Sara Scully and her family have lived in Westport for four years. She is a high school family consumer science (Home Ec) teacher.
“I’m teaching my classes online, or at least trying to because I teach Home Ec, so it’s kind of difficult because I can’t teach them cooking right now. We’re creating cookbooks and we’re learning about different types of produce. And we’re talking about how the shutdown of everything is impacting the farms and how they’re having a lot of waste because people aren’t buying it. And then all the crops that they planned for like restaurants, so the farmers are having to change because people don’t want to buy like gooseberries and microgreens. They want like lettuce and green beans. I found it interesting! The children that I’m teaching… they answer my questions but I’m not sure they find it as interesting as I do, but I try to make it exciting. We watch videos too. I get videos from like Alton Brown and the Culinary Institute of America and I show them how to make things through video. But I don’t know what people have, so I can’t ask them to cook.
I make cakes so I’ve also been making a ton of birthday cakes for all the poor quarantine birthdays. And I’ve been sewing masks to give to friends, family—whomever asks.
Homeschooling my own children and trying to teach my class at the same time takes up a lot of time. My daughter, who is 12, FaceTimes or SnapChats with her friends, so she’s okay.
My 10-year-old really looks forward to his class Google Meets so that he can see his friends.
He is dyslexic so he needs a lot of help and he has a lot of energy, doesn’t want to sit at the computer all day. So, we go for walks and I’ll show them different plants outside. And they don’t know they’re learning. We talked about how the full moon made the tide really high and really low and stuff like that.
I used to go to work and that was my work time. I planned my day. I did my work. I planned tomorrow. And now I don’t have time to plan and do work because I’m homeschooling and the laundry is here, the dishes are here. It’s terrible. So, I find myself staying up until 11 o’clock at night because that’s when I need to plan or correct papers.
My kids have not left the house except for walks. They haven’t gone to a store since that Wednesday when school got canceled. The other day I was going to the grocery store and my son asked “Can I come with you?” I had to tell him “You know, actually you can’t.” He said “What do you mean?” and I had to say it’s only one person per family. He looked at me very strangely, I think it took him all that time to realize, oh something’s going on now.
“Can I come with you?” I had to tell him “You know, actually you can’t.”
Hopefully this is a once in a lifetime thing. I guess you can compare it kind of to the hurricanes that we had that trapped us at home. But that was only because we couldn’t get out because the trees were down and there was no power. But I don’t think that has prepared us for this.
Hopefully it won’t happen again and we all get through it safely and happily, because I know being trapped at home with your family can be very difficult and very hard on relationships.
For my students, I know some of them don’t come from a happy place, and they come to school to get away. And, I feel like telling them, “I’m sorry we had to send you back there.”
I’ll ask them how they were doing with some of them. Some of them say they are okay but are really bored. Some of them are say they’re going crazy. I tell them I’m always here to talk. I mean, I wish I could help them more. One of my very good students hadn’t turned in three assignments in a row. When I emailed her to check in and see if I could help, she said she and her mom both had COVID-19. Her mom worked and her mom worked for a hospice. So, it’s just really hard.
And then all my seniors, they’re so sad because you know, they’re missing out on internships and prom and graduation. Some of them haven’t even picked their colleges. On spring break, they were going to go and drive around and see where they wanted to go to college and make a decision.
Overall, I think we’re doing a really good job here in Westport. Whenever we go out everyone has masks on. All the stores are complying with how many people should be inside and I think it’s great. I’m really happy with what they’re doing. And I think because of the party we wrapped our heads around it real fast and went on lockdown. I feel like in a lot of other towns, it’s not like this. I go to Norwalk for the grocery store and I feel like they don’t even think anything’s wrong. Some people have masks on, some people have gloves on. But people are standing way too close and they don’t seem to be caring… so I think our town got it real fast.