Amanda Lamb: School is calling

Normally, at this time of year, I would be writing about the preparations our family is making for the return of the school year which is just around the corner. In past blogs, I alternately joked about how much I love having my kids home for the summer, and how much I can’t wait to return the order and routine of the school year—the stability it gives our entire family.

But this blog will contain none of this pithy humor as the one thing we thought we could always count on—a return to school—hangs in the balance as the pandemic continues to march across our country with an uncertain path that keeps us all in limbo.

My 17-year-old is about to enter her senior year of high school. We have all seen the social media posts from the seniors of 2020 who missed out on everything from prom to graduation. Now, as she enters what should be the most glorious year of her education to date, she does so with trepidation of the unknown. Will she ever get to see her teachers and classmates again in person? Will the safety rules that schools put in place be so cumbersome if they do return to in-person learning that they will cause yet another layer of anxiety? The truth is that no one knows right now.

My rising college junior has informed me that she is indeed going back to college to live with her friends in an apartment near campus and go to school one way or the other—in-person or online. She has had enough of us, and dare I say, we have had enough of her. Begin 20, independent and off at college, and then suddenly living back under your parents’ daily guidance is not a healthy state of being for any of us. So, either way, we will be loading up our car in mid-August and returning her to the university.

I interviewed an infectious diseases physician and professor from UNC-Chapel Hill this week who told me that he agrees with the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendation that some form of in-person learning must be resumed for our children, albeit as safely as possible.

“There’s emotional and psychological costs and economic costs of not having kids in school,” Dr. David Wohl says. “I think parents see the effects of keeping kids at home. Distance learning is hard for some kids and impossible for others.”

Wohl agrees that many precautions need to be put in place to make this happen including plans for changes in scheduling to allow for smaller classes, social distancing and wearing masks. But he believes it is possible to make these accommodations work. He says for many families, school is the “metronome” of our lives, the thing most of us with children build our schedules and routines around, something everyone is desperately craving.

“I think going back to school smartly is possible,” Wohl says. “I think, again, we have to have protections in place when you have a teacher or kid who comes in with COVID that we limit the spread.”

Wohl likens an outbreak among children to a small brush fire, that if contained properly won’t turn into a forest fire.

“You want to burn a little bit of the forest and not become a big forest fire, and you put barriers in place,” Wohl says.

I know these are hard decisions during one of the most difficult moments in our modern history. I don’t envy the educators who have to make these decisions for their staff and their students. I know coming up with and implementing these plans may seem insurmountable at times. I just hope we can do it in some fashion because you can’t push pause on learning for too long without consequences.

So, what we can we do besides reassure our children that somehow it’s all going to be OK? As adults, we can help by following the CDC rules, helping to get the numbers down so our children can get the education they all deserve. It takes a village, people, now more than ever.

Amanda is the mom of two, a reporter for WRAL-TV and the author of several books including some on motherhood. Find her here on Mondays.