No Witchcraft, but Specter of Covid Shaped a Classroom in Salem, Mass.

A third-grade class in a historic town navigated a school year of loss and resilience shadowed by the pandemic.

SALEM, Mass. — It was late April at Witchcraft Heights Elementary School, and Roneline Ramoutarsingh was still feeling nervous about Covid. Not about getting it herself. By this point, Mrs. Ramoutarsingh, a third-grade teacher in Salem, Mass., was fully vaccinated and confident enough that she had started pulling down her mask when she was speaking to her students from the front of the room, so they wouldn’t constantly ask her to repeat herself. But she was nervous that a decision she made in class — to let the kids work in groups, for example — might trigger an outbreak and send her students back to remote learning. Earlier that month, shortly after five-day-a-week, in-person learning had resumed, several students had tested positive, and nearly the entire class had had to quarantine.