Is this necessary? Photo: Jarrod Valliere/San Diego Union-Tribune/Shutterstock Bank tellers, pawn brokers, movie ticket clerks: for the past few generations, these were the people associated with spending their days behind Plexiglass. Since the fall, there’s been an unlikely and unfortunate addition to this list: children.
It is, of course, obvious that sitting with your head penned inside a three-sided box all day is not conducive to learning or communicating. The desktop partitions that are the primary form of barrier used in schools come in a variety of shapes, materials, and sizes. The best, and most expensive, are made of hard clear plastic and have no metal or colored-plastic seams or borders that obstruct views.
“My interpretation of the worldwide body of evidence is that barriers are not necessary,” said Westyn Branch-Elliman, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School and an infectiousness specialist at the VA. Branch-Elliman is a co-author of the recent schools study that found six feet of distance didn’t provide a greater safety benefit than three feet, though, she noted, the study did not specifically address barriers.
Graphic: Mayo Clinic Though they are not required to do so with students six or more feet apart, a number of districts in New York and elsewhere in the country, including my children’s district in the lower Hudson Valley, have been using barriers all school year. The results are not good. “We’re doing fractions now,” my fourth-grade son told me, “and I can never see the denominator because the top of the barrier on the kid’s desk in front of mine always blocks my view.
Aside from making for an unnecessarily miserable experience for students in the schools that use them, the insistence on barriers widens inequities. But the barriers aren’t cheap, and some districts can’t afford them. With this in mind, Ryan McMahon, the executive for Onondaga county, a region of upstate New York that includes Syracuse, said that his county would pay for dividers “for any district that wants them.
We need to be less rigid and more fluid. This is a temporary situation. Try inviting these students to embrace change-to become more adaptable and less whiny about it.
I kinda like them having their own space.
That's the saddest photo of 2021 and an exquisite demonstration of fear-based ignorance.
Is that a prison visitation booth? What is wrong with people. Its hard enough paying attention if you're too far back. Adding wood & plexiglass seemed like a good idea? Give your lathe a break.
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