I stand on the plaza outside our local school the morning elementary children return to their classrooms after five months of COVID closure. This is our 2020 opening of the schoolhouse day. With temps right at freezing on the first Monday in December, parents are driving tentatively into the drop-off lane. Vehicle doors open and small, K-2 children in winter garb carrying school backpacks and lunch bags emerge to be greeted by their principal and a bus-duty teacher. Everyone has a momentary awkwardness. In a soft opening, only K-2 children are called to school this Monday. Children in grades 3-5 will come on Tuesday. A Kindergarten boy stops in front of the principal and looks up to the man’s smile. This is a first day ever for Kindergarten children.
“Let’s get you inside and we will take you to your classroom”, the principal says, bending at the waist to get close but not too close. Both child and principal are appropriately masked. On this first day at school, a little personal proximity is well called for. Yesteryear, there would have been hand holding as they walked into the school. Not today
Cars, vans, and SUVs line up and children pile out. Parents get out for parting words and a few kisses on top of stocking caps. Second graders walk with some confidence toward the open doors, especially after being greeted by name. This is a first day at school for moms and dads, also, though not their first day of the school year. All have been at-home helping their children with daily remote instruction. All have been in close communication with their child’s teacher. All have been looking forward to this day, personal trepidations aside.
School buses roll onto the campus and drive to a different entrance. The Pandemic Plan distributes children to a variety of school doors to diminish the number of children entering in groups. Waves to bus drivers are exchanged.
As parents depart the drop-off lane, each lowers the driver side window to give a smile or a nod. Some say “Thank you”. Others mouth it.
This school has moved slowly and deliberately toward providing parents the option to return their children to in-school classes. Some parents are choosing to retain their children at-home. Choices are a good thing. Our teachers are very well prepared to continue teaching at-home children while they begin teaching in-school children. School leadership has created an exceptional low-incidence environment for schooling in the Time of COVID. All the pieces are in place for this transition in how we educate children.
It is a new day for our school. A smile and nod and a mouthed thank you are more than enough to shake off the worries about today and tomorrow. Smiling and nodding, I mouth “You are welcome”.