Let's Talk About School This Year
Parents: Do you really want to go back to online only instruction? I don't.
I really don’t have time for this, because the school year just started in western Washington State (the beginning and end of the school year are generally meat grinders for teachers) and I’m trying to become a better teacher by getting my National Board certification. Still, the public needs to hear from in-the-trenches teachers on this year’s mini J6 takeovers of your local schools. Here’s my take.
First, we libs own some of this crazy. What began as a healthy and necessary protest to the murder of George Floyd and institutionalized racism has morphed into a caricature of itself in certain settings (notably some school councils and boards) in which bizarre things happen. Things like the friend of, and babysitter to, an African American mother being accused of neocolonial racist oppression. This over the protests of the African American mom, perversely having to battle the anti-racists for agency. Is there a horseshoe bend in the making on the racism/antiracism spectrum? I don’t know, and I don’t know if White Fragility is really helping people of color all that much, although it’s got to be helping a certain white lady’s bank account. So yeah, I can kinda get some of the frustration in right leaning circles with that stuff.
Second, masks suck. I was having a hard time hearing students last week. I’ll have a hard time hearing them this week. I’m already sick of reminding them to cover their booger ejection ports with their masks. It is more work to breathe through them. Are they detrimental to health? Are they child abuse? I think they fall under the heading of Irritating Inconvenience. Still, they suck. I kinda get the beef with masks, too.
So why mandate them? To protect those for whom there is no vaccine (all students under 12, and that’s a lot of them). No, COVID doesn’t generally hit kids as hard, but I can attest, given the sheer volume of 504 plans I have for kids with asthma, that there’s plenty of comorbidity to enhance risk. We also mask up to protect those who medically can’t get a vaccine. We mask to protect older folks that kids might bring COVID home to. We mask and vaccinate to try to put some kind of brake on a pandemic that’s on track to kill about as many people as the Civil War or the 1918 flu.
If the left is a clown car when it comes to these things, Q is running an accelerating Crazy Train, and our schools are on the tracks. This job’s already hard enough, and now we’ve got two people running for our local school board (and this is happening all across the country) who have led two shouting-threatening shut downs of school board meetings and really don’t have any intention to serve, but to position themselves as internal wrecking balls in one of the last functioning institutions in this country.
We’re also seeing invasions of our schools by the Proud Boys and zip-tie-wielding man-babies who have no idea how to deal with a disagreement outside of bullying a 120 pound principal just trying to do her job. We’re being threatened with being shot in our “Nazi” faces for complying with quarantine procedures, or for teaching anything that isn’t 100% Hooray for America. And I simply don’t have time to catalog the growing list of incidents involving (do I call them adults?) showing up on school grounds to rip the masks off of kids.
Know what our #1 job as educators is? You’d think it would be educating, but it’s keeping students safe. So pass the word up to Michael Flynn or Steve Bannon or whoever else eggs this stuff on: if it gets too far off the hook, to keep students safe we’re going to have to shut down, again, and do online school, again. And let me tell you-online school, well, it isn’t school.
A quick reminder for those whose memories don’t go back a year and a half: I’ll be back to staring at a bunch of colored dots with initials on a screen. My high school kids will be logging in for attendance and then taking a nap, or playing video games, or introducing various controlled substances into their systems. I will have no meaningful way to connect with them, or check for understanding, or help them through a bad day. Google Meet and Zoom are fine for hour long meetings or so, but are exhausting in day long doses.
Think masks are bad for kids? Try crushing depression. Meaninglessness. Isolation. Some kids managed distance “learning;” most didn’t. My older daughter did OK. My younger high schooler got to the point where she didn’t leave her room, or her bed. She didn’t eat much, or bathe, or brush her teeth. She completely gave up on her classes, not even logging in for the perfunctory attendance check-ins. We couldn’t get her to a psychiatrist or therapist because there were too many kids in line who were worse off. Students with similar struggles were legion. High school kids under these conditions, home alone with tools of self harm and self destruction readily at hand. For another year.
Oh, and we do also take care of the little ‘uns while their parents are at work. Want to play another round of Let’s Find Child Care During a School Shutdown? How about a game of Run the Already Struggling Economy With Half the Parents Home for Kids?
The Delta variant of QAnon is infecting school boards. Pay close attention to the elections for your local school board this year. If a candidate’s website is riddled with misspelled words and grammatical errors and nonsensical syntax, maybe you don’t want them in charge of your child’s education. Probe what they mean when they say they want to return “wholesome values” or “common sense” to schools, or just what change they’re talking about when they ask you to “vote for change.” Your kid’s life may depend on it.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to get ready for school tomorrow.