Gloomy bookend celebration time! Back in March, as kids first began feeling out the words “shelter in place,” I started a free pandemic newspaper by and for children and teens. Six Feet of Separation—they named it—launched with a 10-year-old’s passionately ambivalent “School’s Out!” essay on the cover, plus quarantine-themed Mad Libs, some shoe-leather reporting on restaurant closures, tips on next-level squabbling with your homebound sibling, a cat’s perspective on pandemic living, and other investigations of the shut-in lifestyle.
A great many articles and 4 million psychic implosions later, well, everyone’s still shut in. But it’s fall and school-by-Zoom has started up, and if you think Six Feet of Separation sleeps on easy symmetry, you clearly don’t have our number. (We don’t have a number. We don’t even know how to resize our own fonts.)
Why should a person read a 5-year-old’s assessment of Easter or an 11-year-old’s warning about the intersecting crises of quarantine and invasive species? Because (1) you can’t bear to read about coronavirus in grown-up tones anymore and, more important, (2) these are the people being actively shaped by this catastrophe. I need only remind you of your taciturn grandfather, whose brief deployment during the war shaped him—and then his kids! And theirs!—for decades.
In its slapdash, wildly uneven way, Six Feet aims for a real-time reading of what’s happening in young people’s hearts and heads. When, in a few short years, they cease being young people and take the helm of this whole bedeviled enterprise, the historians will have a handy record of their formative period.
The paper isn’t only about the pandemic, just as the pandemic isn’t only about the pandemic. Since Six Feet’s launch, contributors have watched the biggest story of their lifetimes fracture into many biggest stories of their lifetimes, involving systemic racism, and protests, and wildfires, and a pivotal election, and more. The kids have done what journalists everywhere do: snack. And then write.
As a working journalist, I feel compelled to address some concerns about the paper. Many worry that Six Feet filters the world through callow eyes—that it randomly reports on the protests in Belarus while saying nothing about Mitch McConnell, or abruptly shifts its attention from the coronavirus to Rockin’ Breakfast Burrito recipes. These are well-founded worries.
Please read it anyway, starting with the following half-dozen short pieces. Each is a keyhole into a world, one being molded in ways I don’t believe we fully understand yet. Rather than being passively buffeted by this moment, these young people are staking out active roles in it. I love them all, and I find their work genuinely impressive. All due respect to Woodward and Bernstein, but they didn’t even touch Watergate until they were fully through puberty and could probably prepare their own meals.
Hope
By Frances Novak, 10
I wake up. I am Frances, I have been depressed ever since this “oh wear a mask and wash your hands” thing happened. I think of all the good times I had in the old days and I take sad showers and sad walks. I take a Pop-Tart. The Pop-Tart, so innocent, and then I eat it.
I ask my parents if I can go hang out with my friends they sigh and say “no.” I want to punch someone or something. I take a walk without caring to tell my mom or dad. The walk is silent. All I can hear is my breathing. This mask makes me claustrophobic. The walk is slow and sad, I put on my hood sadly. I think of all the good days without A MASK. I go back home and I want to sleep, maybe if I sleep I will wake up and not have to wear a mask and I will finally be able to hug anyone I want.
School is not the same, not as many smiling faces and not the same faces, I can’t see any friends. Maybe I can hibernate like a bear and never wake up. I hope that soon everything will be back to normal. I hope.
Directions for the Sneeze Game
by Stella Pearl Hayden, 5
This is a fun game you can play at home. Or anywhere. Even in the bath. And you only need 2 people, but more can play, too.
- So, the other person, whichever one you like, can go first and choose a character from a movie or a book—any scene, any character.
- Now, imagine how that character would sneeze and do it. (It doesn’t have to be a real sneeze; you can just pretend.)
- The other person who did not go first tries to guess what character would sneeze like that.
- And then we take turns sneezing and guessing the sneezer.
- If you can’t guess it right, the player who sneezed can give you clues, like the movie or the book the sneezing character is from.
- There is only one rule. The rule is: DON’T REPEAT ANY SNEEZES! If you repeat a sneeze, the game is over.
