A Mixed Bag

Yesterday was back to school day for Nathan and Matthew. Today was back to school day for Malia. They have all come out of their first days with mixed feelings.

Nathan’s A days are rough. Being in two choirs in a Covid world is not all that fun. Singing in a mask is hard. Add to that all the social drama that he desperately wants to avoid, and choir becomes a virtual smorgasbord of ulcer inducing anxiety. He originally had four choirs, but over the past couple of months he decided to drop two of them and add a couple of math classes into his schedule instead. Math translates to Covid altered learning much more successfully than choir. And honestly, he’s so stinking excited about the math that it just makes more sense for him to spend a bit more time there. Luckily, one of those math classes and ASL 3 (he took ASL 1 last year and learned so fast that his teacher told him to skip right to ASL 3), both of which he loves, give him a break between choirs and add some redeeming grace to his A days. So there is a bit of a silver lining there.

In direct contrast to A days, Nathan says B days are going to be awesome. He starts the say with seminary (always a fantastic way to start the day!) and has AP Physics C and AP Statistics on these days. He also has a mythology class, but that one is just to finish filling in his language arts requirement so he can graduate. He’s definitely interested in the topics they will cover, but he’s nowhere near as excited as he is for his heavy math classes. Have I mentioned that he really loves math? I mean really, really loves it. He does math on his own time for fun. Daniel reviewed over the summer so he would back up to speed when school started and Nathan happily, nearly giddily, helped him remember the finer points of calculus. So he’s super excited for B days. His entire demeanor after school today was lighter than it was yesterday.

Matthew is going back to school with a hybrid schedule. He has several classes in person, but he’s not ready to be a part of the mass of humanity that is the middle school. His stress level about being an asthmatic in the midst of Covid is still really high. So he’s going to the school for band, drawing and stage crew (and his teachers have been fantastic about helping him find less populated routes to get from one place to another) and doing the rest of his classes online. We don’t really know what online school is going to look like as of yet because nothing has been posted. We’re not even really sure who all his teachers are, so that could be interesting and is providing a bit of anxiety for him. But the band part is great. His face was lit up when he came home yesterday. He said it is so good to be back in the band room. His eyes were alight when he came home today as well. (The middle school is also using a block schedule this year to help lessen the amount of time spent cleaning each day and to minimize the number of passing periods in each day.) He has tons of friends on stage crew and being able to see them and interact with them was amazing. The only damper on things right now is the fact that the before school jazz band has not started yet. They just barely hired a new teacher (the previous one went full time at the high school so is no longer available to pick up those couple of classes he was teaching at the middle school) and he hasn’t had time to work out all the details. But it will come. And Matthew is ready to go when it does.

School definitely looks different for Malia this year. In response to Covid and the need to push the school start date back from the end of July, our elementary has switched from their year-round calendar to a traditional calendar. That meant that for the first time ever, she had a full summer vacation. She seemed to enjoy that, but we’ll see how she feels later this year when she doesn’t go off track. One of the characteristics of year-round school is the fact that at least half of the kids in each class remain in the same class from year to year. It’s those families (like us) that have a preference for a specific, less popular track and always request that one. But moving to a traditional calendar means a lot more mixing of kids across classes. And to her dismay, Malia only knows a couple of the kids in her class this year. Add to that the fact that they are doing everything they can to keep the kids as far away from each other as possible, and my normally friendly girl is having a hard time getting to know the new people in her class. But she does say that’s its good to be back in the school. She loves school and has missed it a lot. During the stretch of online school in the spring, there were several occasions when she told me that she just learns better when she’s in the school with her teacher. I completely agree with that and hopefully she will learn to navigate the social aspects of school from behind a face mask.

As for me, it has been a really long time since the house has been as quiet as it was this morning. Kevin is still working from home, but he’s tucked away in the sewing room in the basement and I’m rattling around in the rest of the house. I’ve always valued my limited time alone at home, but it has been so long since I’ve had any that for right now, it feels a little desolate. But I’m sure that in no time I’ll fall back into my routine and learn how to cherish these silent moments again. It will probably happen just in time for all the schools to close again when cold and flu season collides with Covid in the fall. 😜

So mixed feelings all around. Excitement and joy interlaced with worrying and wondering. But life is like than, even in more normal times. And these are most definitely not normal times. Some mixed feelings are to be expected and, in my opinion, are much preferred over the raging negativity we could be experiencing.