Are You Struggling With What Back To School Looks Like?

This school year has been a struggle for students, teachers, and parents.

When school started in September most parents were faced with the choice of how to send their kids to school. The options were between all online, all face to face, or a hybrid of the two. Some schools started all online from the beginning which eliminated the problem of deciding, but opened up a new bag of problems.

In the beginning I don't think any of us really knew what to expect. Sure, the school year ended virtually for most of us last year, but that felt different. Schools were very clear that the end of last year wouldn't impact overall grades, and many families treated it like an early start to summer vacation. None of us expected to be in the situation we are now back in June of 2020.

Here we are though, halfway through the school year, and I don't think anyone has a firm grasp on what is happening.

I don't mean that as a slam to any schools or administrators, god knows they're doing everything they can. I mean that even though each school has as good of a plan as they can, nobody knows how this weird time will impact our kids.

There are studies being done right now to try and answer that question, but for now we're all just going off of personal experience.

Right now, my wife and I are struggling with what to do for the second semester. After months of sending our kids to a hybrid model where they go to school 2 days a week, we were switched to all online. It was amazing how quickly the mood toward school changed in our house. We've never had any issue with school before, as both kids loved it, and are hard workers. With the online only portal, their engagement went down, and so did their interest.

I know this makes me a bad parent, but it took my wife and I longer than it should have to figure out this was happening. Despite their school changing, nothing about our busy schedules changed, if anything we just got busier.

We all agreed that going back to face to face learning was the best way going forward, but we all had apprehension. The fear of a new virus variant, the unsureness around what happened if their class room had an outbreak. The overall feeling of not knowing what is coming next, makes it tough.

Right now we are sticking to the face to face plans despite hesitation on all of our parts. It feels like we may be putting education over safety, but that's the risk we're taking.

I'm not looking for any approval or arguments from anyone. I just wanted to make sure you knew that you're not the only one struggling with this right now. The feeling when you know that you have to make a decision, even though neither one of the choices seems good is hard.

I hope that whatever you and your family decide, you stay healthy and happy.