The pressured mom facing another pandemic school year is in good company. What’s the right thing to do when community vaccination rates are low while pediatric infections and hospitalizations are the highest they’ve been in the last 18 months? What to do when the school board has to hold meetings with security on site every week as campuses quarantine up to 10K students (and that’s out of ONE district in Florida!)?

There are no answers right now except: wait for the numbers, get everyone over 12 vaccinated, pray for the vaccine to be approved for children under 12, and wear a mask regardless of vaccination status.

Moms in some parts of the country have already guided their families through back-to-school. Their experiences [okay, mostly mine] and recommendations by CDC, UNICEF and WHO inform the following observations or how-to’s in different educational settings. Bear in mind that all of us make the best choices we can for our families. Some are just funnier than others.

1. Wake up at 4:30 a.m. on the first day of school because all the kids are dressed with Cheshire cat grins on their faces in the dark, the youngest nose-to-nose with you. They’re excited and nervous, and some of them can’t tell time on a digital clock. And no one made coffee. Or knows how much the Cheshire cat freaks you out.

2. Assure the kids of all ages that their choices will keep them safe and review those with them.

3. Review social distancing and hand hygiene with your children even if you’ve practiced for 18 months. Discuss high risk situations and role play them with the littles.

4. Review the school and district masking policy. If masking is not required, CHANGE SCHOOLS … just kidding! A little. You did #3 with your kids; review responsible masking habits for when those situations arise in school.

5. If masking is mandated at your school, be glad you don’t have to deal with #4.

6. Before the first day and during the first few, at least one of your children will exhibit separation anxiety. Don’t be surprised if it’s also the bigs. It can look different for each age and child, so repeat, review and reassure. They may not know what their big changes in behavior mean, but you can repeat what they say to validate their feelings, teach them the names of these new emotions, and make them feel safe leaving your side again. Mommying While Muslim recently did a back-to-school with anxiety special for both moms and kids.

7. Review how to cough or sneeze into an arm with the kids and demonstrate to the four PTA moms who took off their masks to NOT do that as you walk by.

8. Pack clean masks in a backpack, lunchbox, sock, cell phone case or wherever you can because children of all ages lose the first seven masks you send them to school with. Label all the masks with your child’s name.

9. Prepare for temperature checks at some schools upon entering the building or classroom, so have a plan in case your child is greater than 100.4 because she will be sent home. You may be required to present a negative COVID test for your student to return to school.

10. In a lot of schools, there are absolutely no visitors, and you will not get to take your littles to the classroom for those precious first days. Expect tears. Yours, not your child’s.

11. All school lunches in America are free due to funding by the USDA that finally grew a conscience. So when they forget their lunch, you don’t have to run back with a replacement unless she has a lactose, gluten, tasteless, sugar-infused, carb heavy, soy food allergy.

12. Nod and smile blankly while a parent inevitably berates the school masking policy. Do not engage if you disagree because school security is helping the parents driving the opposite direction in the drive line, and they cannot protect you.

13. Receive eight notifications of COVID exposure at your school depending on where you live and how much your community masks. Quarantine your kids three times at the beginning of the year. They may or may not have virtual school available, so request that their assignments are emailed to you in case of the latter.

14. Keep your child home if he has any sick symptoms at all, with or without a fever. Test for COVID at home if you can at your pediatrician’s or at a local pharmacy for free. Notify the school if he is positive so they can contact trace. The school will not release your child’s name when they report to parents that a case has been confirmed on campus.

15. Keep the exposed child in a mask at home for the full 14 days if he is infected or untested, and practice social distancing in the house as much as possible. A sick kid is hard not to hug, so vaccinated adults can do so without a high risk of getting sick themselves. Separate unvaccinated children from the one who is sick. Follow your pediatrician’s instructions above all, especially regarding when to hospitalize.

