On Thursday, April 23, as we wrapped the third week of “distance learning” in our house, Gov. Tim Walz announced that schools would be closed for the remainder of the school year. That was a surprise to no one. While Minnesota has “flattened the curve,” the number of COVID-19 cases continue to rise along with the death total. (As of today, Monday, May 4, there have been 7,234 positive tests and 428 deaths in the state. Nationally, nearly 1.2 million cases and more than 68,000 deaths. Thursday, April 30, Gov. Walz announced that the Stay At Home Order will continue anther two weeks to May 18.)
It’s a baffling situation, even if one agrees fully (which we do) with the decision and declaration. Baffling because we haven’t been through anything like this before. Baffling because, while there still is school, it’s shift to the “virtual” was an abrupt halt to a ritual that has gone on largely uninterrupted for everyone in this country for about a century. There are other school rituals that won’t happen. I have a niece who is a senior in high school. There will be no ceremony, of course. She committed to a college, but, who knows if her freshman year will even start. What about those college seniors wrapping up degrees, some of them highly technical or lab-oriented? These are all questions that will be answered, we just need now to be vigilant and stay at home as much as possible. We will endure our isolations with our in-school and in-home offspring. In a few weeks we will stumble into summer breaks, a now-borderless crossing if not for the warming weather and sprouting greenery.
For us, with a first-grader, thanks to the organizational skills of her teachers, there isn’t much to complain about beyond the unusual situation itself. The teachers are working hard to manage a crisis no one has managed before, and we, as rational people, recognize that fact.
But, there was something to note on the home front. During week three, our daughter’s teacher hosted a voluntary Zoom meeting for the three first-grade classes, the purpose of which was a story reading, Der Regenbogenfisch (The Rainbow Fish—our kid goes to a German immersion charter school in our neighborhood). When the meeting got going, her teacher was reading the book and holding the pages toward the class to show the artwork, as teachers do. I saw this, and tapped my iPad screen to switch the setting from “gallery” to focus the speaking individual, so teacher and book would fill the screen. I went back into the kitchen to continue getting lunch together. When I returned with food, my daughter had the screen back to gallery mode (she’s knows Zoom as well as I do). “Don’t you want to see the book?” I asked (the microphone was muted).
“I want to see my friend _____ and the other kids,” my daughter said.
“Oh,” I nodded. Of course she does. It just goes to show how important even these Zoom gatherings are to kids, especially the youngsters in the early elementary years. Those faces and bouncing personalities have already formed a remarkable bond. And, frankly, in our case, with our daughter being an only child, we need to seek out child interaction whenever possible.
That’s more important now in isolation, and we need to dig deep and remember how it was to be a child and act accordingly when it’s time to, say, get down on the floor with Matchbox cars, Legos and dolls Mary Poppins, Anna, Elsa and Moana. Our daughter’s quick reset of the Zoom meeting to gallery format was another “duh” moment for me.
• • •
Aside from walks through the neighborhood, we’ve been together in our house since March 9. It was my wife’s Spring Break (she’s a teacher and we thought we might go see a movie (or two) and some do some other things kid-free. At that time, we were hearing more about the pandemic, and it was dawning on us that things might turn quickly given the rapidly devolving situation in Italy, and the careless dismissals from our orange-tinged leader in Washington DC.
Lucky us, our daughter got sick that week, which turned out to be strep (thankfully!). So, we stayed home with her, aside from the occasional individual escape. Her school conferences were that Thursday, which we made it to. We talked with her teacher about what might happen with classes and the pandemic. I was impressed that the school was already having meetings about possible “distance learning” efforts. After, we went to one of our standbys, D’Amico & Sons. The daughter gets her pasta of choice, a bowl of fruit and her favorite gelato (cotton candy) for dessert. I get my bottomless glass of wine. All was good. We didn’t realize that would be our last meal out.
That Sunday, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz ordered Minnesota’s schools closed by Wednesday, March 18. My daughter’s school took the added step to ask via email that parents who could keep kids home on Monday to do so. (Which was the smart call. In email exchanges I voiced concern about parents and families returning from week-long breaks out of the country or from cruises.)
Overall, because we have but one child and she’s only a first grader, we’ve gotten into a groove—a wide groove. My wife, a teacher, has her job to do from home. My work as a consultant, while not dead, has withered significantly. This financial hit isn’t fatal for us in the near term, fortunately, and the added time in my schedule allows me to step in as primary “teacher” for however long this lasts.
While that wide groove has been found, it’s nonetheless a meandering one and some days are more successful than others. From the outset, I’ve stuck to the lessons those great teachers provided and, importantly, to the general guidelines set out by the school. Among those guidelines is that actual sit-down, school-work time for a first grader is about two hours.
Yep. Two hours. Think about it. Between lunches and recess, time moving to gym and specialist classes (art, music, etc.), actual hit-the-books work is limited. The learning at this age is more interactive and play-oriented.
