For The Kids…

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By Bethany “BST2” Armstrong

This school year has been challenging for every teacher, student, and parent. Watching the vicious debate of in-person schooling versus virtual play out has been disheartening. Our children’s’ school has the option for virtual or in-person learning. We choose virtual for a myriad of reasons, the largest factor being our eldest son is immuno-compromised. I’m a mom and a teacher; I’ve seen the struggle on both sides.

My youngest is in virtual class every day, doing homework each night, and still she has missing assignments piled up. One of my student’s, whose Chromebook malfunction lead him to miss a week, has 24 missing assignments just in ELA. I’m not sure where we veered from structured to overwhelming.

I see a lot of in-fighting in schools. Poor attendance, falling grades, missing assignments need to be someone’s fault. Some say parents are failing their kids, some blame the teachers. Everyone is feeling stretched too thin.

We can’t kid ourselves. Every single student will be further behind than they “should” be. Teachers call the backslide in academics following the summer break “summer slump”. Well this will be termed the covid slump, regardless of how hard teachers and parents work, and it’ll be brutal. Giving excess assignments right now isn’t helping anyone; certainly not the students.

That said, the things we’re doing to mitigate it matter. The structure provided, the social interactions, and the learning should not be undervalued. But teachers and parents need to give each other a lot more grace. We’re both doing it for the kids.

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