The COVID Quacks!

    I am now in my fourth year of teaching kindergarten and I have incubated eggs each year- even the COVID year! In my first year of teaching, I was so excited to bring an incubator into the classroom and hatch eggs with my students. I loved my first class and I still think back on the times we had learning and growing together during my first year of teaching. 

    Then, just as I was settling into how to be a teacher for the first time, COVID hit. In March of 2020, I had to say goodbye to my students for the remainder of the school year. At first, we didn’t know how long we’d be apart but after only a few short weeks we were told we would not return to in-person learning until further notice. I was devastated. The one thing I had been looking forward to the most was hatching eggs with my class and we were only one month away from starting it.

    Once the initial shock of the quarantine and the world shutting down had sunk in, all of my colleagues and I began brainstorming ideas for how to continue to deliver instruction to our kindergarten students from a distance. When we decided on a system and we nailed down what our plan was, I started thinking about my own ideas for how I was going to hatch eggs with my class even if it had to be from a distance. 

    I videoed and took pictures of everything. I gave daily updates and took videos of how I would turn the eggs and add water to adjust the humidity levels. I showed how important it was to take care of the eggs every single day and how the temperature needed to be at 99.5 degrees at all times. Each day I would post the pictures, videos, and updates to my Google Site for parents to help their child access. The children and families loved it!

    Although it was not how I expected my first egg incubation to go with my first class, it was still so fulfilling to hear from my students’ families how excited their children were even at a very uncertain time in everyone’s lives. Families mentioned how this excitement even brought joy to the adults and siblings who got to watch as the process took place. To this day, we still have several ducks from the batch and we call them the COVID Quacks!