In Person

 It is a unique point in human history which we find ourselves currently traversing. The fact that we have to make a distinction about what sort of schooling we will be pursuing: online? hybrid? in person? It is a huge and significant deal that students are returning to our school to be educated this week. One teacher described the experience of guiding a kindergartner's hand as she wrote her numbers one through ten for the first time. That teacher got a little choked up as she described it to her colleagues at the end of the first day. 

Which makes sense. This is not just a physical return, but an emotional one as well. There was some crying, and not just from those helping kindergartners write their numbers. There was the typical and traditional half dozen little boys and girls who were not ready to leave their mommies and daddies. And the attendant mommies and daddies who wept a little as they dropped their children off for the first of what will hopefully be many more mornings just like this one. 

But not just like this one. For the past year and a half, we have all been looking forward to the day when we would once again be open for business. The day that we referred to as "normal." We're still not quite there. We are all wearing masks indoors, and the Delta variant hangs over the whole scene like rain clouds threatening to dump on our recess. Murmurs in the hallways have us guessing about what it might take to send us all back to our Zoom version of this game. Over the weekend before the first day, our staff got a proximal warning for someone on our staff. We all headed down to the school on Sunday afternoon to take our COVID tests together, and as we waited the fifteen minutes it takes for the results to come clear on the tab, we joked about what it might be like if we ended up having to call off the first day of school because of a positive result. 

There was none. We were all negative, but the experience gave us all a positive feeling of community and the sense that nothing was going to stop us this time. No more longing stares out onto an empty playground. No more empty halls. No more abridged lesson plans. This was the real deal. We were back and ready to get in an mix it up once again. 

There are families in our district who have chosen to stay in distance learning. A few of them have attended our school. We will miss them, and look forward to a time when the fear that is keeping them from joining us out on the playground and in those halls can be eliminated. The door is open, and we welcome everyone back. In person.