10 minute read
Back to school in uncertain times
Last 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.
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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
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, 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
in my hometown, have proposed a hybrid option for students, with two days in person and two days remote – splitting up the students into two cohorts. Teachers are in the building four days a week. One day a week, everyone is online and maintenance staff deep-cleans the school. Remote learning is a possibility for parents who choose this option, and homeschooling support will be offered. Contrast this to neighboring Friends Academy, a private school, which released a comprehensive opening plan that involves all-live classes –five days a week, with modifications such as the creation of “pods,” a new “quarter” system, and outdoor classrooms and spaces.
Colleges are a different matter. Bristol Community College, for example (my employer), is nearly all online, with a smattering of hybrid and small-group live courses and programs. UMass Dartmouth is fully remote except for labs, studios, and other necessary in-person meetings. UMass will house limited students on campus, and go fully online for all instruction after Thanksgiving break.
Herein lies the dilemma. Even in our little South Coast region, no two schools will look exactly alike in the way they address health concerns and COVID-19. Just as no two families are experiencing this virus – either in person, with relatives, or in the news – in the exact same way.
To be honest, even with all the protocols in place, none of the possibilities for Back to School will be seamless. Andrea, a parent at Friends Academy, puts it this way: “I definitely have mixed feelings. I am really eager to get [my daughter’s] life back to normal, but I almost feel like this version of normal… is going to be warped. All this new protocol seems possibly more detrimental than staying home. Honestly, I am more frightened of all the rules and protocols than I am of the virus itself.”
The unknown is a frightening place to most of us. Sending our children into the unknown even moreso. Some parents I spoke to, however, are ready to adapt and proceed with live classes. Holly, a finance executive from Dartmouth said, “I’m feeling very comfortable sending [my son] back to school. [His school’s] plan covers all questions I had. Our soon-to-be seventh grader misses his normal school life,
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friends, and teachers.” Holly adds, “I trust in our educators, both faculty and staff, to do whatever is necessary to deal with situations as they arise.” Holly acknowledges the uncharted territory: “These are unprecedented times for everyone. From those working in healthcare, essential business, or education, we have jobs to do. As things change, we too must change and adapt.”
If “comfortable” is one end of the spectrum to name how parents are feeling about going back to school, the other is “physically ill.” Allison, a teacher from New Jersey with two young children writes, “Thinking about it makes me feel physically ill. I will return to my classroom on September 1 and do everything I can to keep myself and my students safe. But I will not send my own kids back. We have hired a babysitter and will keep them 100% virtual for now. Doing so will mean draining our savings, but what is the point of having savings if I can’t use it to keep my kids safe?”
Some parents are concerned about the very tools that schools will use to keep children safe: namely hand sanitizers, wipes, and disinfectant sprays. Nicole, a mother of an autistic son, tells me that these items contribute to an environment with “toxic exposure [that] can have a detrimental effect on both the endocrine system, the microbiome, and neurological development.” Even if we get through this school year without contracting the virus, Nicole believes that regular use of these products can do lasting damage.
One thing parents don’t have to worry about, according to Kate Frias, a physician friend of mine, is mask-wearing. “For the vast majority of kids, including those with asthma, masks are safe and there are no health concerns associated with their use.” She says she spends time every day educating parents. “As a pediatrician, I have heard a lot of concerns about the safety of children wearing masks all day at school. They are uncomfortable,” she admits, “But they are not dangerous.”
Classroom blues
So let’s assume that at some point our kids are going back to school. What do we do, Regina in Mattapoisett asks, when someone tests positive and the whole school has to quarantine for two weeks? In other words, even our “new normal” is not going to be that way for very long. Luckily, all of the school plans I read for this article have addressed this possibility.
And how do the teachers feel? Won’t teacher comfort have a direct impact on how our kids enjoy their school day? Karen, a music teacher, is not worried
about her adolescent children because she “trusts them to be responsible” but, she admits, going back to school does concern her. She and her teacher husband “will be exposed to thousands of people per week, including two schools of elementary aged children. I have already told my parents we will not be seeing them very much once school starts.”
So far, every family I interviewed at least feels that they have a choice. Some families, such as those headed by a single parent with a full-time job, are not so lucky. They are really at the mercy of a school’s plans and protocols to keep their child safe. What about high-risk kids for whom school is a safety net – the assurance of two meals a day, a consistent routine, a nurse, and a psychologist? Children like these have been on the mind of my friend Gillian, who serves on the board of several charities in Massachusetts. She is also the mother of three children in eighth, seventh, and third grades. If kids don’t return to school, she fears, “that social
and emotional welfare of children is at stake, especially in children from high-risk homes. The socioeconomic divide will only become wider, and who is protecting the kids who need it right now? I stress about how I will find a high school during this time for my daughter next year. I can’t imagine being a mother of a child who is being abused, starving, freezing… School is safety, shelter, and home for many kids. It’s sad to think most will continue to be at home not getting the help they need.”
Did I hear any really reassuring advice? Not really. The takeaway, then, is that navigating unchartered territory is all of these: unsettling, vacillating, unnerving, terrifying, hopeful, necessary, and inevitable. We are writing this story, together, as we go along. The best we can do then is to trust that others are arming themselves with as much information as possible and will live in such a way as to do no intentional harm.
While Coronavirus has woken us up in terms of helping us appreciate our prior freedoms (to travel, to go to school, to mingle with friends, to attend concerts), that loss of innocence has hopefully helped us grow. School districts, judging by the amount of work that goes into reopening under state guidelines, have been working tirelessly to create a plan of action. Parents are proactive and creative in imagining a new routine. Through the loss of hundreds of thousands of lives around the globe, the best we can hope for is that we have gained insight about our interdependency: we are all truly in this together.
Some of us, though, want to go back to that innocent time, when we could get excited about backpacks and sneakers and lacrosse games. Maybe not return to “normal” but get as close to it as possible in the midst of a pandemic as we can. Kellie, a healthcare professional from Florida, has daily interaction with the Coronavirus and she is hoping her kids can go back to school soon. “This virus isn’t going away,” she says pragmatically. “We all need to get back to some sense of normalcy. Practicing safe reintegration is essential. We are all going to be okay. I know I’m biased because two of mine [tested positive] and were essentially fine. I treat [COVID] patients every day – and I’m fine.”
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