It was September 2020, and my kids were headed back to in-person learning at Midtown Montessori School for the first time in what felt like forever. As someone who works from home, I couldn’t have been more thrilled. While I love having my family around, peace and quiet on the home front was palpable and welcomed for my work productivity.
My girls, Ella and Bea, and my wife Annie, who teaches primary education ages 3 to 6 at MMS, had just completed nearly seven months together in our house with no real breaks. That’s four online Zoom meetings happening concurrently every day with only so much space to utilize. Not to mention emotional bandwidth, in addition to internet bandwidth. Sometimes it felt like the walls were closing in.
Let’s just say, I know I can get on their nerves. So it goes, my girls went back to school with a whole litany of new and unusual protocols to follow. They included daily temperature checks to be taken before school, mask wearing at all times, no sharing of food or snacks, social distancing, etc. Montessori education is a practice, and many of the traditional Montessori standards had to be shelved for safety reasons. Children adapt quickly, and it is something that should be appreciated and celebrated. I think we can all learn from the young people living through an unprecedented event like the COVID-19 global pandemic.
You name it; the school was prepared to keep our kids safe. For that I’m grateful, but I am so looking forward to normal. Normal drop-off, normal pick-up, normal, normal, normal. Normal never sounded so appealing. Personally, I’ve always kind of been obsessed with normal. Like when I go to the doctor and they take my blood pressure or when my kids get their check-ups. Maybe that’s just what all parents do. Is that normal?
So as the summer nears an end and vacations get wrapped up, I look forward to a return to normal. Well, maybe not completely, but a normal that looks more normal than abnormal. And if safety protocols remain in place, I will be 100 percent behind the leaders of my kids’ school. After all, kids under 12 can’t be vaccinated quite yet. And until mine are, I’m going to follow any and all CDC recommendations so that my family can be and remain safe. And I hope grace will be shown and shared with the educators in our city, as this crisis is not over.
Let’s have a great school year!
Jeff Hulett is a freelance writer, musician, and PR consultant in Memphis. He lives in the Vollintine Evergreen neighborhood with his wife Annie, two girls Ella and Beatrice, and two dogs Chalupa and Princess Freckles.