Learning Alone

 

A while back I posted a story to my blog about Polio that was especially well received.  I judge that by the number of clicks, or times a post is opened.  I am very grateful my pieces are being read at all.  Some are read more than others, which is fine with me.  I try to write what I feel rather than anticipating what you want to read.  Some of the stories resonate and some don’t.

Something unintended and good happened with that Polio story.  It was picked up in a way.  I have a friend who is a high school English teacher.  I worked with her mother and father at a social service agency and have known her since she was a little girl.  She was our daughter’s first babysitter, and our daughter is now having her first baby.  Though there is a big age difference between us, she reads my blog.  A valued reader as are all of you.

My friend is both a teacher and a mother of three. She sees this pandemic we are struggling to get through in a unique way.  She understands the challenge of teaching remotely, observes and develops an understanding of what it is like to be a student learning virtually, and is at the same time a parent of three high school students.  That gives her a perspective I will never know.  I feel fortunate the Polio story resonated with her. 

She assigned Polio 1952 as reading for a Senior English class, typically World Lit, but as my friend the teacher describes, the kids needed changes this year to keep them going.  The assignment began with this prompt: “Respond to the story and how you think we will look back at these pandemic times 30-40 years from now." She shared the student’s responses with me.  After I shared my observations of a pandemic 62 years ago, they shared their real-life experiences over the past year.  Quite an exchange. 

The students drew parallels between Polio and Coronavirus, empathized with my characters, told me how the story made them feel and related their own experiences during this pandemic.  That kind of feedback is pure gold for a writer.  I only taught English full time for a year, and believe me, I was never as good a teacher as my friend.  I would have loved to have imagined and assigned such a creative project as a rookie in 1973-74.  But, I stuck to the book.  It was a tough year.

Let’s get to the point.  Here is what my friend and her students had to say about my story, living through the pandemic, remote learning and teaching, and life in 2020.

The story was both interesting and sad.  Seeing someone else’s story about an epidemic is comforting in a way, knowing there are people out there who have gone through things similar to what we are going through right now.  While this pandemic sucks, I feel as if it isn’t as bad as the Polio epidemic because Polio caused problems pretty much the rest of your life.

It is tough reading about polio as we are also going through something that we are scared about getting.  Reading about how fast Polio spread is so close to how Covid is spreading.  I think when we get older and look back at how this pandemic affected us all we will just be glad for the people we didn’t lose during it.  I will probably just be happy it is over, but I will definitely be thankful for the lessons it taught me.  Lessons like how I am more appreciative for everything I have and all the family support and love.  I will never be able to forget my senior year that’s for sure.

This story was tragic, but it feels accurate for the times we’re living in now.  Just like Covid, with Polio, they must distance themselves from others as much as possible.  I think we’re going to look back on this and be proud of what we got through.  This year has been crazy, but if we all stick together, we’ll make it through.  It’s not just the pandemic we’ve been through.  We made it through the riots, the BLM protests, all the madness of the world.  And we will continue to fight together and make it through it all.

I could only imagine how bad polio was for your body.  It affected the spinal cord and caused paralysis.  I had to go through my Mom having Coronavirus, then I had it and it is not fun.  So, I can only imagine what people with polio had to go through.  Living through a pandemic is scary because you don’t know if you will get the virus or not.  But the story Dave McClure wrote is a great way to get people to understand what happened back in the day, way before we had the technology to correct something so quickly.

The story was very interesting to me.  It is weird to think about different illnesses that now we rarely consider.  The fact that I have only seen people in iron lungs from documentaries and old pictures says a lot.  For older people, iron lungs were normal, and they knew people who ended up in one.  There was so much personal touch added to this story that made it interesting.  I felt like I was there with them.  The lockdown they had made me feel less alone in this pandemic.

In the future, I think people will look back at Covid and think of it as something like polio.  The virus has affected me personally, so I know I will never forget it.  My ex got Covid while watching my daughter, who ended up quarantined for two weeks, then my ex’s mom got it, and she was quarantined for another two weeks.  That is a whole month without me seeing my daughter.  I was so scared she wouldn’t remember me, or worst-case scenario she would get sick and I would not be able to see her.  I hope people look back on this as a learning experience.  They can see how to stay safe and make yourself less prone to having or spreading illness.

The story sounds very similar to what is happening with today’s pandemic. Families are experiencing the loss of family members, struggling with financial burdens.  People cannot say goodbye to their loved ones during the virus, just like in the story where the siblings could not say goodbye to their sister.   A vaccine wasn’t found until three years after the time when the Polio story took place.  I think with all our technological advances a cure will be found faster because of computers being able to analyze long protein chains and RNA, unlike in 1952.

The story was good and realistic.  Pandemics are very sad, and there is no way around it.  I liked how the father, Dean, kept a positive mindset and kept calm.  That’s what you need to do when chaos is happening.  You need to be there for people.

Although I think we will get a vaccine for Covid 19, more pandemics are bound to happen.  This pandemic now has been very tough, and almost seems avoidable.  Just last Saturday, I lost my grandpa to Corona.  So, me personally, I’m going to look back at these times angrily.  I know I can’t be angry at a pandemic for taking my grandpa, but ultimately that’s how I’m going to feel.  But I do believe there will be another outbreak within the next 40 years.  History repeats itself.

Thinking about the pandemic thirty or forty years from now, I will be around my Mom’s age.  I have to say that I will be very concerned about how people dealt with it.  I know from my Mom’s point of view, she is very worried about losing her job and she is worried about paying her bills and putting food on the table for us.  She has a good job, but she must have a second job because of all the bills.  She lost her second job because of this pandemic.

