The other night, I lay with my 7 year old son, as I listened to my husband and daughter fight about bedtime. She had asked for ten more minutes, and he had come up after eight. They were fighting for twenty minutes about two minutes. But it was never about two minutes. When he reached his limit and we both let her simmer down in bed, I went to talk to her. With tears in her eyes, she asked, "How fast will I have to speed walk to get to my classes next year?" I couldn't help but explode with laughter and hugs for her. She could have asked me anything, been worried about any number of things, but she was worried, at that moment, about whether she would get to class on time in middle school. I calmed her down, and told her she could call her cousin to talk all about it tomorrow, and we all went to sleep. But it made me think in a new way about all of this.
My daughter won't finish fifth grade with her class. This means that she won't take a trip with her classmates to see the middle school and walk the hallways. She won't be able to say her goodbyes to the only school she's ever known. Her friends will go to different schools (some magnet, some private), and they won't get together on a school trip first to sign yearbooks all as one. These moments may seem small in the scheme of things, but each one represents one step in the huge transition from elementary school child to middle school tween. We have been so caught up in the day to day, that I had no idea that she was worrying about next year.
It also made me think of my seniors. I teach twelfth grade English, and talking to my daughter made me realize the extent of what they must be going through on a whole different level. Their transition time has also been cancelled. They will not have "Accepted Students Day," before they commit to colleges. They will not have final bonding days and weekends that are so important as they say goodbye to friends they've known since elementary school. No prom or senior trip to blow off steam and energy that has been building toward these moments for so very long. They will not wander the schools with their yearbooks, lining up at teachers' desks asking for words of wisdom. They will not get final hugs from adults with whom they've shared questions and emotions and breakdowns. These are not small things. These are holes, that if filled would allow them to move to new places feeling ready and secure. I can see (when they check in with me virtually) that they are feeling neither of those vital emotions. And I worry about them. I worry about how this strange time will affect next year for them. How you leave a place and time is so important to how you enter the next phase.
A few months ago, I mentioned to my teacher friends that my twelfth graders were going through the anger phase of leaving. They were blowing up their friendships with extraordinary intensity. They were shifting alliances and pushing each other away, and as their teacher, I found myself telling them how normal this is. They are getting themselves ready to leave. But I had the expectation that they would have the time to come back together, to stitch up the wounds, to stop the bleeding. But then, we all just left. How will that affect them? What will be the psychological impact of an uncauterized friendship? I just don't know. And I worry.
The more I think about these transitions, the more I think that they are similar to the stages of grief. But what happens when you are mired in the anger phase, or never get to bargaining because you haven't been given the space or the wherewithal to do so? How do you make it to the point of acceptance when you are abruptly taken from school and placed in a quarantine? My students are anxious and depressed. They no longer turn on their cameras or their minds when they come to my virtual classroom. They are disconnected, and aching for connection. I beg them to show me their faces each morning. Some of them concede. Others stay hidden. They are grieving their losses. And in my fifth grade daughter's anger each night before bed, I find the same grief.
These transitions from fifth to sixth grade, from senior in high school to freshman in college, are so important to how we mature, and with lightening speed the pieces put in place to ease the way, have been taken from our kids. We have no easy words for them, because not one of us has been through this in just this way. There will be a lot of unexpected impacts of the Corona Virus. The effects of this moment in time on our kids going through the greatest changes in their lives is one that I had not thought about until now. But I can see them beginning to take shape in the virtual faces of
my students (those who are willing to show them to me). After twenty years of teaching, I can usually find an answer, but
across a computer screen, now, I can only send my smiles and little in the way
of advice. Just remember to get out of bed, I tell them, to go outside in the
sunshine, and to keep talking to each other and to me. I can’t provide them
with the closure they are begging for, the closure that they need, but am
hoping against hope that as a society, we’ll find a way to give it to them.
