Nerves, joy on day 1
In-person school restarts for nearly 1 million kids
As students at Brookln’s Middle School 50 filed into in-person classes for the first day of school Monday, one sixth-grader was paralyzed with fear — overwhelmed by the anxiety of starting a new school during an ongoing pandemic.
The girl stopped in her tracks in a hallway, telling school officials that she needed another day to start classes.
But after Assistant Principal Jason Warren walked her to her classroom door and showed that her classmates were nervous, too, the student decided to give it a shot.
“She hasn’t been in school, and in her mind frame, everyone knew each other,” Warren recalled.
“Once she saw we’re all in the same boat, she was OK.”
Educators across the city Monday dug deep to soothe frayed nerves and answer lingering questions as nearly 1 million students were expected to report back to school buildings for the first time since March 2020.
The day brought a potent mix of excitement and anxiety for families eager to restart in-person classes, but still concerned about the coronavirus delta variant.
“I’m looking forward to it,” said Kimberly Lopez, the mother of a seventh-grader at MS 50 who has been fully remote since March 2020.
“But with the new delta variant going around, of course I have my concerns about how kids her age are going to be impacted,” added Lopez, whose 11-year-old daughter is still too young to get vaccinated.
MS 50 students wore the mixed emotions on their sleeves, staffers said. “I feel it when they approach the building, in their body language,” said Louis Lopez, a dean at the middle school.
One staffer described a student who asked to keep their hat on during the school day because it made them feel safe.
Many of the worries had little to do with COVID-19, but instead the typical social and emotional stress of middle school.
“I thought I was going to get lost because I’m so small,” said a sixth-grader named Lailonie.
Teachers eased her concern with a tour through the building.
Other middle-schoolers nervously anticipated meeting classmates they’d only known online.
“It’s kind of different because I’m only used to seeing their faces onscreen,” said a seventh-grader named Sophia.
“Their whole bodies are different, and it’s like, Oh, I didn’t imagine you looking like that.”
The day started with a logistical hiccup as the city’s website for mandatory health screenings for students temporarily crashed because of a traffic overload.
A line of kids clad in masks and bright blue school uniforms stretched down the block as families filled out paper copies of the health screener.
But the routines of school in a pandemic — including masks at all times, desks spaced 3 feet apart and lunch in the schoolyard for some kids — soon set in.
“They’re just complete troupers” about the masks, said Principal Ben Honoroff.
School staff did their best to liven up the return to class, playing music like Shakira’s “Hips Don’t Lie” as students filed in and unveiling a colorful new mural at the entrance.
But reminders of the pandemic were never far away.
While the school didn’t get any reports of active cases among students or staff, Honoroff got two calls from families who kept their kids home Monday after they tested positive for the virus. The parents asked how long their kids should quarantine — 10 days.
The city’s policy mandates that unvaccinated students quarantine at home if a classmate they shared a room with tests positive for the virus.
As of early Monday afternoon, the city’s “Situation Room” for tracking school virus cases hadn’t yet reported the number of confirmed cases.
Honoroff has been nervous about how he’ll keep teaching kids assigned to home isolation while staff remain in school with their vaccinated students — eventually settling on a plan to hire long-term substitute teachers skilled in remote teaching to supplement online instruction during quarantine.
As the day wore on, some of the nerves from the morning dissipated and middle-schoolers began to loosen up.
“As each period goes on, it will get a little louder,” said Warren, the assistant principal.
During lunch, a group of sixth-graders sprawled out on the school’s artificial turf, able to drop their masks temporarily as they ate and caught up with elementary school friends they hadn’t seen in months.
“It feels nice to go back to socializing,” said a sixth-grader named Paul.
“I can actually express myself.”