Jessica Zappia

As I write this in mid-April 2020, we’ve been doing online schooling for two weeks now in Madison, Wisconsin, and I really miss my kids.

To show how we all have stories, the kids are making COVID journals, time capsules, vlogs, children’s books, drawings, photo books . . . you name it. We talk all year about how we are reading about regular people in extraordinary times and now, they are the voices that others in the future will read. Many of my students are submitting their work to the Wisconsin Historical Society.

This pandemic is bringing the inequities of our society to the forefront for all to see. Many of my students never realized the integral role that schools play in the lives of children, beyond just “education.” We read a New York Times article about schools during this time. We had an amazing discussion (via Zoom) about how social distancing is a privilege and how our communities in Madison relate to the cities highlighted in the article.

I plan on making the rest of the year more thematic than chronological and I will pull from Zinn and A Young People’s History of the United States, as I always do!