?How did the kids react when they found out they were going back to online school"? my mom messaged me.
?Honestly, I don?t think anything could faze them at this point.?
It was a grim realization. Almost two years into this pandemic, my kids seem to have developed somewhat of a self-protective shield: Don’t get too excited about something, because it might not happen. In fact, my kids are so used to things not working out, to plans being changed, to not getting to live their lives like kids should that they barely blinked an eye when they heard our premier, Doug Ford, announce just two days before school was going to start that classes would be online instead. Their non-reaction was even more unsettling considering  that the government had, just four days prior, announced schools WERE going back in person, two days late but with enhanced safety measures in place. It?s almost like they saw through that promise from the start.
Before kids were vaccinated?heck, before anyone was vaccinated?I understood the need to reduce transmission and while it seems even experts can?t agree on what role schools play in spreading COVID, and how worried we should be if our kids get it, on some level it made sense that not allowing groups of 20 or 30 unvaccinated kids to gather every day could be helpful, although far from ideal.
It?s a cruel twist of fate though, that just as kids across the country were getting their vaccines, a new fast-spreading variant roared in, taking away a...