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I ended my last blog post with the expression “only in Israel.” This is a sentiment that newcomers to Israel, from participants on teen tours to retirees, have often.
Sometimes it refers to the surprising sweetness of tomatoes, mangoes, and other locally grown produce.
Sometimes it refers to the kismet-on-steriods way that fate intervenes here. One regularly repeatedly runs into friends from all stages of life, neighbors, and even cab drivers (my parents hailed a cab driven by the same driver twice on the same day in two different parts of the city), and ridiculously improbable ‘coincidences’ happen all the time. One senses being a small but significant pawn in the Supreme Intelligence’s chess game. It is unnerving, and beautiful.
Sometimes the ‘only in Israel’ feeling occurs when witnessing the surprising hospitality of strangers here. Example: the former Consul General to a large Midwestern community happens to live near us, having just returned from shlichut (service). Upon learning we have children in the same grade, she offered to drive my son home on the first day of school. We haven’t even met.
But this week, I’m hearing ‘only in Israel’ echoing in my head in much more complicated tones, like a simple classical melody that has been stretched into a furious pace and then bent in a minor key. I am referring specifically to the decision to reopen schools for 2.4 million children this week.
To be fair, there’s a lot of data points that would align in favor of opening schools: only 7% of Covid cases are in children under 18, children are rarely the primary transmitters of the virus even among family members, less than .1 % of Covid-related deaths are children.
Moreover, closing schools is disastrous for children’s social, emotional and intellectual well-being. Kids in America are experiencing much higher rates of depression and isolation, learning outcomes have plummeted; low-income, minority and students with disabilities suffer even more than their average counterparts; mental health suffers across the board, and schools’ and parents’ ability to support students with pre-existing mental health conditions plummets. All of this not to mention the ongoing and profound stress on children and on their parents, especially mothers, who are trying to perpetually toggle between their personal and professional selves. Finally, closing schools takes an unfathomable toll on children who are trapped in homes with physical, mental or sexual abuse.
But nonetheless, most American schools decided not to reopen in person. Observing from abroad, seems to me that the reason for this decision stems from a deep American aversion to risk. Even if only .1% of Covid deaths occur in children (a true statistic), with the death toll creeping towards 200,000 this is not an insignificant number. Furthermore, the publicity around the long term impact of Covid even on children has further promulgated the fear that opening schools would cause harm. And of course the elephant in the room is fear of transmission to adults.
In the United States, school districts made a decision months ago about whether school would be virtual or live months ago, and rolled out relatively orderly plans based on careful calculation of the relative risk of online vs live schooling. Most districts made the decision not to offer live schooling.
Israel, by contrast, has gone a very different route. First, the government delayed until the very last moment to make a decision of what to do this year. School opened on Tuesday, September 1st, and until Sunday night there was very little clarity about what the final reopening plan would be. 2.4 million children, including the Bambergers, had very little sense if their school would be online, in person, or hybrid until the day before school started.
Second, the final decision included guidelines, not behavioral recommendations.
The guidelines themselves are part of a plan you can read about here, which aims to give citizens maximum freedom while minimizing the likelihood of contagion. The “Stop Light Plan” is truly Talumudic in its complexity. The government has tried to balance the needs of individuals and individual communities while still protecting the public and the public square.
With schools the plan focused on guidelines…no more than 18 students in a class, sitting 6 feet apart (I think).
Three days in, I can report that we are witnessing a staggering flourish of educational creativity, and a fascinating case study in what happens when ultimate decision making is devolved not just to the local level but to the smallest micro level possible, namely, the teachers of each grade.
Yes, you read that right–here in Israel not even schools decide how to balance online and in person learning, but the leaders of each grade. I have five children, and each of their programs has decided to pursue a different strategy.
- The elementary school has live school only, 8-2 pm, five days a week. No zoom at all.
- The 7th grade has a double back flip of schedule, from what I can tell: two days all in person, two “mixed” days with morning learning at school, and afternoons from home on Zoom. One day all zoom. I find it highly improbable that my child will ever have the right textbook at the right location and the right time, but we’ll see.
- The 9th grade has only in person school for the first three weeks, but only 4 hours of school a day. After the Jewish holidays (mid-October), they plan to switch to all zoom.
- The 11th grader has one day all zoom, and the rest all at the school, with a half day on Tuesdays. If classes are larger than the allotted number of students so that desks can be six feet apart, kids learn while sitting in the hallways. I kid you not.
- The Mechina of our 17 year old has divided participants into smaller capsulim with whom they live and take all of their classes–15 rather than 30 kids–but I think other than that the program will be all live.
School itself has become a sort of performance art piece: part pop-up exhibition, part virtual experience, part visit to sit and learn in the parks or fields or museums nearby. Everyone is expected to be ready to switch locations on a moment’s notice. Sometimes, with all the chaos, teachers make mistakes, like the teacher today who forgot to send out a zoom link to his students until a parent finally wrote the teacher directly.
