We need to talk about teachers at public schools. I cannot speak for private tutors/pods, charter schools, Montessori schools, private schools, and other flavors of schools. But I feel qualified to lament about the plight of the public school teacher. I’ve decided to make a 4 part series if there is enough interest. This is a large enough soapbox that you could help change the dialogue.
I don’t know the lay of the land well enough here on education policy to accurately gauge how this will be taken. All I know is that every school is out for Holiday Break, for better or for worse. ‘Tis the season to appeal to you for mercy and forgiveness for another profession that is under heavy assault right now, and unlike our health care heroes, you are seeing them at their WORST right now.
I could not handle teaching during regular operating conditions. My mental health issues in combination with caring too much burned me out. I still keep in touch with that world, both in Arizona where I taught and locally in Michigan where I was the preferred substitute teacher for many years. I still read WAY too many educational articles for someone who will never step inside the classroom again. While I have not personally experienced this year from HELL for teachers, I feel like I know enough to imagine it based upon what they tell me. I had to promise not to disclose. They BEGGED me to write this.
Do know that every teacher is trying to make lemonade out of chicken shit this year, to mix metaphors. If you are frustrated with the educational experience this year, do know that you are seeing each teacher at their WORST. You get to watch the educational sausage being made fresh over virtual education Zoom if you are at home frequently, and you are appalled. You are frustrated by a lack of mask mandate/forced mask mandate at the school board/local/state level for in person school. You are enraged by the open school to closure to virtual to open school hamster wheel and want to get off that damn ride. You see your child falling behind, stressed out, or getting disinterested. You think the hybrid model (hey, we get to CHOOSE!) is the way out.
You don’t have the knowledge that every teacher is walking the high wire act without a safety net, just like everyone else. You don’t have any idea that record numbers of teachers are thinking of leaving after this school year is over. This is breaking my friends, veteran teachers, mentors, and new teachers alike. Teachers I thought strong and immune are out on leave or on the verge of quitting. Please take what I say seriously.
Let’s go through the looking glass to see that teachers were given a true Sophie’s Choice this year. Let’s look at option #1 today.
Option #1: The Let’s Fully Open Schools Hamster Wheel
This option is popular with the parents that don’t care about the consequences of it. They think of teachers as glorified babysitters already, and just want to dump the burden of raising their children upon them.
There’s also the fact that this option allows for full workforce participation of the parents, which the underclass and those children at the margins especially need right now. School is the safe space for children from broken homes, and a chance for too many to have their only meal of the day. I weep for them.
Did you know that there are millions of children that have disappeared from the school system, and cannot be found? Lord knows where they are and what they are learning. I hope it is private tutoring and pods. If I didn’t catch Covid, I may have even offered my services to one. I fear that for some, secret under the table child labor is the answer.
You may have the impression that was formed early, that children cannot get sick from Covid or school cannot be a super spreader outbreak. THIS. IS. INCORRECT. I’m overwhelmed by the number of outbreak data points that led to school closures that dispel this myth. Very low likelihood of illness does not mean they cannot be a silent asymptomatic carrier which does not mean no risk to them later in life. You don’t take into account this puts every staff member at the school at severe risk too! Also, the new UK, Nigerian, and South Africa strains can attack kids too now. We are truly fucked.
Finally, you don’t pay attention to how school board and educational politics works. It is very cliquish, and often dominated by right wing whackadoodles because they started their takeover of the nation 30-50 years ago at the local school board. We progressives are too busy or too focused on national politics or too uncomfortable (because we want to be experts) to run for these positions many times. They become dominated by corporate charter interests and right wing whackadoodles or run by the same clique for decades.
Many school boards faced no win votes to decide upon how to handle this school year. Heavy pressure to open v. fully virtual v. hybrid. Heavy pressure for mask mandate v. no mask mandate. Had to scrounge for even more funds to try and reopen with Covid safety protocols or fund virtual education best practices seminars or create a hybrid model on the fly.
There is NO way to build a perfect Covid safe school right now that has full capacity. Any school district that is telling you otherwise is lying to you or cutting corners or needs to trumpet how they are doing it because I haven’t seen a model school yet. It’s simple math, other policy, and lack of funds. This is why many teachers HATED the open schools up option. This was what was needed for it to work (and often never considered at all):
- You would have to make the morning arrival protocol a public health screening for each student. Usually schools only have one or two entrances (thanks, school shooter protocols!). This process would take a LONG time and eat into instructional time. Honestly, I am afraid to ask my colleagues or ask Google this question. I don’t think this fantasy is happening.
- You need independent contact tracing, because the government has utterly failed us here.
- If you abide by 6 feet social distancing rules, you cannot fit 25 desks in an average classroom. In Arizona, I’d be doing a LOT of my instruction outdoors as one neat trick to get around this problem. I drove the secretaries insane! But it’s not foolproof in case of inclement weather — too hot in the desert southwest, too cold in the northern tier, and too much precipitation screw me over. But it’s the #1 problem.
- Classic small group instruction violates social distancing protocols. ALL one on one instruction violates social distancing protocols. Classic inquiry based learning violates social distancing protocols. The classic carpet space where you sit ‘criss cross applesauce’ violates social distancing protocols. The ONLY 100% traditional safe method is direct instruction (lecture), which is the lowest rate of retention. Or you sit them in front of computer screens, aka virtual education. Teachers will not innovate unless forced to when they are drowning. They will reach for the comfort food of lectures.
- School lunch and snack time have to be totally rethought, as it is the most vulnerable point in the school day for transmission. Now, cafeteria workers shuttle the lunches in bags to each classroom and kids eat in there. Remember the desks point above? This part of the day is where the problem above becomes REAL.