If we were looking back on this pandemic in 30-40 years, we will probably be living in a world where everything is made easy.  You can see already that people today like to be lazy.  They do online shopping, have groceries delivered, eat take out…etc..  It makes sense now since we shouldn’t go out and spread the virus, but we have already adapted to this “lazy” way.  I know I have.  Everything will be different because of this virus.

I have seen jokes on Tik Tok of kids saying that in 35 years the history of the pandemic will be in our kids’ textbooks.  It is made out as a joke on Tik Tok, but it will probably really happen.  In 35 years, it will only be a memory and no longer reality.  We will adjust to our future life and the coronavirus won’t be the talk of the town like it is today.  I imagine though that many will have some kind of PTSD from these times. 

I don’t often have regrets, but there are times I regret not staying in teaching, keeping myself close to young people who bring honest and fresh thoughts like this to everyday life.

Last but not least, please read closely the observations of the pandemic from someone who has done just that for eighteen years, my friend the English teacher.

By and large, their day is like this.  They wake up just before school starts and log on while still sitting in their beds.  They don’t show their faces on screen and barely talk other than a few chats in Teams meetings.  On-screen is an enthusiastic cheerleading teacher.  Their students wonder why they should still care about putting forth the effort when the situation doesn’t change.  For them, it's log on, do the work, go back to bed.  All seems lost.  What is lost you ask?

There are no friends in the hall to shove around and laugh with, no Friday nights, no fancy dresses or dances to go to, no chicken nuggets flying in the cafeteria, no memories to take pics of and send in Snapchat streaks.

To adults, it may seem selfish but each of us, whether we hated school or loved it, had the experience.  These kids are alone.  They are crawling through a year with no reward other than a letter grade.

I know I paint a sad picture, but it’s their reality.  While their chances of contracting the virus are slim and their recovery almost guaranteed, the virus has killed their spirit, nonetheless.  I just hope we can salvage some of the year together so they can be kids again. 

There are kids who come from homes where the Wi-Fi is strong, food is plentiful, and support is all around them.  But I’m afraid many lose sight of kids and families who never know those comforts.  For them, I feel the most.

The history books will have a unit on this pandemic and that is what will be taught to my grandchildren and theirs.  Not recorded will be the long-term effects of educational gaps, mental health issues, and screen addiction that will be immeasurable.  I’m trying to help both my own kids and my students learn coping skills they can use to face adversity, practice resilience, and seek ways to help each other along the way.  I never thought we’d be living through something like this.  I’m sure your siblings in 1952 didn’t think so either.  I look forward to your piece which reflects on their words.

I think the words written by these students and their teacher speak for themselves.  But let me add this to what they expressed so well on their own.

When I was a teacher, 22 years old and very naïve, one of my favorite duties was homeroom.  I taught five classes of freshman English, but I had a senior homeroom.  Those kids helped me much more than I helped them.

I went to a school so small we didn’t have homerooms.  The concept was foreign to me.  The daily routine when I taught was to gather with your homeroom students before school really started, take attendance, read the announcements, and hang out before your first class.  I used that time to ask my homeroom kids, who had been at the school three years longer than I had, how things worked.  I was baffled by the schedules, unacquainted with the rules, ignorant of traditions.  They helped me greatly.

They were equally supportive of each other.  Homerooms back then were alphabetically assigned (I think) and thus random.  All kinds of kids, college-bound and not, athletes, musicians, stoners, juicers, the popular and unpopular, the outgoing and introverted, found themselves together.  They learned about one another but also formed their own identity.  Homeroom was its own thing, and they were their own group.

When someone was absent, someone else usually knew why.  They talked to each other, some like crazy others hardly at all.  They laughed and smiled, got upset, reacted with glee and anger.  They lived together for ten minutes a day consistently for four years.  They became their own small community.  It was a small part of the high school experience, but it was important.  And real.  And up close.  I still see some of those kids around town. 

I don’t think that can be recreated that on Zoom.  We can see videos of each other on-screen, we can listen to the voices of others through speakers or headphones, but in the end, we are alone.  Like staring at your smartphone and reading words in a text, it is communicating with people but not being with them.  Better than nothing of course, but never as satisfying as life lived in the presence of one another.  I’m afraid it will always leave us feeling separated and alone.   

Just as homes are the logical solution for homelessness, a safe return to school is the obvious answer to the problems my friend the teacher, and her students, have experienced during this pandemic.  But simply returning to the classroom may not be enough.

We can reach out to students most affected during the pandemic and engage them in summer school.  We can use existing programs or create new ones if needed, to make up for lost credits.  We should all work to make up for the deficits our community’s young people have racked up during the pandemic.   

Post Script: In our community, high school students returned to in-school instruction Tuesday morning the 19^th.  My friend the teacher read an email from me containing a draft of this post.  I wanted to make sure she approved of how I described her and her student’s experiences.  She did.  This was included in her reply.

As I type this, I have kids back in my classroom! I appreciate, as do they and anyone who knows students who have been removed from school because of the pandemic, your sincere acknowledgment of their experiences. They are SO HAPPY TO BE HERE!

There was real, raw, and wild energy in my house last night as my kids picked out outfits packed their backpacks and signed the daily required slip certifying they are not feeling symptoms and have not been in contact with infected people who have or might have Covid.  Now our hope is to finish the year together.

It’s been a bad year.  Education has taken a big hit, not only since the virus but over the past four years.  If we work together, making public education a priority, we can make it better.  Better perhaps than ever.  Of all the challenges before us as Americans, improving education may be the most important.