Is this the best we can do?
Something is missing in year without traditional school
Nat, our daughter, mother of two, is multitasking these days. Our youngest grandson has his school desk right next to hers in a sunny nook where she has been working from home since March.
March. It seems a million years away in many respects. It also marks the moment when the tables of how Americans have learned and worked for decades got completely turned and wildly upended. The resulting chaos was palpable. The fear that followed was visceral. The loss of loved ones — nearly 65% of those living in Massachusetts dependent on assisted care and living in nursing homes — was raw and still is.
That was the beginning.
The models predicting upwards of 2.4 million dead in the United States alone scared the life out of us. Many of us were frozen with fear, stuck in our tracks. And as a whole, we’d made some serious economic tracks in the last few years as a country. Suddenly, we began locking down many sectors of crucial life. Schools canceled overnight, hospitals clambered, corporations closed offices and sent many employees to work indefinitely from home. We all lived what seemed like a drill.
But it wasn’t a drill. It was the real thing. And we were rightfully scared because we knew very little.
Now, thankfully, we know much more. Therapeutics are working. Vaccines are in trials. We have a much better handle on it.
But through it all, many families continue to juggle work and school. Many people remain out of work and many businesses struggle to keep afloat. Health experts are cautioning the harm from the ripples of so many COVID-19 closures. It has been a month or so since our children have started back to school in all the various modes and, so far, fingers crossed, it’s status quo.
My daughter says she’s managing by multitasking.
It’s not as effective as she’d like, but she says there’s really no other option right now, “so we deal and we figure it out.”
She’s working full time and fully remote with a full plate of responsibilities to manage.
Our grandsons are in public elementary and middle schools. Collin attends seventh grade by way of hybrid schooling, which has him in school two days a week and doing lessons at home the rest of the time. Sometimes he FaceTimes me for support. He and his best friend are in separate pods, so they don’t get to be in school together. His cousins — Robert, who’s a sixth-grader, and Steven, who’s in second grade — have another arrangement that alternates one week in school from 9 a.m. to noon, continuing studies from home in the afternoons, with one week of distance learning.
My son’s fiancé, who is a first-grade teacher, reports every day to a real, live classroom of students with precautions like masks in place.
Some families I’ve spoken with in western Massachusetts are completely remote until further notice.
We must not let fear rule the day, and we must think about this virus in terms of our healthy populations, like our children. I said this months ago, and I still believe it: Our children need to be in their schools for their health and well-being.
The recently released
Great Barrington Declaration begins with the statement, “As infectious disease epidemiologists and public health scientists, we have grave concerns about the damaging physical and mental-health impacts of the prevailing COVID-19 policies, and recommend an approach we call Focused Protection.”
The signers of this declaration are concerned about the damage being done to our
It will be interesting to see just how the current multiple approaches to students and their education will impact American families, particularly our developing American children, for years to come.
healthy populations, and rightly so. Read more here: https://gbdeclaration.org.
It will be interesting to see just how the current multiple approaches to students and their education will impact American families, particularly our developing American children, for years to come. My guess is that the research will not show a favorable account when it comes to the drastic shutdowns of these last few months, particularly when it comes to assessing our children’s health, well-being and academic development.
I harken back to a baby-boomer friend suggesting months ago and quite glibly over indefinite school closings, “I would’ve loved a year off from school. I don’t think it will do any real harm.”
But we’re not talking about a gap year between high school and college. We’re talking about young learners who are developing rapidly and who are downloading a ton of experiences. Experiences translated into valuable learned information that will set the foundation for crucial future skills and knowledge to build upon. For character to grow and develop through lived experience and extended relationships.
Many levels of learning happen between teachers, coaches, staff and their respective students and, as well, between kids themselves. These interactions, in real time, in real places, bolster the child’s framework of reference and therefore helps him to achieve success in many areas — socially, academically and, to some extents, culturally.
But the culture is changing. With too much emphasis on caution and risk aversion, we throw the balance of achievement off when it heavily weighs caution over innovation. Our kids need to know that they can face challenges and win.
Thank God, my daughter and my son, both parents, see life in a winning light. I want my grandkids to understand that great things can happen when we take the first steps. Of course, there’s risk.
There will always be some degree of risk in anything we do. Remember, Collin broke his nose when he tried a new flip. We figured out how to go to the moon, and now we’re headed for Mars. I want our children to realize that they can reach for the stars. They can’t see those stars when they’re hiding indoors.
But if we continue to place COVID-19 fears before regular health care, we’re going to lose. We mustn’t let the coronavirus preempt necessary immunizations, dentist visits and cancer screenings. If we put unnecessary fear before our children’s best access to education, we lose. If we let COVID-19 rule over common sense, we lose. The data show that more than 95% who become infected will survive. That’s pretty good odds.
The coronavirus is not a death sentence for everyone. Yet when we hide in our homes, many of our businesses shuttered, our kids kept from the true wonder that happens inside their handson brick-and-mortar classrooms, I wonder if it has become a kind of death sentence, because it keeps us all from living right here, right now, and that is no good for anyone.
With too much emphasis on caution and risk aversion, we throw the balance of achievement off when it heavily weighs caution over innovation. Our kids need to know that they can face challenges and win.