Kids seem excited about the adventure and unpredictability. Teachers–and remember, these are poorly compensated public school teachers with families of their own–seem to be pulling 16 hour days, whatsapp and texting with parents and students alike from 6 in the morning to 10 or 11 at night. There’s a dogged determination to make sure that each and every student gets not just textbooks and notebooks and school supplies, but also friends, and educational and emotional support, and group bonding, and good systems for doing homework and keeping organized.
My children, thank G-d, seem happy. They are excited about their classes, and not too overwhelmed by the language. And after not having been in a school since early March, they are pretty excited to be back in school, even if the kids, teachers, language and school culture are new.
So will some, all or none of these plans work?
Here is the rub. Israeli’s Corona infection list is skyrocketing. Israel now has the grim honor of having the highest rolling 7 day average of new Corona infections in the world.
Only in Israel.
And so I, for one, feel like when 2.4 million students go back to school, even if they are “only” 18 kids to a class, sitting 6 feet apart (which in elementary school they aren’t), wearing masks (in elementary school, they aren’t), and not playing together or rough-housing (come on, let’s be realistic, these are kids), the likelihood that schools will become vectors is extremely high.
On the one hand, I so appreciate the heroic efforts that teachers and schools have gone through to give students a sense of normalcy. In just three days of school, my children have gotten to know their teachers, made new friends, attended classes in such diverse topics as physics, Arabic, Hebrew literature, language, citizenship, history, Jewish thought, Talmud, and Bible. Not only have they met their teachers, they each have been contacted by a guidance counselor and/or support services team member to make sure their integration goes smoothly. They’ve gotten to know the half hour walk home from their school, through Jerusalem’s winding streets named for sages and prophets of bygone days. In the age of Corona, I fully recognize that all of these embodied experiences are precious, and not to be taken for granted.
On the other hand, I feel like I am watching an incoming trainwreck. Today was the first day ever that Israel broke 3,000 new daily cases. Although the death rate is surprisingly low–about 43rd in the world per capita–the government is trying to contain the epidemic. The law mandates that anyone in contact with someone with Corona, or in contact with someone in contact with Corona, will have to self-isolate for two weeks. Not surprisingly, by day 2 of school, 4 students are already in quarantine. Hard to imagine that trend will not continue.
There are other countries in the world that are reopening, the most ambitious being China. China’s belief was that first you eradicate the virus, and then you reopen schools. This WSJ video describes the reopening in China. Students appear calm, orderly, and able to maintain distance.
Israel, by contrast, seems to really believe that you can open schools and be the world leader in new cases at the same time.
I know that this seems crazy to risk-averse Americans, but I think the logic runs as follows. 200 new cases per million as a rolling day average is still statistically a small number, about 1 in 500 people. These cases are overwhelmingly concentrated in Arab towns right now, and in ultra-orthodox communities. Those schools are not allowed to open until the number of new cases decreases. So why not let the other school districts open, where the rates of transmission are currently very low?
Students are supposed to social distance, wash their hands, use hand sanitizer, and wear masks. The school won’t let students in without a daily updated virtual note from each parent stating each child is healthy and hasn’t had any exposure to anyone with Corona for two weeks. The class sizes are significantly smaller than usually–Israeli classes are allowed to have up to 42 students, I believe, so 18 students per capsule is a radical pedagogical shift. Interestingly, mask use here is mandated by law, and has become universal.
But when I imagine what Israeli schools look like, it’s like an SNL parody of the previous video about China. Israeli schools exist in exuberant chaos. Everyone talks at the same time. If a teacher can’t show up, the school doesn’t send a substitute. The children–even 7 year olds, as we learned yesterday–are left to fend for themselves. Classrooms are small. There’s a heat wave across the region, and even balmy Jerusalem hit 107 degrees fahrenheit yesterday. Everyone is unbearably hot and not using their best judgement. Parents crowd around the gate to let parents in and out of the school, barely 6 inches apart, and kids play on play structures and play ball at recess and have some semblance of normalcy. Which is good for the individual kids, and will no doubt speed up the spread in any infected area.
Not surprisingly, the grand experiment in reopening may be short lived. On the first day of school, 8 towns were asked to close. By the third day, that number had jumped to thirty.
So for now, we hover in a strange liminal place in the Corona world. On the one hand, it’s a tremendous relief to be in a place where people have more or less returned to normal life. Cafes and stores and restaurants are all open, people have begun to return to offices, even the malls are filled.
On the other hand, are Israelis living in a bubble of make believe? The approach of only closing schools and encouraging more lockdown behavior on a town by town and neighborhood by neighborhood level is either daring and brilliant, or tragically flawed. Time will tell.
Readers–what is going on in your town, city or country? Any approaches that you feel should be scaled?
Shabbat shalom, and I look forward to hearing all of your thoughts.
Pomegranate Dreams 