Back when this pandemic started, I hung a calendar on my wall.

It was just a couple of feet off the ground, so my kindergartener could see it.

I'd make her write out the date each morning, the same way she would have in school.

And I remember looking at this calendar and thinking,

okay, just a few more weeks of this, of splitting my time between managing a classroom and managing a job.

And then schools got closed down for the rest of the year.

And I thought, all right, three more months, I got that.

And now, I'm looking at September.

And I'm thinking, are we really going to keep doing this?

Yeah, I know that feeling.

Laura Mechler covers education over the Washington Post. And she's a mom too.

You know, I sit around like hoping that my kids are going to be back in school.

Laura realizes that starting up schools again is a tall order. So do I.

But what happened this spring?

Let's just say it did not inspire a whole lot of confidence in the national push towards remote learning.

In the spring, schools were just caught so unaware and they were just so unready for this moment.

You know, in a lot of places, like it truly was a total disaster zone.

A lot of places did not do well at all.

That said, though, there wasn't an advantage that a lot of us haven't thought about,

which is that they at least were going virtual with a teacher who they had had for many months at that point.

That is a lot easier, I think, than what we're going to, especially there are going to be people who go back to school this fall,

all in an all remote situation.

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