- Recess in the younger grades has to be rethought. No unstructured play and no contact structured games allowed. Only socially distanced recess allowed if you were serious about it. I know a few games that work, but most do NOT. This year it isn’t recess — it is another lesson teachers must plan if they were serious about Covid.
- You literally cannot do normal transitions with typical block schedules at middle and high schools. It is chaos already. The hallway is a finite space, and everyone would have to move like synchronized Rockettes to make it work. Good luck getting defiant teenagers to do that!
- The young ones (K-2) have to be taught how to go to school. This is a chore (which I loved!) each early childhood specialist knows by heart. This year, we have to make sure we taught social distance and safety protocols ON THE FLY in addition to how to be in school. They will trade masks, trade food, touch each other and say YOU GOT THE RONA!, and do the 95 million other weird things little kids do at school that you have no clue about (but I love). Social distancing is possible at school, but only at the expense of the fun for these grades.
- Most teachers already pay for their own supplies. I paid out of pocket about $2000 per YEAR, and that was in addition to that school supply list every teacher annoys you with at the start of the year. We’re DEAD SERIOUS about the list! We had to add homemade plastic shields, lots of tape to make those social distancing Xs and lines, cleaning supplies time infinity, extra masks and gloves, and home made concoctions for wipe downs because normal things were too expensive or in short supply. Our personal budget got busted.
- Most schools run on an HVAC system that is not negative pressure. That is DAMN expensive to overhaul and the budget will not allow for it except through millage or bonds, and good luck getting those passed when people don’t have money! We aren’t hospitals that obviously get priority here. We did get some money from the feds to help, but nowhere near enough. These changes can also only be done at breaks.
- School bathrooms are always a disaster zone if they are communal, and would still be a germ vector even if every classroom had their own bathroom. It is also the biggest NON MONITORED area of the school for obvious reasons. If two kids wanted to break social distancing protocols to do something dumb, they do it in the bathroom. They would need wiping down after each use most likely; at the bare minimum at breaks and at the end of the day.
- The windows at the school do not open most times if they even exist. They are that way thanks to our lovely school shooting problem (Lord, don’t get me on that soapbox!). You can’t get fresh air circulation into the room unless you have an outside door you can prop open — which is a policy most schools do NOT allow (thanks again, school shooting problem!)
I think I’ve given enough evidence that no school is 100% safe. And in fact, unless your school board/local area/state is total crackpot and doesn’t give a damn about liability (I pray for you if that is the case), the instant an outbreak happens, the school will close. It will start with an attempt at contact tracing to isolate a cluster (schools that tried to open responsibly often sunk their funds into developing their very own contact tracing), but once the cluster is found, it is too late. It will be all over the school.
This means virtual school on Zoom once everyone has to go into quarantine. That will be done for two weeks to a month until the outbreak dies down. Then, the school will be pressured to reopen. We go back into the classroom until the next outbreak hits. Then we switch to virtual school. Wash, rinse and repeat. What's frustrating is there is usually no uniform guidance, as this map shows. Only four states mandate opening, and you wouldn’t be surprised by which ones. This is where federalism fails us.
You don’t know how damaging this cycle is to the education of a student. Children thrive best under order, structure, and routine. Riding the hamster wheel here is extremely disruptive to the education of a child. There will be gaps in knowledge that will fall through the cracks. There will be behavioral problems because routines keep shifting and are so fragmented. This adds to the mental health and anxiety strain upon your child.
Not to mention, what if this happens? I DARE you to click on every word. What about intubation? Are you prepared for this conversation with your child? Do you know how to help a child process this insane amount of grief? They will personalize and internalize, and will likely will think THEY are the one who might have given that beloved teacher Covid. Do you know that there is an underreported mental health pandemic concurrent in this country, so you might be on your own because the schools may or may not have adequate resources? You might not be able to find private resources quickly these days?
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There is NO win for children to be back in school right now. However, in the interest of balance, I offer the opposite take. Changing policies every month as new science comes out also feel like an attack! The Year from HELL affects everyone in the education system! The pish to re-open is stronger after holiday break, and that is with the UK strain, the South African strain, and the even newer Nigerian strain to worry about.
Schools Re-think Quarantine Rules
Superintendent Jonathan Cooper this summer helped write a fall reopening plan for his southwestern Ohio school district with a rule based on the state’s policy: Any student potentially exposed to Covid-19 in Mason City Schools had to quarantine for two weeks, no exceptions.
This fall, he began rethinking it.
Are Schools Safe?
When panicked administrators shut down schools in the spring, little was known about how the coronavirus could spread among students and teachers. Could children fall critically ill and spread it to peers and teachers, like the flu? Would asymptomatic young people pass it on to their parents or educators?
More than nine months after schools closed, some of the answers to those questions are becoming clear. Emerging data on contact tracing — which illuminates the origins of infections — shows that the virus does not seem to spread much within schools when they require masks, urge social distancing, have good ventilation and when community spread is low.
Californian Governor Pitches $2 Billion School Reopening Plan
California Governor Gavin Newsom unveiled a $2 billion plan to help schools reopen for in-person instruction by early spring, even as a surge in Covid-19 cases overwhelms health-care facilities in the most populous U.S. state.
Funds from his proposed legislative package would be spent on testing, ventilation and personal protective equipment. Newsom said he’ll seek weekly testing for communities with high rates of transmission; masks for all students and staff; improved contact tracing; and the prioritization of school workers for vaccinations. Distance learning will still be an option.
If you are a parent, teacher, administrator, or support staff at a school, please share as much of your story as you can!