School districts across the nation are coming out with their reopening plans. In those, you’ll read a lot about what parents want. You’ll read a lot about what students want and what’s best for them.
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Is anyone missing?
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In most of the news articles about these plans, teachers and staff might get a brief mention. If they get one at all.
Why are the voices of such a vital part of the school not being shared or heard?
Maybe folks are assuming we’ll put on our superhero costumes and help to solve the Covid-19 problems along with everything else we are expected to to? After all, taking a bullet for students has already become a job expectation, with no real policy being made to address school shootings.
The problem with trying to turn teachers into superheroes is that we’re actually human. Superman and Supergirl are from Krypton. Bullets already don’t hurt them, and they are immune to human diseases.
As Harley Litzelman says, turning teachers into superheroes during the Covid-19 pandemic:
“… it lets you pretend we signed up to die in service of you.
We didn’t. Neither did our students. Neither did you.”
We, teachers, know that a virtual learning experience is not the best situation for anybody. We know many students will not receive an equitable education if we stay in a virtual learning mode.
But you know what? They and we have a better chance of staying alive! We, as a community, have a better chance of not further spreading the disease outside of schools, thereby causing another round of increased infection!
My heart goes out to parents who need to send their children to school so they can go back to work. It’s scary to have to choose between sending your child to an unsafe environment and not being able to pay for rent or groceries. But the government could be helping these parents. Instead of pushing to open the economy while ignoring the body count, the government could pay people to stay home. It’s been done in Europe in different ways, and it’s helped.
If we have 3ish weeks of strong lockdown across the nation, this whole thing would be done, and we could truly open back up. New York saw drastic drops to their Covid-19 trends after a hard core lock down. And if they are responsible in reopening, it’s hopeful they won’t see more spikes in infections.
Art has been one of the things getting me through all of this. I am a high school teacher. Time and again we are seemingly invisible in regards to the conversation of reopening during Covid-19. I am angry. I am frustrated. And as a scientist who has gained an eye for analyzing trends in data, I am scared for my students, my colleagues, and myself if we go back to a brick-and-mortar reopening on August 12. Below is my mixed media journal entry for yesterday.
Learning is a journey. Our students are living life the best they can. They are learning life lessons by all they are experiencing. They are not “behind,” because there is no ahead or behind. They are. And they are wonderful, beautiful humans who will be fine when they enter the adult world. But in order to do that they need to live and maintain their health.
We should not go back to brick-and-mortar learning until we have at least 14 consecutive days of no new cases. Our politicians should honor life over business as usual.
Teachers are not disposable.