Before COVID-19, Valentine’s Day was a special time for a lot of people since it’s a day when you can spoil your loved one with chocolates or flowers. However, now that COVID-19 has changed so many aspects of normal life, you’re pretty limited to the things you can do with your significant other since there are social distancing requirements that need to be taken in order to stop the spread. Throughout the pandemic we’ve all been distanced from family and friends and we might have been feeling lonely, but there’s a good chance that the people who have felt the effects of being alone the most over the past year are the senior citizens in our community.
The elderly have been the real victims of the pandemic. It’s easy to overshadow the risk of COVID when you think you have a small chance of being really sick, but senior citizens just simply cannot do that. Senior citizens have been hospitalized at high rates because of COVID and often live with a fear of going to the doctor’s office because of their fear of contracting COVID. The elderly who live in nursing homes have been particularly at risk, and therefore the most cut-off from the rest of society during these difficult times.
Although there are many caring people who want to help the elderly through this difficult time, most people are stuck asking the question, what can we actually do? Mr. Pachter, Assistant Principal at Maspeth High School, recently read an article about a school in Boston that is creating handwritten Valentine’s Day cards for senior citizens living in nursing homes. After reading the article Mr. Pachter thought, “Why should our school have any reason to not do this?” Mr. Pachter shared this idea with Ms. McDonald who then reached out to the other English teachers to spread the word to all students.
The goal of this initiative, as Ms. McDonald describes, “is to help create a community where people will be able to look out for each other, and especially help those who really need it during the times we are in”.
Students will be able to create handwritten Valentine’s Day cards that will be collected on Monday, February 8th at school. Ms. McDonald will be in the building collecting the valentines all day, which will eventually be delivered to a nursing home in the community.