Our district pivoted to starting the school year with six weeks of distance learning. They sent out their announcement yesterday.
I am relieved that we know how we’re starting, and don’t have have to spend the next three weeks going back and forth wondering how we will be delivering our curriculum. I’m relieved that I can ask my parents to help me with my kids because I won’t be with middle schoolers all day, who are believed to catch and spread the virus as well as adults, even if I do have to go to my classroom to teach from a computer to all my students at home.
I’m so tired of this debate, and the shit teachers are taking for being selfish and unwilling to show up for their students. I’m sick of people saying we’re essential workers when schools/educators are not listed in California’s Essential Workforce.
I can promise you that few people teach for long if they don’t love their students. Why do people think we become teachers? The fabulous paycheck? The respect and admiration of society? It’s a thankless job that pays very little for the amount of education required and earns little to no respect. And yes, June, July and August are nice, but they clearly don’t make up for the what we deal with during the rest of the school year or our country wouldn’t be facing a severe teaching shortage. Evidently teaching is the easiest profession to be in if you don’t give a shit about anything or anybody, and yet no one wants to do it. Weird.
I have a post in the works that talks more about this, but honestly I don’t really want to post it. I’m tired of hearing that we’re choosing the “easy” option of distance learning when distance learning is incredibly hard and requires way more time and energy than actually being in the classroom (it’s like writing sub plans every day of my freaking life – and it’s miserable). I’m tired of being told to push everything asynchronously (which is considered more equitable because it can be accessed at any time) and also being told when I do that I’m not adequately servicing the most urgent learners, who need synchronous instruction (but also are the least likely to be able to access it).
For the umpteenth time in the history of public education, schools are being asked to solve the problems society has created by perpetuating generational poverty and stripping social safety nets. Schools are being asked to prop up the economy by allowing parents to get back to work, provide services to disadvantaged students that society has abandoned to a disgraceful fate, and solve the inequitable access to internet technology, all while being a chronically underfunded public institution that federal and state policy has continuously ignored or blatantly refused to support.
So yeah, I’m really tired of the shit talking. Really, really tired. I wrote something else but I’m not going to post it. I’m just going to leave it at this.
Thank you.
I am in agreement with you.
You did not say that requiring teachers to be at their job site to do on-line instruction is demeaning and makes it extremely clear that the people who made that decision have absolutely zip nada respect for the professionalism of our teachers. I am forced to assume those ‘leaders’ are the people who cheat on taxes, speed on roads, would personally not work hard without someone watching them, and other even ruder ideas because is how unethical themselves act. It is outside your, and my, responsibility to to change those attitudes. Your principal must be so embarrassed to have to follow such instructions.
Right now things are not going super well, but not covid problem. Hearing from you makes such a difference. Thank you for rational thinking, tremendous kindness and for always taking on amazing projects and keeping on going.
Thank you, as always, for your support. It does seem to be the parents who are most likely to have a gathering with multiple families in Tahoe (where 10+ high schoolers come back with coronavirus)* who are the most ardent supporters of opening up and assume teachers will do nothing while teaching from home. They are also the least likely to be worried about the very real harm that will come to the undeserved students in their district or state if school do not reopen.
*this actually happened in a small, privileged district nearby and it effectively shut down any further discussion about returning in person.
In farther north, open house party at Lake Almanor and same sequence of events but there were WAY higher numbers than just 10 by the time public health was aware. SO depressing. So unnecessary.
You have shown yourself as a thoughtful, hardworking teacher through the years. But teachers are a large, heterogeneous bunch. Some of the statements being made by teachers’ unions (e.g., preference for no in person schooling until there is vaccine or more widely available effective treatment- a standard that is unheard of world wide) or viral Facebook posts from teachers (who have also left their vacation and happy hour pictures public) are adding just as much fuel to the fire now. I know you are not doing these things but when I read all of these messages on teachers expecting zero risk (and please appreciate there are many where I live which has less than a 5% positivity rate), it’s difficult for me to feel that the author actually does care about the student.
