Heading Back To School This Fall
Are you prepared to go back to school? There’s a lot going on and preparing can be chaotic. Fortunately, we have an amazing selection of back to school supplies for you to explore. Do your kids have all their bits and bobs from kindergarten through to college or university? Or maybe you’re the type of independent student who’s doing their best to prepare for it in your own way. Even if you’re the teacher who needs to get into gear for the upcoming year, we have everything you could ever dream of needing!
Early this spring, school gates around the world slammed shut. By early April, an astonishing 1.5 billion young people were staying home as part of broader shutdowns to protect people from the novel coronavirus. Virtual education is often a pale shadow of the real thing and left many parents juggling jobs and childcare. Lower-income children who depend on school meals were going hungry. And there were hints that children were suffering increased abuse, now that school staff could no longer spot and report early signs of it. It was time, a growing chorus said, to bring children back to school.
By early June, more than 20 countries had done just that. (Some others, including Taiwan, Nicaragua, and Sweden, never closed their schools.) It was a vast, uncontrolled experiment. Some schools imposed strict limits on contact between children, while others let them play freely. Some required masks, while others made them optional. Some closed temporarily if just one student was diagnosed with COVID-19; others stayed open even when multiple children or staff were affected, sending only ill people and direct contacts into quarantine.
The scenes hardly resemble typical school: Preschool children instructed to spend recess playing alone inside a chalk square. Eight-year-olds told not to speak to their friends. Middle schoolers reminded to steer clear of classmates when entering or leaving the building. Netherlands cut class sizes in half but didn’t enforce distancing among students under age 12 when they reopened in April. Other schools adopted a “pod” model as a compromise. Denmark, the first country in Europe to reopen schools, assigned children to small groups that could congregate at recess. It also found creative ways to give those groups as much space and fresh air as possible, even teaching classes in a graveyard. Some classes in Belgium met in churches to keep students spread out. Finland has kept normal class sizes, but prevents classes from mixing with one another.
In Denmark, nationwide case numbers continued to decline after day care centers and elementary schools opened on 15 April, and middle and high schools followed in May. In the Netherlands, new cases stayed flat and then dropped after elementary schools opened part-time on 11 May and high schools opened on 2 June. In Finland, Belgium, and Austria, too, officials say they found no evidence of increased spread of the novel coronavirus after schools reopened.
In much of the world, schools that closed in March remain closed through the summer break, and autumn will see a wave of reopenings. In places, ranging from Mexico to Afghanistan to the United States, planning for fall 2020 is underway. In the United States, school districts are releasing a patchwork of plans, which often include hybrid models that alternate distance learning with small in-person classes.
Parents unwilling to homeschool indefinitely will have to get comfortable with managing the risk of COVID-19 at school and in extracurricular activities. What will happen in September remains uncertain, but it is likely to be a hybrid of in-person and distance learning.