Front Porch: Kids need constant reminders, then add face masks

Send kids back to school or not.

I’m glad it’s not my decision to make, but I have gained a little insight into some of the not-unexpected dynamics of how kids are likely to behave, based on summer day camp experiences my son is now having.

Sam has worked in the Seattle area theater community for a good number of years now, and for the past 15 summers or so had taught summer camps at a performing arts training organization for kids. The camps are themed – based on popular plays, movies and TV shows, as well as practical theater craft – with curricula organized around age level and the particular interests of the participating children. (“The dynamics of every group are always different, so we adjust,” Sam says.)

The first month of one-week camps this summer were virtual, a tough concept for activities that are so up-close and interactive. Sam tells me that, despite his reservations about attempting an online camp, the experience went remarkably well, all obstacles considered. Eager kids with a passion for theater and other artistic things. In other words, motivated kids who were pretty darn restless and eager to return to something they love.

Late in July, they moved to limited in-person camps, under the Phase 2 guidelines of reopening. Rather than up to 30 participants per camp, there are fewer than 10. Social distancing is being maintained, hands are washed often, markers and other art supplies are sanitized after use, and kids wear face masks.

Those are the rules.

The first week, a teacher in a room next to Sam’s, which was separated by a large window, needed to step out of the room and asked Sam if he could keep an eye on her kids for just a minute, which he did. The second the teacher left the room, one boy pulled his face mask off, which he did repeatedly during the week. Not realizing Sam was watching, he was a bit taken aback when Sam, in his booming grown-up voice, called out, “Masks up!”

“Sure, everyone’s been pent up,” Sam said. “Kids not wearing masks at home for four months, except when going out with the family. And of course, they don’t understand the ramifications. It’s a steep learning curve.”

Another child, probably with allergies, took his face mask off whenever he had to cough or sneeze. They gently worked with him to figure out how to handle that. And while this wasn’t the case here, it had Sam wondering how many parents, out of growing economic necessity, will be putting acetaminophen into their sick kids and getting them out the door and into school, should schools reopen this fall.

There were some hopeful signs, however.

The kids in Sam’s how-to-audition camp were ages 7 to 11. Masks on all the time for the handful of enrollees, except for individual performers when they were on stage doing a monologue – where facial expression was part of the exercise – and the other face-masked students were situated far back.

Early on, one girl lowered her mask to take a drink of water, which was certainly OK. A little boy, who Sam describes as a bundle of energy, started running over to her as she was putting her mask back on.

Sam said: “She threw up her hands and with that, some shade, saying quite directly, ‘You WILL give me 6 feet of space.’ And that’s just what he did. Watching her own her own power was amazing.”

Performing arts camp, where, this summer at least, there is one instructor for about every five kids, isn’t quite a microcosm of a typical classroom. But no matter the circumstance, kids are squiggly little things, wherever they are, not known for their love of following the rules, who like to make mischief and who will get away with whatever they can.

Even so, there is this: By the end of the first week of in-person camp, many (but not all) of the kids were getting the rhythm of the new way of doing things. Not perfect, and with lapses, but still fun and still with the desired (modified) learning experience.

Yet at the start of each week the camps refresh, and they start anew. New kids, same learning curve, same problems.

They are children, after all. It’s often their mission to be those very same cats that are so famously difficult to herd. How can on-site school possibly work in rising COVID-19 times when we’re talking about millions of kids with not enough teachers in facilities in no way designed for this?