COVER STORY
Back to school
in uncertain times
L
ast year at this time, summer vacation was in full swing. For those of us with school-aged children, we received our “supply lists” and made that annual pilgrimage to Staples, The Dollar Store, or online to equip our children as best we could. Protractor: check. Three-ring binder: got it. Enough pencils for a year: why not? Got that too. Maybe you bought your kid a new backpack, a pair of sneakers for gym, a puffy winter coat… it was a more innocent time, with lower stakes than we have today. Last year was 2019. Yes, we were a nation divided in many ways – politically, economically, polarized in our beliefs around immigration – but the words “virus” meant only something fairly innocuous, like a glitch in the computer, or a bad cold. Fast forward to September 2020. The phrase “Back to School” carries with it a whole host of nuances now, thanks to the Coronavirus. This year is more complicated, to say the least. Much more difficult than deciding how many Sharpies to buy. The phrase Back to School conjures up images of masked children at desks, hand sanitizers on every wall, long lines of socially-distant-spaced students trying to make
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By Stacie Charbonneau Hess
their way from one classroom to the next. What about the lunchroom? How does that work? I teach literature, so I understand it this way: if going back to school in the pandemic of 2020 were a story, it would be a coming-of-age tale. After decades of relative innocence, status quo schedules,
September 2020 | The South Coast Insider
and “sure things” (like returning to school every September) 2020 slams our innocence up against a wall and changes us forever. We are living characters whose outcome is uncertain. Our decisions are part of the rising action, leading to the climax (what will this look like?), and eventually the denouement. As characters in this living story, we are feeling the conflict, the punch in the gut of the invisible villain. In that way, the Coronavirus story is a thriller with no end in sight. One thing is for certain, though: schools will open in one form or another, and parents and guardians are going to have to reconcile their feelings with the new reality of education in a Coronavirus-impacted America. How are we doing? I took an informal reading of friends and acquaintances who represent a slice of the American experience, among them a healthcare professional in Florida, a yoga teacher from Dartmouth, a public-school teacher in New Jersey. It seems that there is no simple response to the question “What does Back to School mean to you this year?” I was surprised at some of the responses.
September stress
First of all, what are the options? Some schools, like the Old Rochester Regional School District
