This call, just like all the other Google Meets and Zoom meetings, has a large portion taken up with a discussion of all the safety protocols the students, faculty, staff, and families will be doing to keep the spread of COVID-19 at as low a risk as possible.
I looked at all the faces on the call and there wasn't a single parent I didn't know. My son's lead teacher will have one of her three children in the class as well as three administrators who will also have their children in the class too. Of the twelve of thirteen students in the room which would typically have twenty-five students, one-third of them are children who have parents ar the school. The other parents are ones we've gotten to know over the years with my son being in class with each child at least one year of all the years he's been at the school. My son is happy about being back in class with some of his friends he hasn't gotten to see much in several years.
Michelle, the teacher, started the call by asking if anyone wanted to share a, "joy" they discovered they had during COVID-19. There are a lot of negatives, to be sure, but there have been some good things, such as the realization by so many of us that we should thank our teachers more—because they do a job that is difficult and aren't appreciated nearly enough.
One mother talked about how her two boys had gotten a much better understanding of what she did on a daily basis for work, in particular, how busy her work was and how long she worked each day. They were at school usually and had no idea. They understood more how difficult it was for her to run her business out of her home while getting all the laundry and other house maintenance things done, all while her children were at school. As a result, they started offering to help do things to help her. That, she said, was an unexpected joy for her, to see her children wanting and offering to help.
My husband had been listening off-screen and working on his computer but about this time he leaned over to me and said, "what's our joy going to be?" I replied, "I'll come up with something" with the confidence that I would indeed figure out something. I'm rarely, if ever, at a loss for words. I was mulling over our time at home since March as the other parents talked and had just about formulated my answer when my husband asked me.
Then he said, "We could talk about how the children are playing together more in more involved, creative ways and aren't arguing nearly as much." I laughed and said he was reading my mind because that was exactly what I was thinking about.
When he and I took our turn, we explained that they still got into tussles and verbal parlays but that the amount of time they spent together on positive, in-depth play had increased dramatically. Michelle had an interesting answer. She said the joy was both in the positive time they spent together but also in the conflict transformation they were going through as they learned how to resolve conflicts more deftly over time through their social interactions.
'Conflict transformation' was a new phrase for me. Typically we think of 'conflict resolution' in the sense that the conflict should end or cease. In the case of our children though, they were transforming how they managed conflict together. As she explained it, I agreed that it was definitely part of that joy we'd experienced.
My children still get angry at each other, yell, scream, tattle, get physical and do all the sorts of things siblings do with and to each other in the course of being brother and sister, but it's transformed over time. Some day they'll be adults. I wonder if this extra time alone together will elevate their relationship years from now in a way we wouldn't have ever imagined?
The Big Boy Update: My son has a book report of sorts to do before school starts on Wednesday. He has to do something to talk about a book he read over the summer. This is a book report in the broadest sense of the phrase. He could make a poster or do a puppet show or draw a comic book or do a magic show or write a traditional book report. He can do whatever he wants and then present it to his fellow students on the first day of school. I told him to figure out what book he wanted to do the report on tomorrow and then he could figure out what he wanted to do on Saturday. I'm interested in what he comes up with.
The Tiny Gitl Chronicles: My daughter was fiddling with one of those little puzzles where you have the numbers one through fifteen in a square and you slide them around until you get them in order. She couldn't feel any difference on the tiles because they weren't raised. I asked her if she wanted me to see if I could find a braille version to 3D print for her and she said yes. Luckily, there was just such a version online I could download for free. Several hours print time later and I have the sliding puzzle ready for her in the morning.
No comments:
Post a Comment