Back to school

I post this from a future that some of you are not yet experiencing: a future where children are back in school. Finland’s kids returned to school on May 14th! That morning, when I walked Sterling to preschool, I heard an unfamiliar sound and stopped in my tracks. The sound was groups of children talking and laughing. It had been so long since I’d heard it! It warmed my heart to see kids playing together again.

It’s not quite business as usual, though. There are quite a few rules in place to keep kids and teachers as safe from infection as possible. The students stay in one desk for all classes, rather than moving around to different rooms, and the teachers come to them. Lunches are in smaller groups than before, with staggered seating. PE lessons can’t use shared equipment. And so on. I have seen similar lists of rules for the proposed opening of schools in the US and some people were labeling them as ‘tyranny’, which…ok? It’s not ideal, but nothing about this pandemic is ideal. Schools being open again feels like society healing, just a little bit, and if that means sitting kitty-corner from your friend at lunch, then that’s fine with me.

My anxiety level is up a bit, though. There were a few weeks there in the middle of the lockdown period where our home felt like an extremely safe refuge from germs. There was just nowhere they would have come from since we weren’t going anywhere. Now that the kids are back in school, we’ve increased the handwashing and sanitizing to the level it was back in March.

A month or two ago, there seemed to be hope that when the schools opened again, it would mean we’d gotten through this pandemic intact. Instead, the pandemic is still very much going on, but the kids are going to school anyway. And for now, I think that’s how it should be. Keeping kids out of school was just the cruelest thing. I know the comparison I’m about to make is extremely inapt but I am going to do it anyway. When I read Logavina Street about the siege of Sarajevo and learned how at various periods during the siege - very tenuous, dangerous periods - the kids still went to school, I thought it was bonkers. Just keep them home until things get better, right?

But now I feel like I understand that just a little bit better than before. Kids being in school means so much. It means society has agreed to let the kids have this one thing, even if it means the rest of us sacrificing our own freedom of movement. It means we take a little bit of a risk but hope for an academic and social and emotional and practical payoff. It means sharing the burden of caring for and nurturing these children - a burden which is heaviest during times of stress and uncertainty. It means someone else’s eyes on my kids, and warm, shared meals in their tummies, and a richer, more equal learning experience. It means we have a shred of normalcy in lives that have changed so much since February.

So it’s not all smiles and sunshine, and I feel a little bit nervous every morning that I send them off to school, but it also feels like the right thing to do.