SOUTH EGREMONT — Spring is in the air, and it reeks of transition — yet again. Over the weekend, I explained it to a friend like this: I’m having trouble gaining traction. You know, that good old-fashioned feeling one gets from digging into something in earnest and making tangible progress? I’m guessing it’s a feeling many can relate to, especially if you have school-aged kids and are trying to earn a living.
On Friday, despite temperatures that hovered around 30 degrees, I drove to April Hill to cover what was slated to be the last day of CLuB (Community Learning in the Berkshires). When I stepped out of my car, and donned a wool hat for the first time in weeks, the breeze carried the scent of woodsmoke; only then did I remember how slow in coming spring can be to these parts. A line of cars queued up in a drive-thru style pickup line (brilliant, BTW, and something I dreamed of when my kids were small, some still strapped in car seats) alerted me to another fact: the day’s plan, to honor the program’s close, had shifted — something that should have hardly surprised me. And yet somehow it did.
On March 12, the Massachusetts Education Commissioner released updated guidance on in-person learning requirements. His plan called for a phased-in approach beginning with the Commonwealth’s youngest learners (K-5) returning to full-time, in-person learning five days a week effective Monday, April 5. In anticipation of this pivot, CLuB planned an honor circle to bid a fond (and possibly teary) farewell to the roughly 200 students who have taken part in the full-day program, several days each week, while SBRSD and BHRSD remained in hybrid learning models.
Then Southern Berkshire Regional School District made a late-afternoon announcement on April 1: “In light of the number of positive cases reported this week … and the very large uptick in cases around us,” the District made “a very challenging decision” to move from the hybrid model to the remote model. As hard as I tried to wish this news into an April Fools’ Day joke (my daughter is a student in the District), it was not.
“Our staff made a 180-degree turn in a matter of hours and, by 7:33 p.m. on Thursday night, we had 45 children registered for the next day and the coming week of remote learning [at CLuB],” Maria Rundle, executive director of Flying Cloud Institute, told The Edge in a written statement. “We have a tremendously dedicated staff who has shown up in snowstorms, rain, and wind to care for and lift up the children we have come to deeply love,” she said of the collaborative effort to provide South County children with supervised remote learning sites throughout the academic year. “After seven months we are tired but looking forward to one more wonderful, sunny week together,” Rundle said of her team’s pitching in to extend the program for SBRSD students while the District pivots to a fully-remote model through Friday, April 9. Emergency funding, to continue this week’s extension of CLuB, was provided through the Berkshire Taconic Community Foundation.
In Great Barrington, Muddy Brook Elementary welcomed back students for full-time, in-person learning on Monday, as scheduled. Governor Baker’s reopening of elementary schools will be followed by middle schools (grades 6-8) on Wednesday, April 28; SBRSD was ahead of schedule in their plan to welcome all students back (through grade 12) on April 5. At present, they are slated to return on Monday, April 12, although nothing is set in stone (and the week-long April school vacation, beginning on Patriot’s Day, is scheduled to begin the following week).
The genesis of CLuB, which has been operating since late September, came as community leaders began to envision the detrimental effects of extended school closures and hybrid learning models for both students and families. “The lack of childcare and support for remote learning means we have about 20-25 percent of our families and kids that are about to go off a cliff, and the equity gap that already existed — exacerbated by distance learning in the spring — is going to tear the social fabric [of our community apart] … leaving behind a whole segment of our community who cannot successfully support remote learning,” Rundle told The Edge this fall.
This reality quickly became the impetus for CLuB’s five coalition partners — Flying Cloud, Berkshire South Regional Community Center, Flying Deer Nature Center, Greenagers, and Volunteers in Medicine — and several collaborating partners (including Berkshire Pulse, Berkshire Music School, BRIDGE, Southern Berkshire Rural Health Network, and the John Dewey Academy), to join forces in order to remedy the situation.
So yes, I’m ready to gain traction; I’m also kind of going to miss my middle-schooler sitting at the breakfast bar in our kitchen — where she has set up her remote classroom these past months — and the camaraderie we shared most mornings while I got ready for work. I am going to miss hearing the voices of her classmates, which I have come to recognize, and getting a glimpse of what it feels like to be an 8th grader again. I’m guessing she is not going to miss my loud singing while grinding coffee beans, or my chiming in with answers to her Spanish or science Cahoot! games, or my questions about Punnet squares.
My plan for making it through this next transition? I’m looking to nature. In March, when our rural dirt road was nearly impassable for days at a time, I took to walking to the end of the road to get the mail. Some days, the dismal landscape was hardly distinguishable from November; everywhere I looked, gray prevailed. Now, when I look closely, the wispy tips of the weeping willows — notoriously among the first trees to leaf out — are noticeably yellow; soon, the ruddy bud scales will litter the sidewalks in town and the oaks and maples will leaf out. But not until my forsythia blooms. Last year, this happened on April 15 (and the branches were heavy with spring snow on the 18th).
If I had to venture a guess, the pair of forsythia flanking my back door will bloom this week, possibly tomorrow. None of these things happens overnight, but when they do I am reminded of the potential lurking within the ancient trees, most of which surprise me every time it emerges. Which really means all things — from school’s opening to shrubs blooming — will happen in their own time, which I have come to understand is usually right on schedule.