16. Have a backup plan with a partner, co-parent or family in the event that one or more of your children is quarantined, because this will affect drop offs, pickups and your work schedule.

17. Follow the return to the building instructions provided by your school.

18. Federal law mandates that all school bus passengers must mask inside the Yellow Tube of Transmission.

19. Teach your child to wipe down the seat and the belts as well as to slide the window down, neither of which he will do because he’s “not an emo” like you are, but at least you tried. Go home and look up “emo.”

20. Fall asleep in the drive line with your mouth open at pick up time because now it’s your turn to slow it down. Your kids woke you up at 4:30 a.m.

1. Everything from traditional school above plus,

2. There are increasingly more “no refund” policies on tuition, even if the school has no virtual learning contingency.

3. Spend a lot of time writing angry emails to enact school policies that limit COVID transmission and student absenteeism.

4. Hire more tutors.

1. Each of your kids will have a different login time so set alarms.

2. Write down the passwords you got at orientation and put them on Post It notes around the house.

3. Reconnect to the internet 62 times for one kid. Multiply by 62 for each kid. Scream the 12th, 26th and 50th time and lose your will to fight after that.

4. Realize there’s a dad helping his kid in the Zoom room and you’re not in hijab. Scream again, but this time with your mouth covered because THEN he won’t see your hair.

5. Redirect your little kid to stop talking to his friends on the screen because the teacher muted him for talking too much in class.

6. Wake up a kid who’s fallen asleep at the computer.

7. Your kid will ask for permission to go to the bathroom. He’s been going to the bathroom without permission since potty training, but now it’s “school” and his teacher wants you to be the Gatekeeper of the Toilet.

8. Open six browser windows to find the “All About Me” assignment you just remembered one of the kids has to fill out and turn in. It was due yesterday.

9. Wake up the same kid asleep at the computer. Answer the teacher in the private chat with “Oh, he was up all night excited about school today” to her, “IS HE OKAY?”

10. Wear a mask because you don’t want anyone to recognize you outside of Zoom class now that you’ve pranced around screaming without your hijab on.

1. Review the learning schedule you created after 700 hours of researching six different curricula.

2. Have the kids plant seeds in their gardens that they will use to do math, science and writing this year. A suitable alternative is any activity non-homeschooling moms tell you is too hard.

3. Do a hands-on activity with the littles while the bigs get cracking on their assignments.

4. Reply, “Yes, we are homeschooling this year” to family and friends who text, “Are you going back to school?”

5. Mute chat when they send (!!!!) and a string of dead emojis.

6. Prepare lunch with the kids and eat together as they tell you all about Korean cartoons and Piper Rockelle.

7. Use breaks to attend to your paying job.

8. Attend an outdoor playdate with your homeschool COVID pod and exchange curriculum information. It’s a lot longer than 15 minute recesses.

9. Spray the playground equipment with Lysol and sanitize all of the kids’ hands before they play.

10. Freak out at your choice of curriculum information.

11. Remind your child not to lick the slide/their friend/the rocks for the four millionth time in 18 months. Sanitize all the kids again.

12. Return home to teach big kid lessons while the littles nap.

13. Prepare lesson plans for tomorrow’s assignments.

14. Send masks to area schools announcing their quarantines.

1. Ask your kid what he wants to do today that isn’t electronics or TV.

2, Do the thing.

3. Take a field trip to a park, zoo, or museum with your masks on indoors.

4. Watch the COVID numbers on TV and back-to-school discussions change from news channel to news channel and state to state.

5. Teach your kids how to interpret the news, where to find it, and then talk to your kids about whatever they have more questions about like BDS, why Allah (S) didn’t leave Isa (as) on earth to cure the pandemic, investing money, and how science and religion agree (in Islam at least). Also, how to use a can opener.

6. Wonder if you should do more to push your kids to learn all the things you memorized and never used in school.

7. Drink coffee and take a nap, in that order.

Bismillah and good luck. We’re all going to need it.