internet...AT HOME."  another muttered.

It continued all day.  Some people didn't give classes at all.  

"We are going to have a virtual tornado drill!"  an administrator announced early in the day.

"Staff that are outside should come in the building when we have it!"

I felt a little confused and pictured all of us huddled in a hallway having a COVID spreading party.  Later in the day, the tornado alert starting going off and the teacher I was video-teaching with commanded the students to find a safe place in their houses and pretend there was a tornado coming.  Many looked confused and just sat, staring back at their monitors.  Other teachers started exiting their trailers.  We walked to the school.  Our key cards still didn't work, so we were locked outside during the virtual tornado.  We walked around the school and through the parking lot.  We saw a teacher exiting his car.

"My trailer is freezing!"  he exclaimed.

"Mine is too!" another responded.

"I saw Ms. Goode teaching in the cafeteria, her heat must be out too!"

"I had to warm up, so I've just been sitting out in my car!"

We walked around the building, trying to find an open door.  When we finally got let in, the virtual tornado drill was over.  I decided that since I was in the building anyway, I would break my no-pee streak.  I emptied out my box in the teacher workroom and opened the little Christmas gift the school had given us months earlier.  It was a school t-shirt and one very small, thin face mask.  As I returned to the trailer, I ran into three staff members not wearing masks.  That evening, I emailed an administrator and requested the missing spray for my "sanitation station".  I also asked if there was an onsite vacuum I could use so that I would not have to carry my own back and forth.

I pulled up to the building Friday morning and dragged all of my stuff to the trailer.  The intercom buzzed.

"Ms. Wagner, I will get you that stuff!"  the admin. announced.

"Thank you!"  I responded and started trying to get ready to teach.  I stepped outside to make another trip to the car for my vacuum cleaner and saw a hand in the window of the front half of the double-wide, waving.  A colleague stepped out that I have not seen in a long time.  

"I'm scared." she said, immediately.

"I called in the first two days back, my blood pressure was really high.  I have not stepped foot in that building." she continued.

"Did they give you the cleaning stuff?"  I asked.  

"No.  There is nothing in there.  I got nothing.  They parked the vacuum in there but didn't even do the floor or take out the trash.  How are we supposed to think the "COVID deep cleaning" is being done weekly if we can't even get basic cleaning done?  Am I really supposed to trust that our two little bathrooms are being cleaned through out the day?"  

I shook my head.

"Look.  This is bullshit.  But, every time I go near the building, I'll text you and bring out anything you need and leave it outside of your door."

"Thank you."  she responded.  

The spray never came.  I spent the last hour of the day vacuuming the filthy carpet and thinking of the kids that would be in the trailer with me on Monday.  I wiped everything down, over and over again.  Their parents trust me, I kept thinking.  What if one of them got sick after coming in here?  I kept moving the bottle of hand sanitizer I had brought from home to different parts of the trailer.  I put extra paper masks from the box I keep in the car on my desk.  The two rags and suspicious wipes I was provided with sat in my "sanitation station".  

And then, I left.  I really had to pee.