Since schools shut down last spring, throwing teachers and students into the deep end of virtual teaching literally overnight, questions about how school was going to work in the fall have abounded. And as hopes of a normal school year have been dashed by continuing viral spread and a rising death toll through the summer, schools have had to scramble to figure out the best way to safely meet everyone’s needs.
It’s a bit of an impossible task all around. No one envies those having to make the hard decisions—especially with heated opinions being thrown at them from all sides. There is no way to make everyone happy, and there’s really no way to do school “well” in the middle of a deadly pandemic.
But that doesn’t mean we can’t laugh at the absurdity of the whole back-to-school mess. After all, if we don’t laugh, we’ll cry.
Dena Blizzard of One Funny Mother shared a parody video of a school administrator explaining the “simple hybrid model” for pandemic schooling, and oh my word, does it ever nail what parents are experiencing across the country.
It just gets better and better, doesn’t it? I have friends with kids all over the U.S., and so many are so confused about how school is working for their children—and are only more confused by the hundreds of emails from their school districts. It doesn’t help that even if a school district has a clear plan, if that plan involves kids physically attending school in any capacity, there are necessary contingency plans in place for if or when an outbreak occurs.
Parents want simple plans, as do teachers and administrators, but there’s simply nothing simple about making school work in a pandemic. So we can laugh or we can cry. (Or maybe a little of both—that seems to be the healthiest choice.)
