Shop | Masking For A Friend

Last week, I heard about a 4th grade boy in Long Beach who hasn’t been enrolled in school since the pandemic closed his campus in March.

His family was devastated by the move to distance learning because they have three kids in elementary and no connected devices at home beside the basic cell phone that both parents share.

The rest of his class has been zooming their way toward fifth grade while he re-reads the same stack of library books and asks his older sister to teach him from her completed math assignments from the previous year. I imagine there are countless others who are stuck in a similar position, and I can’t stop my curious mind from wandering…

How long can learning be paused before a student backslides or loses interest or starts a dog-walking business so he can help his family pay the bills? (The latter option was this little guy’s plan... half the profit goes to his parents, 40% into a jar marked COMPUTER, and the remainder carefully tucked inside an envelope and shoved under the door at their still-shuttered church.)

Take a minute to imagine yourself at a miniature desk back in 4th grade.

I was in Mrs. Huth’s class at Hopi Elementary and my biggest concern was whether or not anyone would notice the new barrettes that I bought with my allowance from Limited Too. (They were in the shape of tiny ice cream cones and I glued a red sequin on where the cherry should have been.)

Despite being a studious (yet fidgety) member of the front-row-brigade, I had a chronic habit of forgetting to bring my textbooks with me when I hopped on the bus ride home each day. The amount of times I scooted my chair up to the kitchen table – fully prepped with a snack, sharp pencil, and a plan to conquer my homework in one fell swoop – I can still remember the sinking feeling when I would open my backpack to see it was nearly empty. An expansive cavern made of floral canvas, my sighs bounced back at me with echoing exasperation.

I was faced with two options in that moment: Tell mom so that she could drive me the 1.4 miles back to school to retrieve my books from a closed up classroom OR hide the problem and risk messing up my grades. The second choice was unfathomable to a young overachiever, so I trudged off to find my mom while berating myself for the chronic mistake. I seem to remember a few seasons where this would happen multiple times in one week, and you can imagine a mother’s dismay at having to keep the school custodian’s phone number pinned above the landline at home.

I can still hear her now, “Hi, it’s me again. Can you meet us at room D2 to unlock the door?”

Our minivan whisking us there and back in a jiff, I’d be finished with the classwork by dinnertime (on most days) but it’s taken all the way until now to realize that even having this option made me a very lucky kid.

Zipping forward to 2020, we find a heartbreaking truth: The educational gap in America is growing wider by the day and nearly 12 million young students in our country are left without the resources they need to complete their basic school work. Many are forced to put learning on pause until their classrooms reopen and the chance to keep up from home is out of the question without a computer or high-speed internet access.

This kind of problem feels huge when you look at it from a zoomed out lens, but here’s one thing I’ve learned from Tiny Jessie today: Now is always a great time to put my privilege to good use.

If your next thought is, “What’s next?” then here is what I’m thinking…

You and I are going to buy that family a laptop so that all three kids can pick up where they left off before COVID crushed the promise of another successful school year.

I designed these t-shirts on a whim last week and quickly realized that it would be a fine way to raise some funds to match my own efforts to help this young family.

Ten dollars from every purchase will go directly toward helping as many local families as possible. We’re going to buy them the supplies they need to get their students online, and I’m aiming (high!) for a goal of three tablets or laptops to allow three families the chance to keep up with their coursework.

Whether you care deeply as a parent or are an education-loving non-mom like me, I hope you’ll consider blessing this sweet young 4th grader by buying a t-shirt or telling your friends about this project.

Even a simple post on social media can go a long way, and we have just one more week to get the word out before the campaign closes on Friday, August 7th!

The shirts are being printed based on a pre-order basis and will arrive 1-2 weeks from the time that deadline closes. There are four different styles with multiple colors and sleeve lengths… thinking about doing a few options for kiddos so stay tuned on IG if you’re interested in mini-sizes!

In the meantime, if you’re looking for more info about how COVID-19 has impacted the educational divide? Start with this USA Today article and I’m happy to add more resources here, if you’re interested.