School With A Side of Pandemic

I feel like such a hypocrite.

Since March, I've been talking, telling, and pleading that the coronavirus is real, with serious consequences. I told my friends, family, and strangers on the internet that we must take steps to slow or stop the spread. Stay in when you can. Keep your social distance. Wear your mask. Our most important task right now is to reducing the number of people who face death or long-term health complications from this pernicious virus.

Now it's nearly September, and I'm voluntarily sending my children back to school in person.  

Sure, whatever. This seems smart.

We were left floundering when schools first shut down in the spring, just like most other families. Distance learning did not go well for us. Twice a week, I sat my son down in front of a Zoom meeting and spent the next 45 minutes telling him sit still, stop making faces, no one wants to see the inside of your nose, quite playing with your pencil, unmute yourself, don't work ahead of your teacher, FOR GOD'S SAKE PAY ATTENTION. I had to park him at the kitchen table where I could supervise, but that meant the 4-year-old couldn't play with her toys or watch TV because it was a distraction. So I put her in my home office with a snack and some YouTube. 

The whole thing was an exercise in bad parenting -- ignoring one kid so I could snarl through my teeth at the other. It was a relief to everyone to turn off the computer at the end of those meetings (probably the teacher too). He still cried after the last Zoom of the school year. 

Spoiler: they're both poisoned.

Both of kids are fortunate to attend a small private school that we love and they love, and they really want to go back. They long to play with friends and absorb new information -- two things that kids are built to do. 

Our options this fall are full-time in person, or full-time online with teachers who are concurrently teaching in person. As in a six or seven hour Zoom meeting every day, five days a week, in a school uniform. In what world is that realistic for a 7-year-old, especially mine? Under what other circumstances would an educator, parent, or doctor recommend that much sitting-down screen time? Part of the reason we chose this school was because it incorporates movement, multiple recess breaks, rotating learning stations, and interactive education. That is exactly the opposite of Zoom learning. 

So my husband and I hashed it out. What would our days look like if we kept them home from elementary school and preschool, to do distance learning for one and homeschooling for the other? What would it feel like to have the Zoom meetings from spring, times a thousand? How would we supervise the 7-year-old while also giving the 4-year-old something to do? And who would find those time-filling activities which would also teach her the pre-kindergarten skills she needed to hit the ground running next year? All while my husband works 40 hours a week at his job and I work 10-15 hours a week from home? 

Round and round we talked about these two bad options. The costs, the benefits, the risks, the statistics. 

I worked myself into knots that rum and Coke couldn't loosen. I took anxiety medication I hadn't needed in months. And still the only answer I could see was the impossibility of keeping the kids here without creating an atmosphere of endless anger and frustration that would last as long as we tried to educate at home. I am not capable of being wife, mom, teacher, disciplinarian, and employee simultaneously for extended periods of time without suffering tremendously under all that weight. And making those around me suffer too, whether I want to or not.

I grew up in a subtly toxic atmosphere, like a house flooded with carbon dioxide you didn't know was there until you were already poisoned. I refuse to force my kids into that house too. 

 

This week I electronically signed the form indicating we're going to send them both to school in person. While I still think it is the best of two bad choices, hitting that submit button came with crushing guilt. Because of my personal failing at not being able to pull it off at home -- not having the patience, skillset, willpower, or selflessness -- I am sending my precious children into a Petri dish and telling them to have a good day.

While cleaning his room, my son found a blue camo gaiter mask left over from a Nerf gun party ages ago. He trotted downstairs calling, "Hey, Momma! I thought I could wear this to school for my mask!" My heart cracked with pride at his complete acceptance of this safety precaution, and with pain that this is his current reality. Second grade with a side of pandemic. 

Lord, help us all.