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Collected Item: “Bells Continued to Ring”

Give your story a title.

Bells Continued to Ring

What sort of object is this: text story, photograph, video, audio interview, screenshot, drawing, meme, etc.?

text story, audio

Tell us a story; share your experience. Describe what the object or story you've uploaded says about the pandemic, and/or why what you've submitted is important to you.

When the pandemic began, I was finishing up my last few months of student teaching. My mornings included talking to students about their day and weekend plans they had; however, once the pandemic started that changed drastically. The students were gone and the silence began. Highschools are customarily, a loud and busy environment; yet, overnight the students were gone and there was nothing at school but silence. The halls were empty, my classroom was empty, the whole school was empty apart from a small group of staff. For the rest of the year, I would go to school and sit in my classroom alone in almost complete silence. No face to face interaction with students or even other staff. As a teacher, this was taxing on my mental health. From one day to the next my entire occupation had been flipped upside down. I never saw my students again. I still wonder what became of them. The one thing that sticks in my mind from that period is the sound of dismissal bells at school. For some reason the bells continued to ring even though there were no students. Everyday when that first hour bell would ring I would remember that no students were coming. This was a reminder everyday that the world had changed.
I recorded the sound of dismissal bells at my highschool. Two years after the pandemic started, this sound still reminds me of teaching during the pandemic.

Use one-word hashtags (separated by commas) to describe your story. For example: Where did it originate? How does this object make you feel? How does this object relate to the pandemic?

Arizona State University, HST 643, Sensory History

Who originally created this object? (If you created this object, such as photo, then put "self" here.)

self

Give this story a date.

2020-03
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