We Just Kept Learning

After being homeschooled for kindergarten, my grandson was very excited to go to first grade at the local school. Two big brothers had gone before him, and it was finally his turn. Then the pandemic happened. So, his first public-school experience was online, sitting next to his daddy, who supported him while teaching AP math to high school students.

After Halloween, the school moved to a hybrid model for their kindergarten and first-grade students. He was finally going to get to go. His scheduled, in-person experiences would be Mondays and Tuesdays. 

My daughter said it was the strangest thing to replace the usual first-day-of-school pep talk with instructions on where to find his extra mask, how to open his hand sanitizer, and what six feet apart looks like.

In his first three days of in-person school, this dear little boy experienced school during a pandemic, and a lockdown because of an active-shooter threat in the area. On the fourth day, power in the entire county was out, but the school decided to embrace the adventure, and students were dropped off to the peaceful silence of mute fluorescent lights.

When his dad picked him up, he said, “Dude, you are ready for anything. You’re going to school during a pandemic, you had a lockdown, and today you went to school in the dark. How was it?”

The calm, matter-of-fact reply was “We just kept learning.”

Does that bring tears to your eyes? It does to mine. This is an extraordinary time, and children will take a strong cue from how we handle it when we are in front of them. I wouldn’t be surprised if his teacher feels overwhelmed at times, but when she is with her students, she demonstrates nothing but calm resolve about the importance of what they are doing.

No matter what it looks like for you today, it is my hope that every student we are working with will be able to look back on their time during this pandemic and calmly remember, “We just kept learning.”