Same as it ever was: Virtual school is probably always going to be at least a temporary constant
Nobody much likes it. But we're going to have to deal with it anyway.
You may ask yourself, “Well, how did I get here?”…Oh, yeah. The pandemic y’all keep trying to pretend we’re not in.
This morning was not the morning I thought I would be having.
To quote Whitney, it’s not right, but it’s OK. Because that’s where we are now.
The way I’d planned it, my 8-year-old son would be back in his second grade classroom, where he has spent a total of one day so far in 2022. But he’s not, because he and his classmates are going virtual again this week, after half a year of mostly-smooth in-person learning. Nobody likes it. But nobody likes a deadly virus, either, so…
He was supposed to be back Monday, Jan. 3, but that got pushed to Jan. 5 so that staff could be tested for Covid because of crazy Omicron numbers, and then to Thursday because it snowed Monday. He did actually go back Thursday, but then it snowed again Friday, so that was at first declared a 2-hour delay, and then a straight-up snow day.
It should not have been surprising to anyone paying attention, or anyone familiar with John Lennon lyrics, that my plans didn’t come to fruition. Last night, as I was hoping there were any clean pairs of khaki school pants around that didn’t need ironing because I didn’t want to iron khaki school pants, we got a message: Enough people had tested positive for Covid on the one day they were actually in the building to trigger closing not only my kid’s school, but a third of those in our district.
And with that, it all changed. Rather than taking the kid to school and then getting a PCR test for myself (just routine!) before running for my 10K training and making a Target run, and then an Aldi trip to see what savings they got going on over there, I had to trundle said kid into the car to the testing place (they wound up testing him too, so that’s a win/win in a weird pandemic sense). Next, I had to do the “We aren’t even going to the LEGO section so don’t ask me!” spiel in Target, THEN head over to his school to get his books and computer so he can once again learn math and reading from my living room couch.
Just like last year.
We weren’t supposed to be back here, but then again we weren’t supposed to be having another surge worse than the last one. The vaccines were supposed to work better because we imagined more people were going to take it, and take masking seriously and not act like everything was better because they really really hoped it would be. But none of that happened, and we are where we are. Again, we don’t want to be. Parents want their kids back in in-person school, teachers know kids learn better that way, but none of that stops a virus from killing you.
I spoke to a lot of teachers for the Washington Post last fall who are so dedicated to teaching that they feel guilty for not being able to give their students everything they need in this terrible time. So they left to at least maintain their own mental and physical health.
They didn’t want it that way. Nobody did. We all wanted things to be better by now and they’re not. Well, actually, in some ways they are, in that this time last year nearly no one had gotten the vaccine and now more of us, including kids, have, which at least should stop us from having to be hospitalized or die, although admittedly Long Covid is still a concern that we’re constantly learning about, and the symptoms change so much with each variant to include things that seemed unrelated before that I fully expect the CDC to be like “Do you crave cake and laugh at Looney Tunes cartoons? NEW SYMPTOM!”
I have every reason to believe that the kids won’t stay remote for the rest of the year, but that they might sometimes, when they have to. And they might have to. Already, I know that we are better equipped as a family to handle this, because we’ve done it. Also, my son, who spent his first grade year as a student of a school whose building he’d never been inside because we’d just moved back here, has connections now. Those bright faces on the screen tomorrow will be his friends, people who knows.
And I will adjust my day accordingly, because I am privileged to be able to work from home and have family support, a thing so many parents don’t have. I am grateful. This will not break me, and I don’t have a lot to complain about. I’ll run tomorrow before my son gets up. I’ll do my Aldi run while he’s in school and my mom will watch him do math on the couch. We will get through this week, and maybe after spring break we will have to do it again. It will probably not be once in a lifetime. It might not even be once in a month.
But we’ll figure it out. We will pivot. Our kids, their teachers, and our communities require it.
What other choice do we have?
No virtual schooling in Florida -- unless you chose it as a permanent option through Florida Virtual or a charter school. It is illegal.