Well, I had a wild-ass week.

FIS spent the week in a preparatory Distance Learning Drill, which involved us using Monday as a planning day and then teaching via Distance Learning for Tuesday through Friday. It was a lot, and I wrote about it here.

On Wednesday, it was decided that students would return to school-based instruction next week. Which was a big deal. I was excited about it, because I much prefer working with kids in a room than I do kids on a screen. My students also seemed to largely prefer the former. Distance Learning is hard, and I know that I’m doing it as well as I can, which is not very well at all. This takes a tremendous amount of effort. My general sentiment is that I feel like I’m working about twice as hard for about half the outcome (if I’m being generous in both regards). So getting kids back in the building was a welcome development, for me at least.

The announcement was made after school on Wednesday. At the start of Thursday, we began doing the various things that we would have to in order to get the school in compliance with government regulations for being able to receive students. It became very clear that this was a huge effort. Many, many things had to be reconfigured. Big things. Things that any normal circumstance would roll out over months of deliberation and planning. In 48 hours. It was easily the biggest effort in the shortest timeframe that I have ever seen a school engage in.

And then, at 4 pm on Friday, the Prime Minister cancelled all physical schooling for the next month.

To be clear, this totally makes sense, and I have no complaint about the decision. But I can’t help feeling a bit disappointed that the massive efforts of so many educators to convert FIS over to a compliant environment for continuing the education of children is going to go largely unseen and unknown by anyone who wasn’t a part of it. And we were doing it. Even though it was a crazy thing to do, we had it moving forward. It was awesome.

Actually, I didn’t do much at all. My only “tasks” in the process were to provide advice, and also to work up some posters for inside classrooms, explaining and acknowledging the new reality. I like this kind of thing. It’s fun for me, even if I am admittedly not very good at it. So I made my Pandemic Propaganda posters. Which won’t get used.

So I’m leaving them here, in case anyone can use them. Help yourself:

A few sources of inspiration should be credited here. First, the noun project (of which I am recently a paying subscriber) is an endless source of amazing icons for literally anything I can think of. Having used it’s free license for years, I think it’s probably time to pay them the $20 per year they ask for from educators. The monster icons, specifically, came from a collection by Kidaha, who seem like another quality organization. And of course, I am endlessly impressed by people who actually know what they are doing with design and art, more broadly. Rob Sheridan has some really solid “repurposed” WWII propaganda posters for the current crisis. And I guess, thanks to Max Meidinger (when in doubt, use the only font that you ever need).

Are these useful? Are they horrid? Would you like me to make some more? Leave a comment, or drop me a line here or @DavidKnuffke and let me know. Stay safe and well, reader!