Dear Teacher with a Quarantined Child,
A year ago getting a sealed envelope on school letterhead informing you that your child could not return to school for 14 days would have been an indication that a legal hearing was coming and likely an expulsion.
Today, it means your child has been exposed to COVID-19 and needs to charge his laptop for some high quality at-home learning. If that child is under the age of ten, it also means you’ll need to scramble to find childcare. You won’t have long to make plans because the school will be waiting for your arrival. As you drive, you’ll mentally juggle how to make childcare work. You know you can't ask at-risk grandparents for an assist. Instead, you’ll begin the preliminary stages of developing two weeks’ worth of your own “high-quality” lesson plans while frantically considering if you have enough days to take off and if you can even find a sub with such short notice.
When you arrive at the elementary school, your son will affirm you by saying, “Dang, mom, I didn’t think you were coming. There were only two kids left in the whole class.”
That’s right. I’m that mom.
When your kid is seven, you wonder how much of this he will remember as an adult. Hopefully, he will forget that he was the last one picked up from school, but we both know he won’t.
You also wonder if he’ll remember wearing a mask or being reprimanded for high fiving a friend. You hope he won’t remember that his Christmas coloring picture this year had Santa sitting in his sleigh six feet away from his elves in a candy cane gaiter while debating which two reindeer to boot in order to be in compliance with the ten or less CDC recommendation.
It’s hard to know what he knows or what he will remember about this crazy, crazy era.
Maybe, one day he’ll read Momma’s blog as an adult and dig up a few buried memories. If so, I want him to recall that his second-grade teacher was named Mrs. Stumpf. The “f” was silent, although at home we often pronounced it with the “f” just for kicks. I want him to remember she worked hard that year and loved him very much. I want him to remember she used Class Dojo to award points and rewards. Maybe, he’ll remember how happy he was getting to bring his pillow pet to school.
I hope he also knows even though Corona wouldn’t allow it, I wanted to meet her in person and hug her for helping him get excited about being seven years old and shielding him from adult problems.
When he is a grown man, I will shamelessly beg him to consider writing her a thank you card for teaching in one of the hardest years of her career. I like to imagine this will mean the world to her, but we all know he won’t write it because even when he’s grown, he’ll still be a boy. He’ll probably also still be holding a grudge for being the last to be picked up during quarantine.
As such, I’ll beat him to the punch.
Thank you, Mrs. Stumpf (and all the teachers like you) for being there for my son, for striving to make each day as normal as possible and sometimes even extraordinary. Most importantly, thank you for reminding all of us that this too shall pass, and when it does, we’ll be left with this pearl of wisdom as a souvenir.
Some of the best days are the unexpected days, the days we hit the pause button on life long enough to hug our children a little tighter and sincerly thank the people who have gone above and beyond. This person is you.
I promise I’ll still try to encourage him to write you, but until then, will you accept this thank you note as a sign of my appreciation?
-CDB