photo courtesy anna traverse fogle
Anna in the first grade at St. Mary's
Fresh notebooks that crackle with possibility as the pages part for the first time. Pens and pencils nestled together in a little zippered pouch, not a one yet lost. An unfamiliar schedule, new teachers, old friends, a creaky locker’s quirks to learn. The rush of possibility, of blankness: back to school. I didn’t always love school, but the beginning! Electric, perfect.
The fall of 2020, of course, is different. As if to rebuke all our cute, obvious jokes about “2020 vision” at the start of the year, there’s been not much perfect about this particular orbit of the sun. I don’t mean that the orbit is itself imperfect, although that’s also true. We humans are causing the earth’s wobble to get wobblier: Greenhouse gases increase glacial melt, and glacial melt transfers more water weight into the oceans, making our sphere slightly less spherical, wigglier. From the pandemic and the recession and surging unemployment to ongoing social awakenings and upheaval, it’s been a dizzying year. The earth’s wobble isn’t detectable by us passengers on this planet, except — what’s that unsteadiness beneath our feet?
The level of sheer uncertainty the pandemic has introduced into our daily lives tests our families, our psyches, our bank accounts. I don’t know about you, but it’s all got me feeling a bit wobbly myself.
Even so, school’s back in session, wobblingly. My stepson, a new seventh-grader, has begun the fall semester virtually, like all Shelby County Schools students; the district decided in late July that Memphis needs to flatten its Covid-19 curve before schools can resume in-person instruction safely. Kids are resilient, and his generation are digital natives — but still, they need each other. Even in seventh grade, a year I found to be a charmless mix of awkward and embarrassing, there was some consolation in everyone being awkward and embarrassed together.
Going virtual makes good sense under the circumstances, but students are losing so much. And they aren’t losing in equal measure. We’re all affected by the challenges of 2020, but there’s nothing even or equal about it. Some kids have parents who can stay home with them and supervise, keeping them on task, energized, and connected. Many other kids’ parents never could bring their work home; a job that can be portable is a privilege not available to lots and lots of Memphians. What will those kids’ schooldays look like?
Meanwhile, as I write, my husband is spending the first week of the fall semester in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. The University of Alabama, in whose law school Cameron teaches, has resumed in-person classes as of late August. Everyone must be tested for Covid-19 before officially entering campus, and those who test positive must convert to virtual learning or teaching until they test negative. The university has implemented on-campus safety protocols — masks, Plexiglass barriers in lecture halls, lots of hand sanitizer.
More than simply difficult, these trying times show us who we are and who we can be.
One wonders how long this experiment will last. In an August 17th article about college students packing bars and shirking masks, the Washington Post quoted Tuscaloosa’s mayor: “‘Why?’ tweeted Walt Maddox, mayor of Tuscaloosa, Ala., above a photo of hundreds of mostly mask-free University of Alabama students outside downtown restaurants. ‘We are desperately trying to protect @tuscaloosacity.’” Also on August 17th, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill announced it would suspend in-person classes after only a week, citing multiple virus clusters on campus.
The level of sheer uncertainty the pandemic has introduced into our daily lives tests our families, our psyches, our bank accounts. I don’t know about you, but it’s all got me feeling a bit wobbly myself. Cameron, a child of the ’70s, would remind me here of the toy-commercial jingle: “Weebles wobble, but they don’t fall down.” We shall all, myself very much included, try our hardest not to fall down.
We call times like these “trying” for a reason. When an experience is difficult, we call it a trial. “This is trying my patience,” we say when we’re exasperated or just done. It’s not simply that these times are difficult, although, yes, they are. Trials prove some aspect of us; trials test us and prove what’s most true. More than simply difficult, these trying times show us who we are and who we can be.
Whether in school or at our kitchen tables, kids will learn a lot more this year than what’s in their textbooks. They’ll find out from the grown-ups around them — that’s us, like it or not! — how to handle the kind of tests handed out by life. A generation of kids and young adults will be shaped by this strange, swirling, hopeful, despairing, cracked-open year — and by what we choose to do next. In this big communal classroom, school’s always in session, and the kids are paying attention.
