School Days, School Dazed…What’s Going On?

By Tom Anselm

About this time most years, the television, radio and mailboxes are flooded with ads for sales, sales and more sales. It is time to start equipping your rugrats for their return to the hallowed halls of academia. I said, most years.

But, as I don’t even have to tell you, this year ain’t like most years. Not by a long shot, pardner.
It’s the “New Normal” say the pundits. Heck, I have to say it’s the “New ABNORMAL.” Nothing we have done, surely in my time on this old earth, has prepared us for what has happened to our way of life. Not the wars we have lived through, the financial collapses, the attacks on our country almost 20 years ago (really… 20 YEARS AGO!!), the SARS, the MERS… nothing.
And now, after we had hoped things would have taken a turn for the better over the Summer, we are seeing a surge in the scourge, even to the point that it may be reaching our children.
All at the time when schools are a-fixin’ to reopen.
I offer up a special piece of prayer for all parents of school-age children. It has to be so incredibly hard for them to discern what the proper actions are for their kids. I know our own are struggling with this, for our grandkids.

And the children themselves?
Geez, when I was their age, all I worried about in terms of September was saying goodbye to the lazy days of summer, and whether or not I’d get that one teacher who everybody couldn’t stand. Or, as I got older, if that certain dark-haired girl would be in my class. Today, a kid has to consider the daily wearing of a mask, wonder if they will ever see their friends again, or negotiate an even scarier possibility that they may contract a serious illness. Simply by going back to school. Awful thing to consider.
To their credit, school boards, administrators and teachers have been laboring all summer, with guidance from lawyers, medical professionals, government entities in charge of community health and parents themselves, to wrangle with this very real threat, struggling with how to best provide their students and staff with a safe and valuable learning environment.Are two largest North County school districts are going to continue the virtual learning method that was required back when this all began at least for the first quarter of the calendar, and maybe for the first semester. Others schools are planning to return to the classroom, with significant accommodations such as masks, sanitizing stations, distancing, smaller groups, two days on/two days home, no movement in the halls, lunches in the classrooms and a myriad of smaller and larger adjustments.
Questions abound as to what to do for older teachers, substitutes (many of whom are retirees… ME!), volunteers, Fall sports… the list goes on and on. I feel a bit of their pain, remembering how difficult it was to return to schools in the Fall in “normal”times. Can’t even imagine the stress and sleepless nights, hours of research and hoping and praying and fretting that these planners have gone through. And then not knowing if any of it will even work! And the parents.
Wow. “I have to go back to work. How can I be sure they do their school work at home? So do I send my kid, if that is an option, into an uncertain world? Or do I keep them home, knowing how hard that was on them in the Spring, missing their friends, having to do everything online, their frustrations, their fears?
What about kids who have special needs? How have they also regressed in their development, to the point of chaos in some homes? Will we ever be able to make up the losses?” Ugh. What a world. What a mess.
I choose to believe this will be only temporary, all this “abnormalness.”
The history of these coronaviruses is that they last, at the most, two years. But then, is this one different? It was supposed to dissipate in the summer. Nope. It wasn’t hitting kids. It did. This was supposed to be the time of the Second Wave. Can’t have a Second Wave until you get over the First Wave, which we haven’t. So many unknowns. So many mysteries, still, after months of study.
About all can do is hope and pray, wear my mask, distance, keep safe.
Should be interesting this Fall. May The Big Educator in the Sky hold you all in the palm of his hand.

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