Free as a bird - the kids are back in school!
The right time to go back to school is - it depends. I advocate working collectively in our districts, communities, and individual schools to weigh all the factors. For our family, we chose to send the kids back to school and outside child care recently for the mental health gain. It’s been our best choice.
Luna after a day at preschool happily singing “I’m free as a bird.”
Our ten-year old went back to the school building in December. She is in a supervised classroom at her school engaging in virtual learning. Her teachers and most of her classmates are at home. She sits in a socially distanced room with health and safety protocols in place. She chats with her friends in the classroom over lunch and they play outdoors on the playground and in the school garden. There are days she wishes she was at home (not unlike pre-pandemic days), but overall our engaged, fun, happy, smart kid has re-emerged.
As of February, our kids’ DC public school has about 20% of the kids back in the building and all staff now have access to covid-19 vaccine. They check temperature and have a parent sign a waiver daily that we are healthy and have no knowledge of exposure. With consent, adults and children in the building receive a covid-19 test every other week. To my knowledge the staff and teachers present in the building want to be there. In my eyes, we are following the science and this is good. I am an advocate for all teachers and child care providers having priority access to the vaccine.
Our four-year old did not receive a spot back at school. The district wide system identified the children most in need of in person learning based on risk factors including homelessness and IEP (individualized education program). I agree with these risk classifications. Any remaining spots were offered on a lottery basis. We did not fall into the risk categories and our number did not come up in the lottery.
We’ve done our best with virtual learning, but it doesn’t work for our four-year old. To state the obvious, It has been hard on her and hard on us as parents. Everyone’s mental health had plummeted.
We are a family with a primary breadwinner (dad) who has kept a stable income for our household and a secondary breadwinner (mom) who has the open schedule to manage the care and virtual schooling for her children. From the outside looking in we are not at risk. But every day of this past season I felt at risk for mental health collapse and nothing about the situation felt resilient.
If I felt this way with all the privilege I have, what about the families that don’t have the supports?
I’ve read many an article addressing the increased mental health crisis due to the pandemic, but I’ve yet to see that translate into wide scale action for families. In our society schools have played a large role in the social and emotional health of children and families. I am writing this to help normalize the choice to return to the classroom due to mental health concern in the family.
We recently chose to enroll our four-year old in a paid preschool program two mornings a week for this reason. She has been in the program about three weeks and the change in our household is a marked difference in the positive direction. She needed a healthy social and emotional place to be a few days a week.
I needed her there too and wish I had done this sooner. I wish I had more messages telling me it was ok to get help - to weigh the full picture. I have a chronic condition makes me more susceptible to serious illness with Covid-19. We take the pandemic seriously and this was a tough call, but with the science now we are comfortable with this choice.
I hope as we continue to plug through the pandemic society will continue to weigh mental health factors with when and how to reopen our schools and economy.