IN THE RUSH TO NORMAL, WE CAN’T LEAVE THE KIDS BEHIND

Along with birthdays and anniversaries, our calendars are filled with special days, weeks and months, many designated by presidential proclamation. These observances raise awareness of an issue, commemorate an event, or celebrate ethnic and historically marginalized groups.

March is Women’s History Month. It’s also National Colon Cancer Awareness Month and Irish American Heritage Month, coinciding with St. Patrick’s Day.

I wonder if down the road, March will become COVID-19 Remembrance Month. It’s when we mark the anniversary of the World Health Organization’s pandemic declaration (March 11); President Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration (March 13); and California’s issuance of a statewide stay-at-home order, the first in the U.S. (March 19).

In a country where we can’t seem to agree much about anything, we are united in our zeal to get back to life as we knew it, PRE-COVID. So, it’s not surprising that roughly 2.5 million weddings are expected to happen this year, according to the Wedding Report, the most since 1984.

While we are all taking strides to regain some semblance of normalcy, our school-aged kids are stumbling. Just think about it: A child who completed third grade in 2020 returned to school last fall as a sixth-grader. There’s a lot of social-emotional learning (SEL) that happens during those years.

SEL is considered an integral part of education and human development. The term was first introduced by the Collaborative for Academic, Social and Emotional Learning nearly 30 years ago. Through SEL, children acquire and apply knowledge, skills and attitudes to develop healthy identities; manage emotions and achieve personal and collective goals; and feel and show empathy for others.

While the academic losses attributable to the pandemic are very real and heartbreaking — especially among kids in underresourced communities — the SEL losses seem even more concerning. Not long ago, I heard from the principal at a local middle school who is nearly overwhelmed by the behavioral issues she’s seeing. With so many classroom disruptions, teaching and learning can’t keep pace with grade-level requirements.

At the National Conflict Resolution Center, we have been working in schools for nearly 15 years, tackling what’s known as the school-to-prison pipeline.

We are helping school districts transform their cultures and adopt restorative, rather than punitive, approaches to student discipline. But rather than system building, our team is on the front line, assisting teachers and administrators exhausted by the chaos. At the same time, we have seen a significant increase in referrals to our diversion program that keeps youth out of the criminal justice system, when harm is caused.

I’m not suggesting that we should have done things differently, as far as remote schooling is concerned. Faced with this situation again — with our public health at stake — we would make the same decision, even knowing the unfortunate (and unintended) consequences.

Certainly, the predicament was made worse by the personal loss that so many children have suffered. A study in the journal Pediatrics found that 1 out of 500 children in the U.S. have been orphaned or lost a grandparent caregiver due to COVID; children of racial and ethnic minorities have been disproportionately affected.

The impact of that type of loss on a child’s social-emotional development seems immeasurable.

It speaks to the urgent need for programming and services to help our kids, who may otherwise face lifelong deficits. In December, California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond announced a plan to recruit 10,000 new mental health clinicians to work with California students. Thurmond cited the alarming increases in depression, anxiety and general distress among students during the pandemic — issues that appear to be persisting in our post-pandemic world.

I also wonder and worry about the children who have disappeared. At the peak, an estimated 3 million children didn’t show up for remote learning and were unaccounted for. Thousands of them never logged on or reappeared when classrooms reopened in the fall. What are the prospects for their social-emotional learning?

The last of the federal mask mandates — requiring travelers to mask up on airplanes, trains and buses — is set to expire on April 18. With the most visible and contentious symbol of COVID going away, we can’t forget what’s most important: the wellbeing of our kids.