USN and The Bubble

Let's keep our social circles small so we can keep school doors open and commit to civility during this election cycle.
Getting school moving and getting us back in-person offer reminders of all kinds that we don't operate in a vacuum. One term of the season is “porous,” a reference to the degree to which the wider community affects the best efforts of a school or other organization to successfully mitigate COVID-19 risk. As much as we’ve strived for years to be connected, across the K-12 range, across our city, across divides of all kinds, right now that would make us more porous, so we’re quite consciously staying distanced, to use another familiar euphemism.
 
The phenomenon brings to mind our High School students’ frequent objection to being contained within the USN bubble. While Lower School families may historically have appreciated the relative warmth and insularity of our campus culture, as children then traversed the grade sequence, they often yearned to reach outward, to go beyond this familiar rambling brick building. The “bubble” terminology carried a more pejorative connotation for students as their graduation day neared. Then fast forward to 2020, and bubbles abound—in the NBA, the NHL, numerous college sports teams, groups going on excursions, military bases, and neighborhood friend groups, just for starters.
 
We now spend hours every day keeping students in cohorts, sorting and directing them in a constant effort to diminish the number of people each of us encounters up close in the course of our activities. And thereafter, we all go home, wondering what happens in the span between leaving the parking lot and rolling back in. My guess is that some USN families bubble into tighter tolerances than we can dream of at school, while others, however well intended, find it hard to follow through after the long journey to get here. And the actions of all affect the outcomes for all.
 
Just to shed some light, virtually every instance we’ve heard of from other schools or experienced at USN when it comes to COVID-19 transmission came from off-campus. So yes, the bubble does matter—let’s keep the circles small so we can keep the school door open. But it sure is hard to stay apart, to postpone or live without the big gatherings that dotted and defined our regular calendar. Watching students adjust, signing on (literally, in the case of High School) to what needs doing lifts our spirits.
 
One different kind of looming challenge to USN’s community bubble and to our respective household versions is the coming election, now 32 days away. Let’s commit to working together in support of young people’s experience in this time of incivility and uncertainty. Here’s a reminder that regardless of the events at hand, our responsibility to help students think for themselves remains.
 
In support of that aim, I’m more than a little excited to welcome two hotshot political scientists and USN dads for Tuesday's coffee at 9:30 a.m. Alan Wiseman, department chair and inventor of the acclaimed Center for Effective Lawmaking, will be joined by Josh Clinton, who’s part of the team (with John Geer and Jon Meacham) teaching Vandy’s largest class ever, remotely, on U.S. elections. They’ll opine on what might be helpful at home in discussion, what college kids are saying, and maybe what this whole presidential race will mean in U.S. history. The topic only got more timely overnight.

What promises to ease some of the isolation burden is reliable access to rapid screening for the virus at the center of this pandemic. As promised, the weekly update is as follows—the pooled saliva testing project continues through its approval process, getting the technology and logistics lined up, and we are confirmed as research partners when the green light shines. Sounds like we are likely a few weeks away. Let’s stay extra focused until then.
 
A concluding word of thanks for your collective patience and responsibility when it comes to our drop-off and pick-up routines, the subject of recurrent redesign to maximize efficiency. Feels like, with your careful attention to schedules, we’re in a good rhythm. Amazing what we can do together—at the right, non-porous distance.
 
Appreciating the essential difference you’re making away from school,
Director
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University School of Nashville models the best educational practices. In an environment that represents the cultural and ethnic composition of Metropolitan Nashville, USN fosters each student’s intellectual, artistic, and athletic potential, valuing and inspiring integrity, creative expression, a love of learning, and the pursuit of excellence.