by Mauve Maude
December 9, 2020
It’s the worst the pandemic has ever been, I’m in one of the states with the worst numbers and the most resistance to public health measures, where education isn’t the highest priority even in the best of times, and I just signed up my last remaining virtual learner to return to in-person learning, effective yesterday. And I feel great–and terrified.
I should say that my children’s small(to mid)-town schools, like many, have done a better-than-expected job of keeping cases low, and evidently not spreading within the campuses themselves as we’d feared. For the first three months of the school year, my elementary schooler’s campus saw only one off-campus case, and attendance was up from normal years, because kids weren’t even catching colds, thanks to the coronavirus measures. I can’t say that’s the case anymore, even on that exemplary campus. It seems inevitable, really, that the spread will catch up, through the off-campus contacts of anybody involved, odds which I don’t trust. Risk is there. So I’m glad there are only a few more days before the holiday break, wherein we can just stay home and count the days on symptom watch. What January will look like, I don’t know.
All I know is what my children have endured in a pretty decent situation–which is the equivalent of half to three quarters of a school year (one held out longer than the other) trying to learn at home through screens, each ending up depressed and failing at least one subject before returning, when they’ve both always loved and excelled in school. My eldest, who skipped a grade in elementary school, is now hoping, in one of her classes, to barely pass the term. And all of that happened with me at home and mostly available to help them. That’s a far better situation than many families across the country are in, and it’s been pretty terrible. It’s been frustrating, to say the least, to see so little done in such an important arena–to see schools “virtually” unsupported through this ordeal–and to see working mothers, including myself, hit so hard.
So I must say how hugely refreshing it is to hear President-elect Joe Biden’s plans to prioritize education (children and their educators) in his coronavirus response, and in doing so, to support America’s working parents, the ones who keep our economy alive. This includes pushing educators closer to the front of the line for vaccines. Considering the future First Lady is an educator, this is not surprising, and I’m eager to hear more details. The pandemic, for me, fortunately, has resulted in a very positive career change. I am training to go into the education field myself, hoping to start by supporting our exhausted local teachers as early as January. That’s what I want January to look like. So I will hold out my arm for a vaccine as soon as they will give me one, so I can safely move on with my life. This is very, very good news for me.
But not to be forgotten, in the next year, I’m clearly walking into some major challenges left in America’s educational system, in the wake of this pandemic. I will certainly, above all, need my health. We all will.