A story (with pseudonyms)

“Raise your hand if you love school so much you wish you could live here!” Jose says during my 3rd graders’ social lunch break.

All ten students hands and my own shoot up. We giggle and smile at each other. The love for one another, for learning, for our safe space exudes.

When I was a kid, I loved school a lot too, but I never said I wanted to live there. These precious 8-year-olds with the purest heats have experienced what it’s like to be neglected their physical schooling for months. They appreciate it more than any other generation of children

They have suffered in learning at home, and want desperately to have a conducive learning environment again.
“Of course kids want to be in school, so do we, but we can’t because people will die.” This is the messaging from many Ts and families who believe schooling is impossible

Jose is a third grade English learner in New York City. He lives with his dad and his sister, who is also in third grade, but in a different class. Their mom lives in the Dominican Republic, and they haven’t seen her in a while, besides on FaceTime.

During another lunchtime, he said “raise your hand if sometimes you cry at night because you miss your mom and you haven’t seen her in two years.”

Jose’s sister is in a dual language class, and Jose is in my monolingual ENL (English as a New Language) class next door. When they’re learning virtually, they sit next to each other either their chromebooks simultaneously streaming their separate classes.

They both love school. They wang to learn and they want to do their work. They also want to help each other and they have a hard time staying focused on just one of the two third grade classes happening. When one has Phys. Ed. class, both want to participate.

When one is struggling with multiplication, they want to work together on it.

As a teacher, it’s hard to deny this student-to-student interaction and collaboration that we know is vital to children’s learning.

When Jose found out he would be coming to school five days a week, he jumped for joy (literally, out of his seat and 2 feet into the air). When Jose found out we were off for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, he said “oh no.... that means we have to have 3 whole days without school.”

Why is he SO excited about school? Jose knows, at age eight, school is the place where he can do his best learning, interact with peers, feel safe, grow, take risks, get his meals, go to the dentist & health clinic, detach from familial concerns, and so much more.

I could go on and on about the benefits of quality schools, which seem to be lost on many these days. But they are not lost on Jose.