Teaching in the Age of COVID-19

Obviously it’s been years since I’ve written a blog post;  while I have many thoughts racing through my head, I’m always reticent about putting my thoughts in concrete form so extensively.  Few things could have driven me from retirement, but two did, one of which being the current COVID-19 pandemic.  The novel coronavirus has permanently altered many aspects of our lives that, up until now, we have taken for granted, one of which being education.  Teaching and learning has been irrevocably transformed, and both students and teachers still are reeling at the speed and degree of which these changes have occurred.  However, as always non-educators have decided to chime in, and dictate how and when learning must occur, while ignoring the advice—and warning—of both many health officials and education specialists.

Many doctors and nurses have warned any teacher who needs medical accommodations to get them, for protection against COVID-19 and to continue keeping down the infection rate.  However, I am so sick and tired of a certain subset of people for saying that because they have to go into work during a pandemic, then teachers should too, while totally turning a blind eye to all others working remotely.

Nurses and other health care professionals, especially those in hospital settings, may not have anticipated a pandemic, but knew when they took their jobs (and even began their courses of study) that they would be working with sick people, at least some of whom would have communicable diseases.  Teachers did not sign up for this.  Some of us literally have taken bullets for your children; all of us have participated in lockdown drills where we’ve practiced shielding your children in situations where bureaucratic protocols leave us as little more than sitting ducks.  I have held my students’ heads as they projectile-vomited blood, with no gloves because there weren’t any readily available, and I wasn’t going to leave them alone to go find some.  I’ve helped stabilize students having overdoses so that they could be transported to emergency rooms.  I’ve protected my students from attacking peers, and mediated aggressive students challenging administrators, all while pregnant.  I had a student actively seeking me out to hurt me when I was nine months pregnant, because my administrator told him that I’d called ACS because his crackhead mother kicked him out.  BUT I DID NOT SIGN UP TO DIE IN CLASSROOMS WHERE I CAN MANDATE, BUT NOT ENFORCE, PPE AND SOCIAL DISTANCING, AND WHERE THE PUBLIC WAS BEING TOLD IN MARCH THAT SANITIZING PROCEDURES WERE BEING IMPLEMENTED THAT WERE NONEXISTENT.

This past spring, I worked HARDER putting together remote learning classrooms from SCRATCH, and worked longer hours because I responded to each and every student who reached out at any hour, because I recognized that not all were keeping “regular” hours.  I counseled kids from home, who’d lost all of their grandparents months apart, who’d lost parents, uncles, cousins, who’d sat outside the hospital rooms of sick siblings.  And all the while, I still supervised—mostly alone because my husband worked outside the home—the online learning of my two young children.  IT WAS DAMN HARD, but I made sure that my students had as worthwhile an experience as possible, and that my own children did, as well.  I worked my ass off.  How dare you tell me that you expect me to fall on my sword, in order to make you feel better about your life choices?  How dare you tell me to sacrifice my family’s health and well-being, not to mention their emotional well-being, by having a mother who’s alive?

AND I AM NOT ALONE;  all of my colleagues, and teachers who I don’t even know personally, share the same story.  WE ALL WORKED OUR ASSES OFF, to ensure that our students had one bright spot of normalcy in the chaos and uncertainty through which we’ve been living.  HOW DARE ANY OF YOU MINIMIZE WHAT WE’VE DONE, FOR YOU AND FOR YOUR CHILDREN?  

Am I aware that remote learning doesn’t work well for all children?  Yes.  Do I think that more needs to be done to ensure that our “at-risk” student populations are better accommodated, in order to ensure their success?  Absolutely.  But that needs to be done without turning all other teachers, and the students they teach, into sacrificial lambs for a grasping, corporate-driven economy that looks at mortality rates as collateral damage.  We teachers don’t expect “thank-you’s” for what we’ve done, but we do expect a little common decency.