Lost And Found

Today is the day that families are invited to drop by our school and stand six feet apart. While they are there, they will pick up report cards and drop off any work that their children may have completed during the weeks that they have been locked away. They are also encouraged to take a trip through the wonderland of jackets and coats that were left in classrooms or on the playground over the course of six months when we were all in school.
When I was busied with the task of taking the boxes and bags full of outerwear and laying them out on our cafeteria tables, it did not occur to me that I should count them. I was careful to give each one enough space to be visible without a lot of pawing and additional sorting. I also tried to separate the myriad of black sweatshirts by putting a pink or red or blue something in between. I would be willing to make my guess at more than two hundred.
I am also willing to guess that we will still have a great many jackets, coats and sweatshirts left when all is said and done. We will also have a number of leftover report cards. Try as we might, we simply have not made contact with every family, every student. I will continue to laud our school's efforts in distance learning and the commitment our staff has to the community we serve, but I know that we aren't able to make the difference that we used to.
I also know that there will be a sea of anxious faces, young and old, asking what will happen in the fall. I wish that we had answers to all the questions they will have. One of our third grade teachers suggested that our job currently was like flying an airplane as we were still in the process of building that airplane. So far we have avoided impact. That doesn't mean we haven't had any casualties. We know that when we all come together again in whatever shape public education takes in the next few months, there will be gaps. Progress that had been made over the first two trimesters will be mitigated by a lack of practice and reminders. To be sure, there are kids who have used this opportunity to soar. Independent study and online learning suits them. These are the ones who have parents who are there to answer questions, or help them find an answer. These are not the ones we have been looking for.
They are also not the ones, for the most part, who have jackets laying on our cafeteria tables. The close of a school year is often looked upon as an ending, but after all these years I can't bring myself to think of it that way. Instead I see a tide going out. It will come back again soon enough, and when it does all that bare sand will be covered for a while. When it goes out again, there will be things washed on the shore by the waves: shells, driftwood, and probably a great many black sweatshirts.