There is a student screaming across the hall.
He is holding his gut and rocking back and forth in cries of wordless emotional pain as the rest of the class looks on in bewilderment.
Students from other rooms start to cluster around the door until a security guard makes them go away.
I close the door to my own classroom and try to settle my students down – but we can still hear him through the walls.
And then:
“Shut up!”
“You’re stupid!”
“Why don’t you make me!?”
Believe it or not, this is not what teaching middle school used to be like.
Eighth grade students were never perfect angels, but at least by then they used to know how to talk to one another. They could usually interact without constant sniping. They knew what was expected to get respect from each other and at least tried to do it.
But things have changed.
After 18 months of a pandemic, even when they aren’t infected with disease, children still are suffering tremendously from the effects of Covid-19.
Adolescents are dealing with higher rates of anxiety, depression, stress, and addictive internet behaviors.
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) reports that children between the ages of 5 and 11 visiting an emergency department because of a mental health crisis increased 24 percent from April through October of 2020 compared to the previous year. Among 12- to 17-year-olds, the number increased by 31 percent.
Suicide attempts among 12- to 17-year-old girls increased by about 50 percent over winter 2019, according to the CDC.
And these numbers are probably under reported since these increases took place at the height of a pandemic when many people were hesitant to seek medical attention.
As usual, the place where these issues are most visible is our public schools.
When Covid-19 swept our shores last year, much of the benefit of formal education fell through the cracks.
Consistency went out the window. Many schools went to on-line learning or a hybrid model of in-person and on-line offset with increasingly common periods of quarantine.
These were often necessary to keep kids and their families safe – and in some cases still are. As a society, we could have done more to blunt the blow such as paying parents to stay safe at home as well as supervise their children, but economic concerns took precedence to human ones.
And now we’re seeing the cost.
Many students attended school haphazardly and their parents often weren’t around to give them the kind of stability, role models or attention they’d normally get at school.
Today, as the pandemic still smolders on, and schools struggle to function as if the danger had passed, the result is classes of emotionally needy and socially awkward children.
There were so many fights in the halls of my building last week, we’re now operating on a soft lockdown to decrease unstructured time between classes.
And you know what – it’s not really kids’ fault.
They’re just trying to live in the world we’ve built for them.
More than 674,000 Americans have died from COVID.
According to the CDC, more than 140,000 children in the U.S. lost a primary or secondary caregiver such as a live-in grandparent or another family member to the virus.
Globally, that’s more than 1.5 million kids who have lost a parent, guardian or live-in relative to the pandemic, according to the Lancet.
No wonder kids are having trouble dealing with their emotions! Their support systems are shot!
My students are bright, caring, energetic and creative people. They have the same wants and needs as children always have. They just have fewer tools with which to meet them.
Administrators often focus on academic deficits.
They worry about learning loss and what the kids can’t do today versus students in the same grades before the pandemic. But I think this is a huge mistake.
My students are not suffering from a lack of academics. They’re suffering from a lack of social and emotional development.
I teach Language Arts and, sure, my kids may not have been exposed as deeply to certain concepts as those who came before them. They may not have written an acrostic poem or read Dickens or had as much experience writing. But that doesn’t mean they’re deficient.
Every child – every PERSON – learns at an individual rate. Some take longer than others. Some take more exposure, experience and practice. But learning is never lost.
Teachers know this. That’s why we scaffold our lessons. We get to know our kids and where they are before we can gauge what they still need to learn.
My students may not have read the play they would have in 7th grade, but I can help them understand the components of drama when we read a play in the curriculum for 8th grade. They may not have written a particular type of poem last year, but we can still read one and understand it this year.
Many students have difficulties with spelling and punctuation. That’s true this year as well as any other. That doesn’t mean they’ve lost anything. It means they need more instruction and practice.
I’m not worried about that. It’s really pretty similar to any other year.
What does concern me is the level of immaturity and social awkwardness I’m seeing.
People aren’t machines. You can’t flip a switch and they just learn.
You have to create an environment that is conducive to learning.
Part of that is creating a class culture where everyone feels respected and safe. That’s difficult to do when kids don’t know how to communicate without conflict.
That’s difficult when their sense of safety has been deeply impacted. Community members whining about security measures like wearing masks and getting vaccinated don’t help this – not at all.
In schools, we’re trying to instill a sense of consistency and care. We’re trying to teach kids the basics of human interaction again – something even some adults are having to relearn.
And let me tell you – it’s extremely hard in large, anxious groups dealing with the continuing uncertainty of our times.
My own health has suffered under the pressures with which educators are forced to contend. Unnecessary paperwork, increased expectations, lack of respect and compensation have teachers stretched to a breaking point.
I was in and out of the hospital all last week and the district had great difficulty finding an adult to sub for me.
For two days they resorted to hiring parents from the community to watch my classes. I’m told that one of them reported to the office at the end of the day and promptly told the secretary not to call her tomorrow, that she was never coming back.
It’s hard for professional educators, too.
According to a 2020 survey by the New York Life Foundation and American Federation of Teachers, only 15% of teachers feel comfortable addressing grief or trauma tied to the pandemic.
My kids are not demons.
They are not monsters or evil or incorrigible.
They’re just kids who really need our love and support.
I feel for them. I really do.
When I’m here, I do everything I can to help them feel safe, secure, respected and cared for.
It’s certainly not easy.
At lunch the other day, one student came to my door and scratched on the window. He was in tears.
I let him in and asked what was wrong.
He was at his wits end about his home life and felt lost. I sat with him, we talked it out and I asked if there was anything else I could do for him.
He said, “Yes. Can I have a hug?”
So even now, with COVID out there in the community and my mask securely fastened, I did it. I gave him a hug.
That’s the need I’m seeing in schools right now.
It’s not academics. That will be fine if we can take care of the emotional and social needs of our students.
But this can’t be accomplished by teachers alone – nor even administrators, school boards and districts.
We need to build a world that cares about children.
We need to value their lives and needs.
It’s not enough to care whether a child is born. We have to care whether a child is taken care of, healthy and loved.
And that means looking out for their parents, too.
If parents didn’t have to sacrifice themselves to their jobs, they could spend more time with their kids.
When your job constantly demands more time, at all times of the day and night, you can’t be there effectively for the ones you love.
We talk about family values, but we do little to value families. Only their credit score and earning power.
This is a problem that won’t be solved overnight.
It may far outlast the pandemic, itself.
To heal our kids, we have to heal our society.
In fact, we can’t do one without doing the other.
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