The Positives of the Pandemic

“What are we doing to our children!” they screamed on social media and in person.

“You won’t muzzle me!”

Now that COVID has reached endemic status, it is easy to forget where we came from and how we got here. It’s easy to claim that all the restrictions caused untold harm while doing nothing to mitigate the effects of the virus. It’s easy to dismiss one million deaths in this country alone.

Our view on Burnt Lake in the BWCA.

This isn’t about all of that. COVID was an unknown variant, and likely because of our efforts to prevent its spread early on we were able to develop a vaccine and slow the spread to a point where it was manageable by hospitals.

But what about the children?

My children weathered the storm of the pandemic just fine, thank you very much. Not because they are superhuman or more special than everyone else’s kids (they are, obviously), but because rather than focusing on what we couldn’t do we instead focused on the opportunities the pandemic and lockdown presented to us.

We ate a lot of meals together as a family without electronics.

Without the constant drain of summer sports travel fees, we had more money and did not feel the pinch of multiple $500-plus baseball tournament weekends.

We spent more time outdoors sitting around campfires and just talking.

Martin, Jack, and Logan all experienced a trip to the Boundary Waters Canoe Area and felt the effects of no cell coverage (along with the withdrawal symptoms of literally no contact with their social media “friends”).

We played catch in the backyard and went on motorcycle rides. We watched movies together. We sat down and talked about things and time slowed down for a while.

We did all of the things we often wished we could do if only we had the time.

Children are resilient and respond to whatever vibe we give off. If we focus on everything they are missing out on and lament all of the opportunities they lost, then that will be their frame of mind: that they have been cheated out of something irreplaceable.

If we adapt to changes and make the best out of a situation, our children will learn to do the same and become more resilient in a world where the only constant is change.

And I believe that is the best lesson we can teach them.

Note: This was written a couple years ago as we were returning to some normalcy following the COVID-19 pandemic. I simply never got around to publishing it.

Education Evolution

I can still remember the worst grade I ever received in high school: A D- in Physics.

I should be thankful that Mr. Simms gave me a passing grade because I am fairly certain that I didn’t deserve it, but in my defense he was a terrible teacher. I don’t remember a whole lot of explanation about the properties of physics and theories and such, but I do remember being told to read the book and do some problems quite a bit. I also remember hearing the lectures that seemed like they come straight out of a 1980s movie featuring stereotypical rotten teachers. Mr. Simms would often regale us with stories about his son Thomas going into the library at the University of Nebraska and being the “only caucasian in the bunch.” He would emphasize his disappointment in our generation by letting us know that “the Japs are taking over.”

Needless to say, I was less than thrilled with this class, but to be fair I wasn’t really thrilled with any part of my education through my freshman and most of my sophomore year of high school. Learning came naturally for me and school was usually easy, but my motivation to put any effort into my education was nonexistent. Even the “good” teachers saw me underachieve. I didn’t think I was smarter than anyone else, I just didn’t care. My parents expected Bs or higher (or I would be paying my car insurance myself!) so I did as little as I possibly could to maintain a B average. I was the very definition of water finding the easiest path to flow downhill and all that.

About halfway through my sophomore year something changed and even today I am hard-pressed to explain how it came about or why it happened. It certainly would make for a better story if some all-star teacher taught me how to value education so I could better my life and get out of the inner city, but I lived in a middle-class home and none of my teachers really did anything like that. It would even make a decent story if I suffered some terrible accident or got thumped on the head and had some sort of epiphany about not having any more time to waste so I decided to take my education seriously.

Nothing like that happened. Maybe it was simply my impending graduation and uncertainty about what to do next that brought about the change in me, but I began to do better in school based on a few premises:

• The people paid to teach me know more about their subjects than I do whether I like them or not.
• I like to learn new things.
• People smarter than me think I should know this stuff.

I decided to change my entire outlook on my education. Instead of focusing on grades, I instead focused on learning as much as I could. In fact, I quit worrying about grades altogether and instead made a conscious effort to ask questions and be actively involved in all of my classes. Again, I don’t know why, but the results were astounding.

Instead of scrambling to turn in last-minute work done half-assed merely to get the points, I focused on doing the best I could and learning all that I could. My grades easily improved to As and Bs without any more work than I was putting in before. In journalism, my curiosity was piqued and I wrote many terrible stories as I tried to learn how to create through writing. I even wrote an editorial about the ratio of counselors to students, arguing that our school needed more (still terribly written work, but it sure did make the administration angry). In Human Biology, I came in for labs after football practice simply to sketch out slides of parasites and dissect our mink. In Quest for Peace (called Peace with Reis, the teacher who taught it), I learned in a simulation that making deals with other countries and then stabbing them in the back will turn out poorly when the rest of the class (world) unites against you.

I was learning and I was enjoying it. My junior and senior years of high school saw me actively engaged in learning, sometimes even enthusiastically. I absolutely enjoyed my last two years of high school, I think simply because I sold out to the process. Of course I still had some teachers I didn’t really care for, but even then I could appreciate what they were trying to teach me.

As a teacher myself, I now understand that even though we are not supposed to play favorites, we are all human. A teacher’s favorite student is not necessarily the smartest or the biggest ass-kisser. However, the student who is actively trying to learn, asking questions, and making mistakes will always find a way to make it to the top of the list.