You know how hard it is when a school community loses a kid or a teacher?
I know you do. It’s devastating. I’ve lived it too many times. We bring in counselors, we have community support events, we hurt and heal together.
When we open for school this year, we are going to lose people, multiple people. There is just no way that we can realistically stop spread in a classroom; don’t even get me started on hallways and the cafeteria. It simply won’t happen. I hope I’m wrong.
People are going to die.
This is us willfully ignoring the most likely, most terrifying outcome.
Now, imagine how each tragedy impacts a school/community. Imagine the trauma of repeated tragedies. I want to be in my classroom with my students. It is, under normal circumstances, the best format for educating kids. It’s best for their mental health, their cognitive development, even (for many of them) for their physical well-being. I don’t think that’s gonna be the case in these circumstances.
Everything that makes in-person learning more effective and nurturing than remote learning is negated by the rules we’ll have to put in place to try to reduce spread. Collaboration, teamwork, community, regrouping, proximity management, turn-and-talk, think-pair-share, conferencing…all gone. Even practical considerations like sharing supplies are off the table. Really? Do you know how many kids I loan a pencil every damn day? So, will our classrooms become lecture halls, falling back on exactly the format that we’re told time and again is ineffective? I think it’s likely. If we’re practicing bad pedagogy in-person, why are we returning?
Childcare…at the highest levels, this is about keeping the economic engines running, not good educational practice, IMHO. And, I get that; I really do. People have kids. People have to work. Under normal circumstances, the system we’ve built works pretty well, but not this time. This is us willfully ignoring the most likely, most terrifying outcome. Yeah, I hope I’m wrong. Sadly, local officials have their hands tied by economic threats and we move forward with plans to open. In March, when we closed, there were fewer than 700 cases of COVID-19 in Ohio, total. For the past 21 days, we’ve averaged well over 750 cases a day.
I’m genuinely scared, not for myself, but for the mistakes we’re about to make. We will bear the responsibility for this for the rest of our lives. Why do you think politicians are so dead-set on passing laws that limit liability for businesses that remain open during the pandemic? The most charitable explanation is that those in power aren’t absolutely sure that opening the country is safe.
I hope that our leaders at the state and federal level wake up to what they’re asking us to do soon…if not, we’re going to shed a lot of tears and need a lot of counselors this year. I really do hope I’m wrong.