Pandemic Homeschool Milestones

May always sneaks up on me. Planning ahead, it looks like a routine month, but as it gets closer my calendar fills up with late school year special events. This year, for obvious reasons, that hasn’t really happened. The trade off for a peaceful May is the loss of some milestones that are pretty meaningful for my kids. Lockdown already has enough in common with Groundhog Day without ignoring milestones, so even if substitutions are just vestigial acknowledgements of old systems, we can’t afford to ignore them. We’re passing milestones during the pandemic, they just aren’t marking the same road we thought we would be on.

Mosaic Tiles

It’s a tradition at the elementary school that both my daughters attended for each graduating fifth grader to paint a ceramic tile. The tiles are then attached to a concrete retaining wall along the street. The year my oldest daughter graduated, they ran out of room on the wall, and decorated a set of stairs on the playground.

This year, my youngest daughter designed her tile – a copy of Munch’s Scream holding a paper with an F on it – but the school closed before they actually made the tiles. The art teacher swears that she will find a way to retrieve the supplies from the closed building and distribute them to students so the tiles can be completed. But no one knows how that will happen yet.

Teacher Appreciation Week

To be honest, my family is not very good about participating in teacher appreciation week. At our school, the PTSA usually provides lunch for the teachers and designates each day of the week with a theme, such as snacks, flowers, and cards. We usually forget what day it is until it’s too late. This year, since we can’t deliver chocolates and flowers, they asked the kids to write their teachers a letter.

Writing is something we do in this family. (That reminds me: If you haven’t seen it, Seattle Times ran my kids’ essays on their pandemic experience.) We still turned ours in late, but my daughter did write a letter to each of her teachers. I read them before I sent them in, and I think the teachers will really like them.

Yearbook

With only part of a year to photograph, putting together a school yearbook looked a little different this year. One parent, who is a professional photographer, volunteered to stand in front of the school for three days while kids from the graduating class showed up one at a time (thanks to 15 minute increment slots on a sign up app) for “senior” portraits. Another parent used Photoshop to create a fun virtual class photo. (Hopefully it’s okay that I post it. I cropped out the names but trying to blur faces made it too ugly.) I assume the yearbooks will be mailed. I don’t know what the high school is doing.

Islandwood

Another school tradition is a wilderness week. When my oldest was at the school, it was fourth graders at Naturebridge. They switched to fifth graders at Islandwood in the years between kids. So my youngest won’t get to spend a week in the woods with her classmates. At one point there was talk of mass sign ups for the same summer camp, or even scheduling a summer birthday party there. But now it’s looking like summer won’t be happening either. By the time Islandwood is an option again, I don’t think this bunch of kids will still think of themselves as a group anymore. They may have an adventure like this in the future (probably not) but it won’t be with their elementary school classmates.

Village Day

Another beloved tradition at our elementary school is Village Day. Every class in the school participates, and they spend weeks preparing. There is a bank that gives out paper money – students are granted a certain amount based on their classroom behavior or level of participation in preparing. Parents can buy Village money with U.S. dollars.

Each classroom has a business. Kindergarten classes sell bead necklaces and wind “chimes” made from painted paper plates. Other grades run carnival style booths, thrift shops, or even a pizza restaurant. It can get overwhelmingly hectic, even for adults. So one classroom has a movie theater, a quiet, darkened room where you can sit down and eat popcorn while videos play on the whiteboard. The event takes place after lunch in two shifts, so every student spends one shift working and one shift shopping.

Everyone loves Village Day.

When my oldest was in fifth grade, we planned our trip to China around getting back in time for Village. When our return was delayed 24 hours, we drove directly from the airport in Vancouver to the school, arriving just in time for the second shift. That was my youngest daughter’s first Village Day. She won’t get to have her last one. We’re trying not to think about it. There can be no Virtual Village.

Graduation

Like every other group activity, this year’s fifth grade graduation will be held on Zoom. I used to think elementary school graduations were dumb. But after my oldest daughter’s graduation I changed my mind. It was actually very sweet to hear the teachers’ talk about how our kids have grown. The kids’ own speeches about their experience of elementary school were both guileless and insightful. I even liked hearing them sing the super-annoying school song in what was probably their last unironic sing-along.

Sitting on the floor in the pint-sized gymnasium wasn’t very comfortable, though. So it’s possible that a Zoom ceremony will actually be more pleasant. And since it’s online in the evening instead of in person during school hours, long-distance family might be able to attend, too.

Teen Traditions

So far I’ve only talked about my fifth grader, since she’s moving to some version of middle school in the fall. Sophomore year isn’t full of major milestones, and our family isn’t really big on traditions. The high school’s spring formal slid in under the wire on the Saturday before large gatherings were banned. She didn’t go anyway. She and her friends had a girls’ night out instead. (Some people found this scandalous, since at least two of them are on student council and helped plan the dance.) They dressed up as if they were going to the dance. But instead they went out for ramen and bubble tea.

Driver’s License

But my teen’s sophomore year has a few disrupted traditions, too. She had just finished her drivers’ ed course when the pandemic hit. She needed another 35 hours or so of logged, supervised driving before she could take the final driving test. The reduced traffic resulting from a stay-at-home order, and the looser schedule of homeschooling could have made it much easier and less challenging to fulfill those hours.

But it turned out that driving was exactly the kind of trigger that released all the stress that both teen and parents were successfully ignoring at home. After only a few tense driving sessions, we all quietly let driving practice slip by the wayside. I know that traffic is going to be insane when things start opening up. So if we don’t get those hours logged soon, she probably won’t be getting her license this year, and I’ll be stuck driving her to the ice rink every day when it opens back up again. But we’ll cross that bridge when we come to it. It’s not like the DMV was likely to be open on her birthday anyway.

Sweet Sixteen

Yeah, my oldest daughter will be turning sixteen in lockdown. If all goes well, Washington state will move into the second phase of reopening a few days before her birthday. In that case, gatherings of five people will be permitted, and a birthday party consisting of her 2-3 closest friends will be the best gift she could possibly receive. But even if it doesn’t, she hasn’t seen any of her friends in person since early March. (Her sister has had “10-ft. playdates” but my teen’s a hugger and hasn’t wanted the temptation.)

So just in case, I’m trying to plan a 10-foot birthday in the back yard. And it’s complicated enough that it will probably need its own post.