Good morning boys and boys — Welcome to Zoom School. Come on in, shoes off at the door, this is slobbering beast is our mascot, Gus the dog, and I will be your principal, Mom. Everyone with a core body temp of 98.6 or lower? Masks handy? Right, then! You’ll find the sanitizer strategically placed about the house. We have quite a bit of it, actually, by strange happenstance. One of our pupils is actually something of a pyromaniac and the alcohol content makes the stuff highly flammable, so we were quite surprised to find such an arsenal of it in his locker when he was able to come clean it out last June. Handy, really. At the height of the scarcity, with shelves all over town stripped bare of cleaning and sanitizing supplies–and here in Locker 818 we suddenly had the motherload. Yes, we too were a little giddy. So help yourself.

Okay good, let’s get started. We have three state-of-the-home study areas for you: the dining table where you will compete for space with broken objects, overdue library books, and unread mail. Every learner needs a challenge, eh? Seven hours in my grandmother’s antique dining chair ought to do it. Our second area is this well-lit room aptly named the sun room, you could also call it the spooky collections room, where our own children refused sleepovers because of the vintage dolls in the glass case over there; but don’t worry, the only ghost in here is a piano that hasn’t been played since 2008. You can work here, at a mammoth roll top desk that hasn’t been dusted in as many years and is pleasantly stuffed with unpaid bills, loose photos of unidentified relatives, and coin rolling envelopes (Won’t be needing those anytime soon, now will we?) I must apologize about all the paper. Ordinarily our administrative assistant would take care of all that filing but she left to work overtime as a mom. Regrettably, so did our cook. So yes, there is a bit of clutter. Around here young sir, we don’t “spark joy,” we firebomb it with a hoarder’s abandon. You’ll be fine in here, just you, the Kewpie doll and a stuffed bear. Our last area is a little more temporary so we’ll save that for boy, who likes his interruptions and distractions peppered with a little formal instruction from time to time. He’ll do nicely at the kitchen table, where the glare isn’t so bad on Strike Force Heroes.

Now you all have your block schedule; there is no bell unless you count the ringing phone or the oven timer. I can turn off the driveway alarm so that the Amazon delivery doesn’t interrupt math class and so that you won’t realize the administration has snuck out for a power walk, leaving you to your own devices. Yes, sadly, I mean that literally. In the meantime, enjoy the home-like atmosphere we’ve created. I read in a book that you should always bake something if you have children at home to give them that reassuring sense of belonging. So, even if we’re completely out of ingredients and I have nothing to bake I’ll be setting the timer anyway. Feel homey. If all else fails I can run a vacuum or a load of laundry to shock your video-dulled brains back into the realization: Yes, I really am home in the middle of the blooming day. Remember those dreams, nightmares really, that you missed the bus and then showed up in your pajamas–or better still, naked–on the day you had a major test you forgot to study for? We’ve all had them. Here at Zoom school, we’ve committed to give you that uncanny, fresh “Day 1” panic of the pandemic all year long. But remember boys, there’s more than one way to be truant. So from time to time I’ll be walking through the room ostensibly putting away laundry (in the dining room) but really peeking over your shoulder to see what all you’re up to. Since I have the equivalent of a 6th grade education in math, your algebra or geometry notes really could be the redstone specs for Minecraft. Of course you should all “enable video” to show that you are interested and involved. No, your teachers won’t want to look at ceiling fans all day or a close-up of your forehead, so sit up straight and smile for the camera. Pulling photos of chicken nuggets off the internet to use as your virtual background is unacceptable, as is the wearing of hoods, hats and sunglasses. I have heard of one county whose students were successful in placing the word “poop” over the teacher’s virtual head and their IT personnel were unable to remove it for two full days. This sort of unruly behavior will not be tolerated. Keep your scatological humor for the breakout rooms.

I do understand that you will be needing a larger monitor because those 13″ Chromebooks we issued are so inadequate and strangely, our student body seems utterly fixated on the visual quality of our online experience. When paired with their reluctance to appear on screen in their classes, I can only assume that it is all the better to see biology notes driving this concern for pixels and resolution. I need to alert you, boys, that due to the fact we could not find an instructor, Fortnite 101 will not meet this fall. We have heard of students setting up two and three monitors–in their own bedrooms even, but we also heard the term “kill switch” so have quickly put that excess to rest. Really, people! We have a lot of solid academic work to do in Zoom School. For math we will work equations such as amount of time spent staring at screens, for biology we study the effects of said quantified screen time on permanent retinal deterioration, and for gym we will watch videos of people exercising and then “table talk” that rousing experience. For Language arts we will be studying–you guessed it — text features! I know you’ve had that in 4^th, 6^th  and 8^th grades already, so you should be stellar. Cuts down on all that costly photocopying if we can just repeat whole chunks of the curriculum over the course of a student’s schooling. Hence, the Cell again in biology. Anyhoo, we find that as our student body become less and less literate that the analysis of text and the designs behind it are our most fruitless waste of time. I had hoped to read some great literature or some contemporary novels, even launch a discussion group but alas, our reading time is shrunk to a mere 10 or 15 minutes at the beginning of class while your teacher fiddles with her microphone. You know, it’s funny. We think of virtual learning as all new. But it’s not the pandemic that invented “virtual” learning. No sir-ee. Over 20 years ago, in fact, the state of VA instituted the SOL, our first hint that time spent in a classroom could amount to little or nothing at all.

