Tuesday, March 16, 2021

Back to School

                Last Friday, the governor commanded all teachers back to buildings by April 19th, ordering all schools to make 30% of learning available in-person. I am so ready.

               When I visited my sister on Saturday, she told me her daughter had become lazy and wasn’t putting in the work or previous concentration; I told her as a teacher, I’ve seen so many students--both those with resource issues and those resource-rich and reliably prompt--fall through a motivation and spirit hole: what looks like laziness to a parent is not laziness.

               Maisie’s unexpected response to the return was distress. Her first joy in school has always been gathering with friends and the energy of interactions; but now she says there are people to whom she just does not want to return, online presences and tensions she does not want to see made live. It deflated me.

               And then I read an opinion piece written by a 12th grader in Virginia, who described students split alphabetically and sent in shifts and divided still smaller because many stayed home, and he described how his teacher made all his eye-contact with a laptop rather than the live students behind the screen, and he portrayed lunchtime as students separated on green dots and scolded for their aerosol vectors when they tried to talk. This led to a third, more tentative response in me.

               My students, meanwhile, are largely apprehensive about going back. They don’t trust their peers or teachers and they don’t trust our school to keep their families safe. A student gymnast described football players huddled together, talking loudly and poorly masked, and one of our staff stepping into the gymnastics gym and pulling down his mask to yell.

               I can’t blame students for their reticence. But it’s still true that something needs to be different. Yesterday, I checked in with my classes--How are you feeling about the return-to-school order; how are you doing; how are you feeling about the workload in this class? One of my brilliant and normally energetic students has been down for a while. She admitted as much again. And when I sang “Older” in celebration of her birthday occurring later this week, she looked away. After class, she stayed behind for a logistics question, after which, I tried to condole with her, and said something about Wednesday being “your birthday, damn it!” She started weeping. After school, I wrote a birthday card all appreciations and celebrations, biked to the store for chocolate bars, rode them six miles to her house, and knocked on the door to her mother who disappeared very fast to get her daughter, who then stood in front of me awkwardly, crying again, as I said, I just wanted to wish you a happy birthday, and I needed to see your face, and she thanked me, eyes wet, waiting for me to leave.

               Something needs to be different.

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