Good try everyone, but, no surprise, virtual platforms for education are hollow stand-ins for brick-and-board classroom learning. Who knew? Well, nearly every teaching professional from Walla Walla to Puyallup, that’s who. Now because target dates have been set and vaccination goals are being met, the process of getting students and teachers safely back into real classrooms is in the process of happening.
A lack of consensus over safety standards imposed a pause while all parties find a solution. The discussion among teachers, staff, parents, politicians, and epidemiologists did not produce an evenhanded verdict. Is it true that given sensible precautions and science-based guidelines (physical distancing, masking, hand washing, and increased ventilation with proper airflow) students can now take their seats and get down to face-to-face learning? Can that happen even before school employees and students receive vaccinations? If not, we have at least several more months to wait. If so, restarting in-person classrooms presents logistical problems because normal class spaces are not quite big enough for as many as 33 students, or whatever the number, to be separated by three-feet. Recommendations keep changing as the CDC improves its understanding of how the virus spreads..
Regardless, some creative shuffling needs to happen for students and teachers and staff to come together in real space and time. Asynchronous classes (in-person supplemented online)? 365-day school years? Classrooms in gyms and lunchrooms. Open air classes? Whatever the outcomes, the CDC and our governor consider educators to be essential workers and have shuffled them toward the front of the vaccine line. President Biden wants schools to go full throttle within his first one hundred days in office. That seems iffy given the complexity of the undertaking.
Patchwork schooling the past school year has taken a toll on students cognitively, physically, and psychologically. They have had a gap year. An inequity chasm widens between economic privileged students, many of whom are enrolled in private schools, and those from disadvantaged populations, especially among predominately marginalized Black, Hispanic, and Native American communities. By some estimates, three million children are not in school at all for various reasons ranging from homelessness to inconvenient internet connections to virtual learning indifference. Add more millions of students who suffer from mental, physical, or behavioral health issues and other insecurities exacerbated by being deprived of support services that education provides.
What is more crucial than the education of our children? Quality learning is borne from good teachers, not flatscreen avatars flipping through PowerPoint presentations, not virtual education, but real teachers in real classrooms.
The kiss my second grade teacher planted on my cheek after our class production of “Johnny Appleseed” changed me forever. In high school, I took classes from a teacher who laughed a lot and encouraged me to laugh with her. She said yes when other voices were fond of saying no.
Rather than “no child left behind,” coronavirus has left most children behind. It is a national emergency, so let’s invite students back to class as safely as humanly possible.