I’m sure there are teachers unions, and specific teachers, adding fuel to this fire, just as there are idiots making entire states look bad right now. But I’m not super interested in hearing about “world wide” right now, when the countries that have returned to school have:
– testing capacity that FAR exceeds our own
– productive contract tracing
– safety nets to support for people who have to isolate for 14 day
– national and local governments that recognize the threat of the virus and have taken the appropriate actions to contain its spread
– nationally and locally required safety measures that are understood and accepted by the general population
– much lower rates of percentage positive and community spread
Without those things, and without functional national leadership around our response to this, do you really expect teachers to go to work? Nothing our country has done so far communicates that their healthy or safety is a priority. NOTHING.
And the idea that having 10-12 kids in a classroom, being forced to wear masks for the entirety of their time in the classroom, unable to work with, or socialize with their peers, unable to approach their teacher, unable to even see their teacher’s face, spending 30 seconds x the number of students in the room washing hands every hour, possibly giving their peers the coronavirus, or getting it from them and bringing it home, is somehow a far superior option than distance learning, does not take into account the reality of what school will actually be. When you realize what school will actually be (especially when none of the above safeguards are effectively in place), the argument that it’s in the best interest of children becomes very weak. If you want schools open so your kids can be out of the house, that is one thing, but what schools will have to be until we get this under control will not be about providing quality learning experiences.
Teachers know this because they are in classrooms every day and they know what it will actually look like. They know what kids need to learn and they know it won’t happen effectively in classrooms where kids can and will be transmitting the coronavirus. They know there won’t be subs when they are sick and need to stay home. They know parents will send their kids even when they know they have fevers (dosed with ibuprofen to keep the fevers down). They know how this is going to play out, and they know it’s not going to provide the security and socialization that parents are arguing for when they say they want their kids back in school. And we can’t look to what other countries that are returning to school are doing and try to emulate it when we haven’t emulated ANY OTHER ASPECT of their response to this virus.
THANK YOU. You and I and others who respond on here actually care a whole lot more about dead or damaged children than the nasty anon. You are fully correct, this nation choose to not fully shut down, choose to re-open way too fast, chose against maintaining PPEs and preparedness, choose to eliminate the White House pandemic team in order to pay someone’s costs to golf at a course he own, choose to ignore what was obvious from China and Italy and Spain and …. Becoming a grocery clerk or a teacher or meat packer or many many other occupations was not done in expectation of putting their lives on the line.
💯
Yes. All that is total bullshit. I really feel for doctors nurses etc. risking their lives to go to work…but they did sign up for that, and they are trained in infection control, etc. Teachers did not, and are not! And the level of protection in a classroom is far less than a hospital scenario! Yet people expect teachers to go to school under these conditions. WTF!!!!
I have a lot of complicated feelings about the essential workers who have had to return and the idea that teachers can effectively opt out. But again, in California at least we are not listed as essential workforce. Maybe when we are, people can engage me in that argument.
Yes. I also feel for grocery workers but at least their interactions with any one customer are typically short, and the building typically fairly large, vs. hours on end in a much smaller room as teaching would entail.
I am actually an essential government worker. Which means even though I can do 100% of my work remotely, I’m at the mercy of my dept head—e.g. we’re on the monitoring list, which means any office worker that can work remotely must do so, but my work doesn’t have to abide by that (currently I am back working remotely thank goodness). Which is ridiculous. A lot of likely unintended quirks in the guidance/orders/etc.
It’s ironic. Some people such as hairdressers etc. were railing against the governor demanding they be deemed essential so they could go back to work meanwhile some of us are like please don’t deem me essential….my husband is also essential. I am actually less worried about his workplace than mine at this point.
My school district is still planning to return 5 days a week/ 5 hours a day for students, full day for teachers. I am still waiting for our governor to announce that we are moving back a phase, we have had a huge increase in cases. If we move back a phase we will be remote. I am planning my in person as if it is remote, not handing out or collecting papers. Thinking of you as all teachers will navigate through an incredibly stressful year!