AUSTIN, Texas — Normally band director Stephen Howard ends his summer leading more than 100 kids through a weeks-long band camp, but this year it's virtual. ​

“This would have been our third week with the kids in person in a normal scenario, but we delayed our band camp so that the staff and I had time to prepare the like instruction," said Stephen Howard. “It’s tough because it's like, 'No I need to watch you marching so make sure your camera’s pointed at your feet.'”

What You Need To Know

  • Teacher Couple Concerned About Possibility of In-Person Classes

  • Planning both in-person and virtual lessons

  • Juggling full-time teaching with two kids is more than a handful

Stephen Howard and his staff are using Zoom to teach marching band concepts and lead exercises as the students follow along, and getting to interact with his students, even virtually, has brought him a great deal of happiness after a difficult summer. 

“This has brought me a lot of joy this week. This has done a lot for my mental health because seeing all the kids and kind of at least having an opportunity to interact with him a little bit has been great," he said. 

However, it’s still not quite the same as seeing them in person. 

“I miss hearing my kids all make music together, that's the thing that's definitely lost in this format, and I, we kind of talked about, like when we finally get a chance to be face to face again like what that's gonna feel like when we actually get to make music again. I don't know if I'll be able to control myself, it'll be emotional for sure," he said. 

Unfortunately he’s not sure when that will be due to so much uncertainty about what school will look like in the fall.

“This is what keeps me up at night is trying to figure out how this is all gonna work," he said. 

His wife Hannah Howard is a high school history teacher, and shares his concern. She’s been teaching virtually since the spring. 

“I went off maternity leave after spring break because I didn’t want to leave online teaching to a sub, so I went off maternity leave and taught from home with like a three week old," said Hannah Howard, who taught remotely in the spring while nursing a newborn and taking care of her four year old as well. ​“I’m working on my computer, holding him because he was tiny and she would be playing. And so a lot of times I had to like turn my camera off so I could deal with them or I was always muted because, you know, they make a lot of noise.”

Juggling full-time teaching with two kids was more than a handful, but she’s preparing to do the same this fall. She says in her mind it's the best of the available options. 

“Stephen and I both, I mean this is our passion, and we want to teach, but we also want to keep ourselves safe and our family safe and our students safe. And so, as much as we don't like teaching online, we feel like it's the best option for this semester, just because we don't know what's coming. And what we're afraid of is we'll go back to school and everything will open up and then have to shut down again. And so we would rather just like make a consistent plan for the semester, so we can prepare for it," she said. 

Just in case, she’s preparing for both in-person and virtual learning, even though the latter makes her uneasy. 

“It makes it really hard to plan, like quality lessons for either side, because you're pulled in so many different directions," she said. 

That said, she’s more concerned about health and safety. 

“I’ve had classes as large as 42 before, and I teach in a portable, so it's impossible to like keep them six feet apart. So that is a big concern of mine is just the amount of kids," said Hannah Howard. “A lot of the CDC guidelines about like social distancing and sanitation like, I just don't see how that can work in a high school campus, like for a passing period for example like we have almost 2800 students at our school, there's no way they're gonna be able to move from class to class and stay six feet apart in the hallways.”

With the start of school right around the corner, the Howards are taking steps to protect their family.

“So at the beginning of, when we figured out we were going back to school, we contacted a lawyer about getting our wills done. So this is all the paperwork for getting our wills done," said Hannah Howard.