If You Send Your Child Back To School by Abigail Hope
This week New York City parents have to make a decision that could impact their families for the rest of their lives. By Friday they must let schools know if their children will be learning remotely or if they will follow the Department of Education’s hybrid model, where students will attend their schools two to three days a week and spend the rest of their time at home, learning remotely. Some parents have already decided: “safety first” dictates that they keep their children home. Some want their children to get out of the house, at least for part of the week, and will pick the hybrid model. And some are undecided. They don’t know what the hybrid model will look like or how safe it will be. How could they know? This model of teaching has been spun out of thin air with no input from them, their children, or their children’s teachers.
New York City schools are supposed to start on September 10th this year. If this were any other year teachers like me would be submerged in the deep end of our vacations. The kids would be, too. But 2020 is not like any other year. This is our Covid year, when from March through June New York and other Northeast states suffered terribly from the pandemic. We all lived through the overwhelmed hospitals and funeral homes, the shuttered businesses. We waited anxiously for our public schools to close down as one-by-one, private schools and colleges went dark before we finally switched to remote learning. At my school, students picked up the notebook computers we had finally acquired through hard-won grants so that everyone would have devices to work on. Teachers worked hard to stay in touch with our students, to give them the personal attention they needed, and to keep them learning. It wasn’t the same, but it was pretty good, in many cases. And, it was safe.
Yesterday I spent an hour in a staff meeting with our principal, hearing about the DOE’s plans for the upcoming school year, and another 90 minutes in a union meeting, discussing what has been ordained. So, why aren’t teachers and students relaxing now? Because in a little more than a month we will be back at school, at least on a part-time, “hybrid” basis. But hold on – isn’t that what everyone wants? Of course it is; we all look forward to the joyful, friendly moments that we miss about school. But it is all a fantasy. School will not magically return to pre-Covid times. Everything students miss about school will actually still be missing, and that will be especially apparent if we return to our brick and mortar buildings.
Entire communities will be risking their lives for a fantasy of “school” that doesn’t even exist anymore. When parents talk about why they want to send their children back to school, the majority respond that the children are missing the “social learning” or the “social experience.” They have a picture in their minds of a group of students sitting around a lunch table, sharing food, laughing, chattering. Maybe they reminisce about sharing a locker and leaving notes or snacks for their friend when they were in school. Or they think of serious students collaborating, or hotly debating the results of an experiment. Perhaps they think of a Socratic Seminar where ten students sit desk-to-desk in a circle, discussing current issues. Remember acting out a scene from Romeo and Juliet or A Raisin in the Sun with classmates? Maybe, like I did, your teacher even brought in costumes to share. I think of these scenarios, too, when I think of my happy days teaching, pre-Covid.
But none of these moments can happen in a school this year. It wouldn’t be safe. Instead, ten or twelve students will sit in rows separated six feet in all directions. This will be their “pod”, all day, every day in school. Teachers will stay away from all students and not be able to lean in close to see the work and have a quiet conversation. No materials or textbooks can be shared. If students collaborate on anything it will be a shared Google document. Students will stay at the same desks, in the same rooms, all day long. And as for the lessons, teachers have just learned that we will be expected to present a scripted curriculum, dictated by the DOE, one size fits all, everyone on the same page.
After-school activities must be with the same pod of 10-12 students. No PSAL sports. Definitely no live orchestra classes or school dances. How excited were you for your first school dance? This year’s crop of sixth-graders won’t have the chance to experience either dread or joy. This sounds rough but at least they’ll have lunch to break up the day and hang out with their pals, right? Wrong. Lunch will be eaten in the classroom, during an instructional period. So, no break during the entire day. Except maybe during the 3-4 minutes that their teachers are scurrying from class to class and they are unattended. What could possibly go wrong? Let’s just say that a percentage of class time and energy will be spent enforcing social distancing and safety protocols.
Of course, most of the students won’t be misbehaving. They’ll be scared. Scared of getting sick and maybe dying or giving Covid to someone else. Scared of seeing someone they care about: another student, a teacher, or a family member, get sick, suffer, and maybe die. Kids don’t learn so well when they’re scared. It has to do with the “fight-or-flight” part of the brain, which when activated, doesn’t let much else happen.
If I were a kid, I’d find the days of remote learning on the hybrid model a relief. I’d probably beg to switch to the all-remote option pretty swiftly. But nobody asked the students. And nobody asked the teachers. Did anyone tell the parents what hybrid instruction would really be like? No? Well, now you are hearing it from a teacher. September of 2020 is the brainchild of the bureaucrats. But you don’t have to consign your child to this. Remote learning has some issues but it is safe and for many students it will be a much more comfortable option.
I could go on, and talk about why the buildings are going to be unsafe, why the schools are giant petri dishes that could easily spark a super-spreader contagion, and surely will if we all go back. I could remind you about all the multi-generational households in our community, and how the youngest and the oldest (and most vulnerable) are often the closest. But we’ve already seen what happens in our close-knit communities. We’ve lost and seen the health of so many forever compromised. It isn’t worth it. Nothing is. But above all, what you fondly think of school just won’t exist this year. You’ll be sending your children off to a place that certainly doesn’t exist right now, and may never again exist in the same way it did pre-Covid. You will be risking their health and even their lives, as well as those of your entire community.
It isn’t worth it.