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If you’re advocating for opening schools, I want you to explain to me how we’ll safely do that with 6,000+ kids in a 9-story building, less at least 20% of our staff, with class sizes that were maxed at 34 already... with budget cuts and a hiring freeze.
If you’re advocating for opening schools, I want you to explain to me how we’ll safely do that with 6,000+ kids in a 9-story building, less at least 20% of our staff, with class sizes that were maxed at 34 already... with budget cuts and a hiring freeze.
We don’t have bathrooms for every student/staff member on ea floor. We rarely have hot water or adequate soap. More than a few spaces are unusable due to asbestos/mold. Most classrooms don’t have AC. My dept office, used by 40+ dept members, is both our only workspace + our caf.
Moreover, I need you to explain how we do it equitably: COVID disproportionately impacted/impacts the same s’s already marginalized in our bldg due to race+socioec status, who also have some of the longest commutes+most outside responsibilities.
I don’t know a single teacher who doesn’t *want* to be in the classroom, in an ideal world. We all desperately want to be able to return to the “before times,” to have the most joyful and meaningful parts of our work, the ones we know are good for kids, back.
But, in the immortal words of @RollingStones: you can’t always get what you want. We can want things to be normal as much as we’d like, but that doesn’t change the reality of a pandemic. Our only option is to try to get what we (ALL the members of school communities) need.
So much discussion of this issue sets up a false dichotomy for teachers: if you’re not prepared to risk your life/the lives of people you love, you must be selfish, lazy, or ignorant of the benefits of having kids in school.
I’m biased, as an econ t, but I dig @SarahCohodes’ framing — it’s all trade-offs. If opening schools is a legit priority, we have to make choices accordingly. Trade going out w/ large groups for lower case counts; trade Wall Street bailouts for emergency supplementary ed funding.
This is possible, but only w/ creativity, collective effort, and political will. The trade-off I will never support, the one we shouldn’t be asked to make, is the health and safety of staff/students/families for the ability to say “Look! We’re in a school building!”
That serves no one. Doesn’t address childcare (logistically no way to do 5 days/wk of “normal” school) or quality of instruction (kids can’t work in groups IRL; I can’t work 1-1 to address needs IRL; I can’t build/manage robust learning both full-time online + full-time IRL).
I desperately need everyone in these conversations to listen to more teachers: not politicians, not journalists, not “people who went to school and believe that means they know how school works.”
We love our s’s + our work. We’re also trying to get through this as humans. Both of my parents are in healthcare in NC; a dear friend in my dept died in Mar; I’ve lost count of the # of my s’s who’ve been ill, lost family, started working FT, are struggling w/ mental health.
We also can’t, and shouldn’t have to, engage in constant abnegation to make up for this country’s failure to provide for the well-being of its people. It doesn’t have to be this way. /end
