The COVID-19 pandemic:

"My school was among the learning institutions that had canceled all school planned spring break trips for precautionary reasons and on our first day back from spring break instead of going into our school building, we would have a cyber day.

Now, not only was March 17th 2020 going to be a cyber day, all school activities had been canceled for 2 weeks and there would be no in person contact or classes until March 31st 2020. Extracurricular activities including sports were also put on hold. This is how virtual school slowly started.

We returned from spring break vacation to our city Reading, PA on the same day, March 17th and Mayor Eddie Moran declared our city a disaster area due to the number of patients that had been diagnosed with this 2019 novel coronavirus.

Dr. Rachel Levine, the secretary of health for the state of Pennsylvania and Governor Tom Wolf on March 19th 2020 closed all Commonwealth businesses that were not life sustaining. It seemed that the only grocery stores and health care facilities were opened.

A ‘Stay at Home” order came from our state’s capital Harrisburg, PA on Friday, March 27th 2020, issued by Governor Tom Wolf and Secretary of Health Dr. Rachel Levine for 20 counties. They included: Allegheny, Beaver, Berks, Bucks, Butler, Centre, Chester, Delaware, Erie, Lackawanna, Lancaster, Lehigh, Luzerne, Monroe, Montgomery, Northampton, Philadelphia, Pike, Washington, Wayne, Westmoreland and York counties. The order officially went into effect at 8 p.m. Saturday, March 28th 2020 and was to continue until April 30th 2020, according to Pennsylvania Gov. Tom Wolf. A ‘stay at home’ order meant that residents could only leave their homes for school, work, food and health care. In addition, when residents are in public, they should maintain social distance from another and stay 6 feet apart.

Governor Wolf also mandated schools to stay closed until April 6th 2020. On March 30th 2020, just three days later the Governor closed all schools indefinitely. It was one disappointing news after another, with a new announcement that schools will be closed until May 4th 2020. All this time we were doing online learning at home. At first back in March 2020, it was nice to have a couple of additional days off after spring break, but as we were approaching the two-month mark of not being able to go to school, my classmates and I were beginning to miss the social interaction. Our bedrooms, kitchens, dining rooms and play areas in our homes now became our COVID-19 classrooms.

We missed waking up in the mornings, getting dressed for school, traveling to school. We missed the friendly chat in the hallways, locker areas, being face to face with our teachers and classmates. We missed the cafeteria, extracurricular activities, and team sports."