Ambient Cheery Mayhem

My two kids have been learning remotely since the beginning of the pandemic. With my wife and I both working remotely, and with her having a flexible schedule, we're one of the very lucky families for whom this is a totally feasible option.

Eventually there will be whole dissertations written about this time of remote learning; about the pros and cons, about how hard it's been on teachers and students alike, and about whether much learning even happens at all. In so many ways it's not ideal. I've worked remotely for several years, and it's tough for me to stay focused during my intermittent Zoom meetings. How a middle-schooler can be expected to learn on Zoom all day I don't know. But right now everyone is doing the best they can–trying to balance a hundred different considerations, and regularly making impossible choices.

But I'd like to highlight a very selfish perk that I've found amidst all of this. Earlier this week I found myself standing in the kitchen and listening to my daughter's 6th grade class. The teacher was chatting with a "Zoomer" (their quirky term for remote students) and there must have been a group activity because I heard a bunch of kids talking over each other in the background, laughing, and just being kids. The general happy pandimonium, and the voice of the teacher was such a welcome sound floating through the house. Similarly, I love hearing the clarinet and the guitar playing during my kids' respective music classes, and the poor music teachers attempting the impossible task of coordinating in-class and remote band members.

It suprises me how comforting I find these school sounds. Maybe it's just the sound of normalcy in weird times, or maybe I have much more positive associations with my time in school than I realized. Either way it's something I look forward to every day and, even though in-person school can't come soon enough, I will miss that aspect of this situation when it's gone.