Just as in “real” school, lunch will be a highlight of your day. You will be allowed to sit together and though I do not have any styro-foam trays or environmentally offensive containers, I will buy food requiring a microwave for its preparation, has the sodium content to stroke out a small animal and when you are “done” you can throw half of it in the woods. If the “virtual” baking yields cookies, all good–and if not I ought to be able to scrounge some stale goldfish from under the sofa that the mascot has missed. For recess we shall put you out to air like a comforter and hope that you won’t notice the woeful condition of our playground equipment. Should more exercise than chucking acorns at each other be warranted, we have a giant 8 x 10′ hole in the woods that needs to be filled in with dirt. Don’t get so squirrelly with me–other people did it and they won all kinds of awards for the book and the movie.

I am aware that online school is not ideal. For one, it has all but doubled your screen time, which for teenage boys was already somewhere in the neighborhood of 7-8 hours daily. As the American Academy of Pediatricians recommends no more than two hours for the developing brain, you have really outdone yourself. Here at Zoom School, we’re committed to the principle that seated passive viewing is the best replacement for all those power points your teacher would have slogged through in-person and then turned you loose with worksheets to your “table group” for “collaborative work,” where one type A student (a girl, no doubt) would have dutifully executed the assignment while the rest of you rolled about and dinked on your phones. Don’t worry about the “mute” button. You won’t need it. What do you think this is, a Socratic seminar? We got rid of show and tell, we got rid of teaching penmanship and formal grammar, we’re working on eradicating hands-on projects and can sure as heck get rid of classroom discussions. You want to create, discover, or investigate something–sorry, wrong classroom. That’s GT, down the hall, third door on your left. You’ll be relieved to see that, just like the modern in-person SOL classroom, the teacher’s creativity, charisma, wit, care, depth of character, innovation, wisdom and seasoned experience have been filtered out so that what stands is quite a cut and dried little lesson you can master in a day — and then promptly forget.

Now for the bottom line: your grades. Many of our parents have noted that working fulltime jobs and managing a household takes up almost every waking minute of their day and that becoming a fulltime teacher is a bit of a stretch. They tell me you are young men, responsible for your own learning, and that they tell me they are holding you to the only 4.0 you may see in this lifetime. With only four classes, two of which are such stirring electives as “study hall,” “gym” and “band,” I tend to agree with your parents. The excuse, “I didn’t have time” is–let’s be honest–kind of a gas. Or, “My computer wasn’t working”–really people? You, who have been hacking through the school’s firewall for years to download YouTube or watch NCIS–this is your moment.

And now, Zoom students, every pandemic has its silver lining: circle time has been replaced by “tile time,” where disembodied faces of teens float grid-like on a screen, a little akin to the The Brady Bunch or The Price is Right. No more assigned seating! You don’t have to sit next to the weird kid, or better still, be the weird kid no one wants to sit near. Now you don’t sit next to anyone at all. No more awkward roaming the hall or standing at lockers. Vertical postures are so overrated. And all that money previously spent on pants–or new school shoes, for that matter? Paff! You are finally free to wear suggestive clothing, T shirts with edgy or all-out offensive language and spaghetti straps. Or nothing at all. Now, I know you will miss all those countless valuable in-class moments spent cracking empty plastic water bottles, grinding your pencils down into nubs until your teachers are forced to remove the entire wall-mounted appliance, monopolizing the bathroom pass to be out of your seat more than you’re in it, and snapchatting friends in other classes (two disruptions for the price of one!). Ahh, boys. I suppose the distractions are always with us, and your electronic diversions are simply the online equivalent. But don’t worry. We will soon find our new normal. You may actually come to enjoy online learning, and get something out of it. And your teachers will come to love and know you as the little postage stamp, top right row of their screens. So, I’ll leave you to it. I’ll be in the lunchroom if you need me. I think I hear the timer going off.

(What do you mean, What’s a postage stamp?)