Partly cloudy this morning with thunderstorms becoming likely this afternoon. High 92F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 70%..

Mostly cloudy skies. Scattered thunderstorms this evening. Low around 75F. Winds light and variable. Chance of rain 40%.

I loved school. I was that kid.

Homework never bothered me. I read every book on World War II in my middle school library – and there were a lot. I thought my teachers were super human. I was, without question, a nerd.

I own it. I embrace it. It’s just who I am.

So it should come as no surprise that college only made me an even bigger nerd. I could only go to classes that held incredible interest for me. Thanks to advanced courses in high school, the only math I had to take was Statistics for Political Science and my science courses included what was lovingly referred to as “Baby Bio” and Meteorology.

Baby Bio was a science class dedicated to non-majors that hit highlights of super interesting things like genetics – but at a level that made sense for people who would likely never use that information again in their lives. Meteorology was an interesting thing to learn about. It made me much more attentive to weathermen on the news.

But the most important thing about my Meteorology class was that Buster Posey – the San Francisco Giants’ catcher – sat behind me. He even borrowed my notes one time when he missed class for an away game.

Once I got through that first year of non-major courses, I was home free to take fascinating classes that made me read textbooks for the fun of it. I know, I’m a nerd.

One of the best classes I took in college was a geography class. I quickly learned that geography was far less about maps and far more about how people interact with the world around them; how they maintain and utilize resources; and how pretty much every conflict can be boiled down to resources and either actual scarcity or the fear of it.

That course shaped a lot about how I began to see the world and how I began to understand that sometimes what sells the war to the common people – ideology, good vs. evil, etc. – is often a narrative that reflects very little about the underlying root causes of how conflicts begin.

The other really important thing I learned that has stuck with me for the many moons since I graduated from Florida State University (Go Noles!) is the concept of unintended consequences.

On its surface it’s a pretty simple thing to understand. We see the effects of them in our daily lives all the time. I eat pizza every day for a month. The intended consequence is that I enjoy eating every day and it tastes amazing. The unintended consequence is that my pants no longer fit. Pretty straightforward. In a lot of cases we can see what the unintended consequences of our actions are even before we make the decision to act. We balance out the good from the bad and we plow ahead.

But what my geography professor was so great at explaining was how we often don’t see the unintended consequences of things until they hit us square in the face – and we have to deal with the fallout.

He was, of course, speaking on a much higher level than my decision to eat pizza to my heart’s content. He was talking about war and politics and the global economy. All things that have much bigger impacts on everyone than my junk food habits.

The consequences of those kinds of things – both intended and unintended – affect everyone, everywhere. And there are consequences – both intended and unintended – for everything that we do; the right decisions that we make and the not so great ones alike.

I was thinking about this in light of starting yet another school year in the shadow of the COVID-19 pandemic. Going into year two of post-online learning is giving teachers a fully developed taste of the consequences of the decision to take schools virtual in March 2020.

Hear me say this: Virtual learning and the closure of schools at the onset of the pandemic was 100 percent, without a doubt, the right thing to do. There were too many unknowns, too many risks, and definitely not enough information to keep kids sitting inches apart for 8 hours a day.

The pivot to online learning was a necessary evil. It was the only choice.

And we should be glad that we had that option. We should be grateful to the tech companies. I know, I can’t believe I’m saying this either, but we should be grateful for the development of the online platforms that were the foundation of our even having the capacity to do anything online. We should be grateful that Zoom and other online applications and companies opened up their policies and let schools and businesses utilizes their resources for free. To create online platforms that could migrate an entire country online at the same time was no easy feat. Sure, they made a pretty penny in the grand scheme of things. But that wasn’t a guarantee either. It was a utilitarian and move for the greater good.

Some schooling, even online schooling, was better than nothing.

The intended consequences of virtual learning during a global pandemic were to keep kids engaged in learning at whatever level was possible while doing our best as a society to keep everyone safe from an unknown viral plague.

It was an honorable mission. Not perfect. But better than nothing.

Now that we’re back in full swing and living with COVID as a part of our existence, teachers are bearing the fullest brunt of the unintended consequences of what our online learning experiment brought to bear on our students.

All the efforts we’ve made as a society to unhook kids from their screens has been undone. We required them to be in front of one eight hours a day. Getting some of that back is going to take time.

But that’s just the tip of the iceberg. Our kids are facing huge learning gaps and incredible emotional and social deficiencies. And it isn’t just the report cards that will reflect it. It’s coming out in student behavior, too.

Our teachers need our support now more than ever to try to get the train back on the track. Our communities need to come behind our teachers with love and grace. We need to support them with our words and our deeds.

A little bit of gratitude goes a long way.

It’s also the moment for parents to get in the game in ways they never have before. Being involved is more than just complaining to the teacher when a student gets an unfavorable outcome. It’s about partnering with teachers to make sure that our kids get the academic, emotional, and social support that they need to grow and thrive.

It means giving the teachers the benefit of the doubt and assuming the best of them – even if that means admitting that the student made the mistake.

Unintended consequences are just that – unintended. But we still have to deal with them. Now’s the time to start, at the beginning of the school year. Let’s establish patterns of support for our teachers that will do us a world of good in getting our kids back to where they need to be.

Cortney Stewart is a Lecanto High graduate with political science, international affairs, and intercultural studies degrees who has lived and worked around the world.

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