July 23, 2020

Anger

Let me set the scene. It is late July 2020. We are seven months into The Year From Hell, and a global pandemic has been raging for almost five months now. The country was flipped upside down in March. Businesses shut down, parks closed, and schools turned virtual.

I spent the last three months of the school year at home with my husband and daughter figuring out how to turn my very in-person job into a computer-based, self-paced, parent-facilitated classroom. I learned new technology, communicated with parents on a daily basis, and turned all my lessons digital. I figured out a grading system that balanced the expectation that work is completed with the understanding that all of my students need adult support, and most of their parents are now (like myself) full-time working and full-time parenting. I video-chatted with students who have proximity control and hands-on activities as accommodations, I tracked data submitted through the screen, and I attended approximately one-hundred virtual trainings a week. I did my very best to keep my students on-track socially and academically, and I kept my six-month-old fed, cared for, and alive at the same time.

I worked my ass off.

And it sucked! Virtual teaching sucks! Doing two full-time jobs simultaneously sucks! Uprooting everything I know about what works best for my students and attempting to turn it all digital over a weekend sucks! The whole thing was horrible, and I don’t know a single teacher who enjoyed this time or thought it was great for kids.

But, you know what? We were safe. My family was safe, I was safe, and my students were safe. So we did it. Not because it was great, but because it was necessary.

And now it’s July. We are 3 weeks away from a new school year, and cases of the virus (and deaths from the virus) are continuing to rise. Things are undeniably worse now than when we shut down the country in March, and yet we are considering opening school buildings back up in a matter of weeks.

But don’t worry, most kids won’t get the virus.
Probably only some will die.
They need their social interaction, you know. (Six feet apart, with masks on.)
Parents need to work.
Virtual school is making them fall behind.
Things are’t really getting better, so we need to learn to live our lives through this, and that means sending kids back to school.
Guess it’s a risk we’re willing to take.

Cool. Great. Awesome.

Three months ago teachers were heroes, and now we’re sacrificial lambs. We’re being told to risk our lives and our families’ lives to go back into a clearly unsafe environment. I’m supposed to expose my daughter to who-knows-what by putting her in daycare, so I can go work and expose myself to who-knows-what, so I can expose her further when I pick her up, so we can both expose my husband when we get home every day. But it’s okay because we probably won’t die.

I am infuriated.

I have seen countless teachers talk about how they don’t feel safe. I have seen countless teachers express their thoughts and ideas, begging for someone to listen. For someone to care.

We are not respected.
We are not valued.
We are not taken into consideration.

Well, I won’t.

I won’t risk my life, my husband’s life, my daughter’s life for this. I won’t be forced into this horrible position by people who aren’t willing to put themselves in the same position. Or support people who do. Or fund supplies and materials to make this even the slightest bit less insane.

So, I quit.

I was forced out of a job I love because I wasn’t willing to die for it.

And honestly, I am a lucky one. I am able to leave this job to protect myself and my family. I have that option. Many, many others don’t, and that is being taken advantage of. More people will get sick and die from this, and they will simply be replaced. And no one will take responsibility. And it will be allowed to continue. I am outraged.

You should be too.