Answering a Grade 5 parent:

All of us are dealing with a lot of anxiety right now. Things feel unstable, uncertain; it’s hard to plan. And all of this is happening on top of the normal ebb and flow of daily life.

It’s a lot.

In some ways reaching grade-level benchmarks might not seem very important right now. There are benefits to school besides getting tagged as proficient. Absorbing work is an excellent way to block the anxiety spiral: giving the mind something complex and positive to engage with and conveying a sense of productivity, meaning, and connection. More subtly, when we continue school and learning, we communicate that life will go on after this. When we drop academic expectations completely, we communicate that we don’t expect a future in which people will need to know how to multiply or how to write sentences, for example. That is a scary thing to lay on an eleven-year-old.

As part of the school curriculum, writing gives children a space to work out their feelings, worries, and ideas about things, often without even realizing they are doing so. We are seeing lots of danger, both directly related to coronavirus and not, in the children’s writing. When they write, they can choose where they want to put their focus; they can organize their thinking, and, unlike in the real world, they can control how things end. Writing can both bestow a sense of power over a narrative and allow for venting and letting go. In many ways, writing is a more sophisticated version of imaginative play, and it holds many of the same emotional benefits.  Finally, working on things together through school reminds us that we are still part of a strong community, albeit one we won’t see in person for a little while—a community we need and which needs us. It invites and even requires everyone to reach out—on chats and hangouts and video messages—and stay in touch, stay connected.

Right now, it doesn’t feel like too many things are more important than that.