We do the work. She starts the day with math. I don’t even have to ask (she likes math). Take a quick break. We move on to the German, which is based on the vocabulary for the week (some of the words last week: der Jäger (hunter), jagen (to hunt), der Junge (boy) junge (young) see the pattern?). I put on some stories from German websites and YouTube videos recommended by the teachers (or by the teachers themselves) that enhance the lesson, and they usually cross over into science and other subjects. I do this often while one arm holds a tug-toy being yanked mercilessly by an indefatigable and vocal 15-month-old Doberman. Break. We walk that Doberman through the neighborhood streets, or if the lake paths aren’t crowded, down there, bringing our masks to put on if needed. I shoot old film cameras, so my daughter brings an indestructible digital we bought for her and we do a photographic scavenger hunt of some kind, or she might ride her bike. Back for lunch. Another hour of school work or an art project. Ideally, we’re done by 1 p.m. Over five hours with me, its about three hours, tops, of formal “school work” within that five hours.
I take the school’s word that’s enough “school” for a day—they are the experts. I am helped because I like to think there’s a lot of what I’ll call “casual education” in our house. We’re readers, and our television is never on during the day. At seven years old, she has very little screen time, and we have studiously avoided getting her into habits with a smartphone or tablet of any kind, aside from looking at some photos or something from, say, National Geographic. We don’t want her developing a taste for scrolling or gaming at this age.
Due in large part to our habits she’s more interested in her books, reading, using her imagination playing with dolls, cars, drawing or painting.
I also don’t mean to make it sound like we have it figured out, or that it’s easy. We don’t, and it’s not. She can be as big a jerk as any kid, and we, as parents, certainly have our flawed moments.
Further, it’s a coin flip if my daughter and I wrap “school” by my goal of 1 p.m. As mentioned above, there are days it’s a struggle, and on those days, while I do keep things moving along, I don’t push too hard. Shortcomings? Yes. I admitted to her teacher that, because of our avoidance of “screen time” for her, I lacked the instinct to utilize the links they included for videos and episodes of, as it turns out, very worthwhile German programming for children. On the behavioral front, as we closed out a month of “distance learning,” we’re starting to see our daughter acting out a bit against us, which is understandable. She has not played with another child in seven weeks, and we, her parents, are controlling not just her home life, but, as a consequence of the pandemic, her school life and social life. She feels she has no control over anything, even with whom she plays. It’s us or the dog. We are complete overlords. Benevolent overlords, but overlords nonetheless.
To counter that, we’ve been honest about the virus, the disease it causes and the consequence—which is isolation. She gets it (to the point where she called out her grandparents, Trumpers both, who winter in Arizona and were ignoring social distancing). I used the school’s daily email attendance policy with her as the start of the day, which helped focus her (now the school has turned to weekly check-in, adapting to parent complaints). When she rolls her eyes on occasion, I remind her casually: “Do you give Frau ____ that look at school?”
“No.”
“Who is your teacher now?”
“You.”
“We’re doing this at home now because we have to, not because we want to, right?”
“Right.”
“Let’s get through this and then we have fun.”
That mostly works. We muddle through. My wife, when she’s done with her work, will practice violin with her to prep for the once-a-week Zoom lesson with the instructor through school. That is going very well. And we do make a point of having that “fun” when goals are accomplished, as tired as we might be.
All that said, we, like all parents, are concerned for her and her childhood the longer this lasts.
• • •
As we get mopey about our pandemic lifestyle, perspective is important. What has worked out OK for us is unique. Most other families who lose an income find themselves in dire straits quickly. Many families have lost two incomes. Some families have both parents working from home, thus “distance learning” is difficult, if not impossible (I’ve read many a melt-down story, which sometimes results in schooling surrender). Further, the fact that we have only one child makes it easier, to be sure. (Our neighbors have three kids, one at each school level. The father is an essential worker who manages a large grocery store and, at the beginning of this episode, worked six days per week.)
Then there is the fact that many rural areas have limited broad-band Internet access to conduct distance learning. I spoke with a neighbor whose sister works as a teacher in northern Minnesota near the Canadian border. Several of her students have no computer at home, thus she prints out lesson plans and drops them off on the porches of homes. Many inner-city families have multiple challenges with poverty, working or absent parents and, with school closures, access to regular meals.
I’ve heard people say the Coronavirus and Covid-19, because it strikes everyone, has brought a certain equality to society. It certainly has not. The rich fare much better, as do white people generally. The virus has done much to expose inherent and systematic inequality. If any good comes out of this, it will be the need to address this inequality is no longer debatable.
There is hope to come from this experience in “distance learning.” Last month, the Parent Council (of which I am a member) for my kid’s school held its monthly meeting via Zoom. Joining that meeting was the school’s director of teaching and learning. He’s a veteran teacher and administrator, who has been an educator in many different countries over three decades. He offered some perspective that I found helpful. “Kids are resilient,” he said, confidently. He recalled his experience with kids in war-ravaged countries who, for obvious reasons, fell behind academically. “They caught up,” he said.
The education gaps, he added, are to be expected and similar conversations are happening in Germany (his home country) and countries across the globe. “It’s not going to be a semester project (to catch kids up),” he said. “It might be a two-year observation process (to see the areas where shortcomings exist). … Our staff is totally up to it.”
That applies, thankfully, to all educators, who get into the profession to teach the next generation of professionals that will keep civilization moving along. They will, with our help as parents, get our kids to where they need to be. The world’s educators are having the same conversations. This period of history will be recognized, and together everyone will fill in the gaps.
