I don't navigate around people very well, and crowds are often exhausting instead of giving me energy. However, this last week, at school, crowds have been one of the things that have made my school finally feel like home again.
When I think of my favorite moments of the past two weeks of school, most of them have been when I have been in groups of people in close proximity. For example, when dancing in the music classroom with my 4th graders, we are in a pretty tight circle or grid formation. While dancing spaced out or at desk has had its merit, which we have had to do for the past couple of years, dancing closer to each other feels more free and joyful. Yes, that means that we bump into each other more, but that's an important part of the learning. Because part of what makes a school feel like being at home is learning how to share space by bumping into each other.
Standing in the lunch room with my fellow teachers, watching our students crowd around long tables in energetic conversations, we cannot help but whisper to each other and point out silly and wonderful things happening at the lunch tables. I find seeing children eat together fascinating. When it's the most joyful, these children transform from being classmates eating lunch together to a family sharing a meal. In these moments a cafeteria becomes a dining room.
We opened the school year with an assembly, and I had the privilege to lead part of the assembly with a speech and a song. As I sat there on stage, with the auditorium more full than its been since the pandemic started, I just looked around and marveled at the students, faculty, and staff surrounding me. We were all here together, and even though we shared a roof in the past two years, it felt different, being that space sharing the auditorium room. Our community felt bigger seeing us all together in one place and smaller as we were all in one place together.
I love walking down crowded hallways waving "hello" to classes of students passing by. I love the energy of a lunchroom, and I love seeing students enjoy each other presence while sharing that space in our school.
A big part of being a community is sharing space together and being together in groups. It's not just about being loud, sometimes, it's about being in a large group and reading silently together. These are what we have been missing so much for the past couple of years. Being together without worrying about spacing provides an important feeling of freedom.
I was worried that after the experience of social distancing, my students wouldn't know what to do with themselves when social distancing stopped. Here's the good news. They are doing just fine. It's clear that the distancing habits did not stick because I'm having the same conversations about spacing out with them before the pandemic.
The freedom to be close to other physically is something that, at times in the pandemic, could only happen at home. Now that I'm seeing it in school, that special feeling that school can be another home, is coming back.
And it feels great.
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