As many of you know, I have three children of my own, and my wife is a special education teacher in a public school district not that different than Winchester Public Schools. Therefore, we wear both hats – the parent one and the school official one. My two girls had a great start to the school year. They like being back in the school buildings and seeing their friends and teachers. Wearing masks and staying six feet away from classmates did not seem to bother them that much.
My son’s start of the school year was much rockier. He is the only middle schooler we have right now. He was already dreading this school year because during the summer he found out his buddies were either fully remote or due to the first letter of our last name he was placed in the different cohort than his other good friends.
My son said he felt lonely throughout the first day of school. He tried to do what my wife advised him to do to make new friends. However, having a mask on and being seated six feet away from other people made it hard to engage in conversations with students he did not know well. He reported that lunch was horrible because other kids seated around him knew each other and were talking over him like he was not there.
He was in tears when he came home after the second day of school. The terrible lunch experience of the first day of school became in his mind the stuff of horror movies. He was let out late the period before lunch so most seats in the cafeteria were already taken when he arrived there. He was then seated in the cafeteria annex with a few other kids who all happened to be girls. The horror movie escalated to the level of Stephen King’s The Shining because in the middle of lunch the Assistant Principal announced that the seats the students were sitting in were everyone’s assigned seats.
Tomorrow will be his third day back in school, and I suspect at the time you are reading this post, my wife and I are desperately trying to pump our son up and putting a positive spin on things so we can get him to go back to school. We will likely be telling him that sitting with girls gives him the opportunity to be that “cool kid who all the girls like” and that spending more time with kids he does not know will help him make new friends.
The fact is both my wife and I want to wave a magic wand and instantly make everything better for our son. However, as public school officials we both know why things have to be the way they are. Kids have to have assigned seats to make contact tracing possible. Kids have to be grouped into cohorts in order to create space for social distancing. Schools with large student populations cannot accommodate requests to place a student with their preferred peers because they will never be able to create any schedule or seating chart that make every one of the 1,000 students happy.
All my wife and I can do as parents is to help our son embrace a growth mindset and give him some TLC. This weekend, he got to pick his favorite meal for dinner which to the horror of my vegetarian oldest daughter were ribs from Blue Ribbons Barbecue in Arlington. He also got extra Fortnite time so he has the chance to be with his buddies even if it is online.
It is not easy to see our son be this upset, but my wife and I are working hard to remind ourselves that two days of school is a small sample size. We have to trust the work we have done as parents to teach our son how to be resilient will take effect, and he will find a way to work through this difficult situation. If none of this works after another week or so, we plan to reach out to the teachers and my son’s guidance counselor to see what support the school can offer him. I am hopeful by working with the school we will figure this out even though the solution may end up to be less than perfect. Or better yet, with some time my son will figure out on his own how to navigate through this middle school nightmare.
