Day 5 of the school year on Zoom: Why is Love Important?
Distance education for small children poses real hardships, too many to count, but even these contexts are not without their moments of light-hearted humor and maybe, if given an opportunity, some wisdom along the way. A teacher posed this question, Why is Love Important? to her class of 2nd graders, including our 7-year old daughter, Iris. Her teacher deserves credit for asking the big questions! In truth, it’s a good question for any of us to think about but then, as the teacher tried to mimic the physical classroom, she used the “breakout” function on Zoom. This function drops participants into smaller groups at random, so they can have a small-group experience. That’s the idea. So it was that our daughter found herself face-to-face with another little boy in her class. The girl stared blankly at the boy while the boy stared blankly at the girl. The question, Why is love important? seemed to vanish into irrelevance as two 7-year olds looked at each other on their respective screens, the very randomness of this medium seeming to complicate the question beyond recognition. Iris’ mum, sitting nearby, encouraged her to say, “Hi” but she refused to take herself off mute. Minutes passed. Well, she suggested, could you wave? She consented to wave. About ten seconds later, the little boy waved back.
