The pandemic plus-side (and there are some)

I am a progressive person.
I believe in improvement and making things better and enacting quick change if necessary to make improvements happen.

I do not believe that "things were better" in the past.
If they were so great, why did we strive to get to where we are now?
We only think things were better back when because we aren't living back then.

I sometimes fall into this, especially when I see how much time my kids are spending online since we are not doing much because of COVID. 

When I find myself doing this, however, I try to whisk myself back in time and maybe even do a little Google research.

Sometimes I only need to go back to my own childhood, when my mother thought me watching MTV for hours on end would lead to the atrophying of my brain. 

(Actually, she and my dad wouldn't get cable so I would go to my friends' houses and watch MTV there for hours on end. And she always wondered why I never wanted to invite friends to my house.)

And yet, here I am, with a master's degree and having read 68 books so far in 2020. 

Or I go back to the late 1800s when children my son's ages were working in factories under horrific conditions. 

Or working all day long on a farm doing back-breaking work. 

Or I think to children in other countries who are working in cobalt mines under horrific conditions like right now, in the year 2020. 

Last week I participated in an online lecture about tuberculosis, and I would not want to go back to when TB was epidemic.

Or polio was a thing.

Or smallpox was a thing. 

It is with this in mind, this movement forward and not focusing on what the past was like, that I look at non-traditional instruction for 6 weeks  (the rest of the year cause I know these fools going to pool parties and keggers are not gonna help the virus go away.)

There can be some real positives from online school for my kids such as N being able to work more and earn money to put toward car insurance or car purchase or college expenses. Or G not having to be around other dumb-ass middle schoolers all day (because he doesn't love middle schoolers even though he is one.) Or us being able to do some weekend trips around the state because we have greater flexibility. 

N actually read more books during the spring NTI than she normally does when she is at actual in-person school, and that isn't a bad thing. 

We all aren't running in 15 different directions all the time, which isn't a bad thing. 

NTI means families don't have to buy new uniforms or clothes or shoes or backpacks or lunchboxes or folders and pencils and all that other stuff. 

NTI means some people are finding more time to exercise since they aren't having to drive kids to and from school. 

NTI means kids are maybe having to be adaptable and flexible in ways they haven't had to be. 

And maybe, ultimately, that will be ok and even beneficial for them over the long-term. 

(I have to bite my tongue every time I see a parent comment about their kids potentially not having a prom or a ring ceremony because this historic pandemic event is the time to make things different which will be a f*ck load more memorable than say my own senior prom, in which I desperately wished while.I.was.actually.there that I wasn't there with my longterm boyfriend at the time who I wanted to break up with but didn't until I got into college.)

I mean, at 46 years of age, if my prom or ring ceremony or graduation actually mattered, I WOULD NEED TO BE SEEING A COUNSELOR. 

I think parents are getting way hung up on a lot of the things that I just don't know that they need to be getting so hung up on right now. 

(I also just finished reading The Poisonwood Bible, and if that novel doesn't make you look at American excess and convenience with a more critical eye, then something is the matter with you.)

Of course, I say all of this fully understanding that I am the people who benefit from American excess and convenience, from an upper-middle-class perspective and part-time employment that allows me tremendous flexibility to assist kids with schoolwork while still doing my stuff. 

That doesn't mean NTI in the spring was always fun or seamless, but it got done. 

And I do think school districts need to think very much outside the box to help kids who don't have home support or who are below grade-level. 

NTI could be an opportunity to micro-focus on the kids who aren't at grade level, perhaps. 

I never consider myself an optimist, and I certainly don't now (especially as it concerns how we're dealing with COVID), but I do think in every situation, there can be positives even in the midst of negatives.