I thought we were doing well. It was six weeks into the new school year, we were full distance learning and it seemed like we were crushing it. Everything was getting done pretty much on time, her teacher was commending her work ethic and other than a few confusing math problems fourth grade was off to a great start.
She was safe, we were getting lots of extra time together and she had spent enough time with the best friends from our little germ bubble that I didn’t think she was feeling isolated or missing socialization. When some time was given to the class to catch up on anything they were behind on we had nothing. Instead, I pulled out her journal and asked her to write an entry about our return to living room academics.
It didn’t exactly say what I thought it would. I’m paraphrasing a little but basically, the theme was “this sucks” and a lot of my smugness disappeared in a hurry.
She doesn’t hate it. Sleeping in as late as she wants is cool, as are the extended breaks we sometimes take in-between subjects. The flexibility to take a two-hour hike in the afternoon and do social studies after dinner is nice. Peanut butter and jelly sandwiches from a paper bag are great but homemade grilled cheese and bacon are much better.
It’s just not school. It’s not gossiping with old friends, trading snacks, seeing people at recess. It’s not meeting her new teacher and classmates and potentially making new friends.
We talked about it, something else we get to do a lot more of now. She knows that school means a mask all day, that a lot of the things that she misses are things that they aren’t being allowed to do anyway. She gets it but her friends that are there say it’s not so bad. I promised that this wasn’t going to be forever and that eventually restrictions would be relaxed and normalcy would return, that we’d re-evaluate in a few months. I hoped that was true.
Nothing is relaxed and nothing is normal but that re-evaluation came sooner than hoped. Forced sooner than hoped.
The plan was to see how things were after the New Year, to see if 2021 was going to be less of a shit show than 2020. We’d get through the first half of the school year, see what things looked like and go from there.
The school system has its own plans. Right now half of the students that returned attend Monday and Tuesday and the other half go Thursday and Friday. Approximately 25% are like our daughter and do all of their learning from home. Our section of the state has been mostly spared from the pandemic thus far and there is a large portion of the local population that takes it much less seriously than my family and friend circle do so even though the state as a whole is seeing some of our worst numbers since March there is a push to get all children back to school at least four days a week as soon as possible. In order to determine if that is possible or not they are going to need us to either agree to come back or commit to our present course for the remainder of the school year.
I understand it but I don’t want to commit to our present course for the remainder of the school year. The remainder of the school year is a long, long time. I just told my kid to not give up hope on a return.
We had a week to respond with our intentions.
I couldn’t do it.
According to the form that we were asked to return we were agreeing to send them back within the next two weeks and retained the right to pull them back out into distance learning at any time. Option two was a commitment to keep them out for the remainder of the year. Their ultimatum had a huge loophole in it and I took full advantage. I don’t know if she will actually return but we’ve got two more weeks to think about it.
How many times we will change our minds over the next two weeks I can’t say. Her mother and I both like having her home, it’s really not overly inconvenient for us and our daughter seems to be thriving. We are 90% sure that’s what we want to do.
But only 50% sure it’s the right thing to do and that’s what will gnaw at me for the next two weeks. She’s safe, flourishing and overall pretty happy but how much happier would she be if she was there? The rest of the school year is a long time and this is not only the best time but maybe the only time she might have to give it a try. Do we owe it to her to let her go?
I think maybe when your favorite part of school is the fancy headset it might be time to think about making a change. I think that tomorrow I will probably feel totally different. It’s a problem.
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Previously Published on thirstydaddy.com
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