Distance Dep’t
by Charlie Steinberg, 11, and Kira Steinberg, 8
Our house has six people: Our mom and dad, us and our two aunts. One of them works at Whole Foods and the other is a hair stylist. We live in San Francisco, and we are now going to virtual school. Here is what our days have been like:
Charlie, sixth grade
My mornings are usually pretty rushed. I’ve been waking up fairly late, about 8-8:30. My first virtual class starts at 8:55, so I quickly get dressed, gulp down my breakfast and (usually) brush my teeth. There have been a few times when I’m so slow that I have to eat my breakfast on the Zoom, and keep my camera off. Normally though, I go upstairs for my schoolwork.
My mom, and sister work up there. My aunt is a hair stylist, and she cuts hair up there as well, so there can be times when it’s pretty noisy. If I really can’t concentrate, I’ll go back downstairs, where my dad works, but it’s usually fine.
I just started middle school and my sister is still in third grade, so we have different breaks. I have lunch from 11:20-12, and my sister has it from 12-1. We barely talk to each other throughout the day, which would be kind of like real school. I have a few classes, then lunch. I think lunch is the best, and pretty much the only good part of virtual school. I can make my own hot lunch, instead of having school lunch or a cold lunch from home. I usually heat up leftover pasta, or something else we had the night before.
After my school day ends, my sister still has about an hour left. I just do my own thing, since everyone else is busy. After Kira’s school day ends, we usually go on a walk, or bike ride to get outside instead of staying indoors all day. We sometimes go to Glen Park Canyon, which is a giant park really near our house. We’ve been meeting up with friends there, and we play and talk, just like normal times, except we wear masks, and social distance. This school year is very different, but we’ve made the best of it and kept ourselves busy.
Kira, third grade
Every morning I wake up, eat my breakfast, brush my teeth and then pop on to my Zoom at 9:00. I usually do my school upstairs but if I am running late I just do my work downstairs. My class starts at a community circle and then maybe a game like rock paper scissors or freeze dance.
After that we move onto a writers workshop and maybe work in our virtual journals. Then we go to independent work and read, or sometimes we do typing club. Sometimes it is a little distracting to be upstairs with everybody because my sister is probably on a Zoom and is talking loudly or my aunt is talking to a client, but it is nice to be upstairs because there’s a lot of space and I have a desk up there. In the afternoon I have a break for lunch and then get back on the Zoom and do science which is usually just a video, like Mystery Science. After that we have a special class like library or PE or music.
Our school day is over at 2:30, but after school I go to the canyon close to our house and meet up with friends. We usually make forts out of branches, sticks and logs. So far, third grade has been weird but better than nothing!
Review of Tonight’s Dinner
by Ender N., 7
Meal: Linguine with Meat Sauce
3 out of 5 stars
It had some really good meat sauce. A little too much pasta and too much parsley. It was chunky good. And the pasta was a little too flat. Oh and nobody asked me if I actually wanted cheese or parsley. Mom said it’s part of the recipe.
Dispatch from Dhaka, Bangladesh
by Usraat Fahmidah, 16
Crashing waves,
flooding gates
fluttering hearts —
eyelids too tired
to glare up.
A little burnt out, a little tired
But what about the unsent assignment
the professor inquired.
Editorial: You All Should Get a Fish
by Elsa, 11
I have two fish, GoldiLocks (GoldiLocks is a goldfish) and Flash (Flash is an algae eater). They feel like real people to me. I can sit at my tank and watch them for hours.
There are so many types of fish. I really like goldfish but I LOVE all fish. Fish are easy but most people know about goldfish, betta, etc. But there are so many more from goldfish to betta to freshwater eels.
I mean did you know that you can tell a goldfish’s gender by the size and shape of their fins? Here are some more facts: They change color, every year of a goldfish’s life they grow a ring of scales, Goldfish will turn white if kept in the dark, and… You can train a goldfish to do tricks! I mean WOW did you know that?
I think you all should get a fish in these days. But PLEASE don’t get a fish if you don’t have or can’t afford them. Did you know that for every goldfish you should have 20 gallons? That means if I have 2 goldfish I should have them in a 40 gallon tank! Well thanks for reading!
- 📩 Want the latest on tech, science, and more? Sign up for our newsletters!
- If you've just had Covid, exercise might not be good for you
- Colds nearly vanished under lockdown. Now they’re coming back
- Covid-19 vaccines could end up with bias built right in
- What teaching online classes taught me about remote learning
- Hey students! Here's how to deal with school in a pandemic
- Read all of our coronavirus coverage here
