Ice Storms and Happy Faces

Our perspectives about schools and the pandemic are shaped by own experiences.

Feb 04, 2022

An ice storm is on its way, closing schools early and sending weather alerts through my cellphone. We’ll make a dash to the supermarket before the streets become an ice rink. As I type away in my office, the opening ceremonies for the Winter Olympics are on in the background. Smiling children sing in unison to distract us from the fact that China is a totalitarian government that squelches free speech and violates basic human rights. Between the ice, gloomy skies, and fakery on my television, things feel desperate indeed.

How bad are things really? Has our perspective become skewed towards the negative? Are we’re seeing the glass half full, when in truth, the glass is spilling over with an abundance of lemons, limes, and a double shot of tequila?

Before I took a mental-health break from twitter this week, the education geeks were disagreeing about the overall picture about schools. The full glass geeks said the schools were still plugging away, doing what they always do. Sure, some students — poor kids and kids with disabilities — are in a bad spot right now, but those subgroups always suffered, they say. The empty glass geeks pointed to surveys showing high levels of parental fears for their kids’ academic progress, high levels of misery with anyone who works or attends schools, and parents crying at school board meetings.

Since I have a kid in one of those traditionally and continually disadvantaged subgroups of students, I am more likely to see the system in the pooper. Unlike our neighbors, my kid didn’t have basketball practice and weekend games to keep him socialized during the pandemic. There are no after-school programs for kids like mine. Because his 18-21 program couldn’t get off the ground with covid restrictions, he currently spends up to seven hours a day in a windowless basement playing games on his cellphone and filling in meaningless worksheets. The kids in Newark and Cleveland are even worse conditions.

Last week, I talked about the fact that some people have coasted through the pandemic without a bump, while others are sliding on black ice. Perspectives are certainly colored by personal experiences. I’m sure that our experiences have shaped my views.

As this pandemic segues into an endemic, we will first have to convince people to relax their guard. That’s going to be a huge task, as I’m hearing stories about teacher taping masks to kids’ faces even now. In today’s New York Times, a Danish researcher wrote that we must make this transition now, before divisions become even more toxic. He wrote,

“As we tentatively approach the end of the crisis period of the pandemic, leaders need to help people put risk into perspective. If countries haven’t articulated how they will deal with pandemic trade-offs, they need to do so now. The longer it takes for the realization that the risk from Covid is lowering, the longer the crisis will last and the deeper the divides it will create.”

With a front row seat to our own school district’s mask wars, I know that this transition will be rough.

After we survive the civil war around Covid rules, we must address inequities in schools and elsewhere. And that fight will be even more ugly. I’ll ready to join Team Happy School, when I see real efforts to put resources into disadvantaged camps.

LINKS

I’ve been writing a lot lately. On the blog, “Will the Commuters Return?” “The Paperwork Queen”, and “Teaching Life Skill to Young Adults.”

I’ve gone from a full house to an empty house in a week. Jonah’s back at college and Steve’s in the office three days a week. I mean, it’s not really empty, because the autistic kid comes home at 3:00, and Jonah is driving home for the weekend. But, by COVID standards, it’s quiet in my house.

Laura McKenna's Apt. 11D

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