We asked educators to share what it’s like to work in school buildings while the pandemic rages across Arkansas...
C * CONFIOVID* DENTI AL PROFILE 1: Being a teacher has always been a difficult but rewarding career. Reaching students who have struggled and helping them find success is the payoff for all the time spent nurturing relationships with our students, all the hours spent planning lessons individualized to fit the needs of diverse learners, and all the early mornings and late nights spent reading essays and grading papers. Teaching has always had its challenges, but 2020 is the first year where I’ve been scared to walk into my school building. It’s not just the sight of hundreds of students inching their way through crowded hallways, shoulder to shoulder in a time where they should be six feet apart. It’s not just seeing students sit in classrooms with no social distancing, with nothing between them and covid-19 but a cloth mask. It’s the days when over half the staff and a fourth of the students were under quarantine for exposure to covid. It’s the lack of subs to cover the classes, causing class sizes to double and triple with no learning happening. It’s watching principals desperately begging to go virtual for the safety of their students while the governor and school officials sit on their hands. The other thing that covid-19 has made abundantly clear is that instead of addressing the fact that students struggle to stay engaged with virtual schooling, politicians and school leaders all too often want to blame teachers and place the responsibility to fix the problems squarely on our backs. Taking away planning time while at the same time doubling and tripling the amount of duty responsibilities is just the beginning. Continuing face to face PLC (Professional Learning Community) meetings that put teachers at risk of exposure, and other time-consuming tasks at the expense of individual planning time is not a sustainable situation for teachers. The hard truth is that students in face-to-face learning are failing in my school at a 60% rate. Virtual students are failing at or above that rate. What we are doing is not working, and despite teachers screaming at the top of our lungs
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ARKANSAS EDUCATOR
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begging for someone to listen, none of our leaders seem to hear us. The chaos at the local level reflects the state government’s feeble and chaotic attempt at planning. All too often the state pushes responsibility off on the local districts, who then blame the state for the lack of sensible planning. In the end, I think it’s important to acknowledge that learning is hard right now. It’s not just school aged children, college campuses across the state are struggling to keep students engaged as well. In fact, life is hard right now, and unfortunately in times like these education becomes less of a priority. We are all struggling though these difficult times. Instead of closing their eyes, sticking their fingers in their ears, and hoping for the best our leaders need to prioritize compassion, understanding, and flexibility. Far too often the priorities remain district initiatives and new programs instead of the humanity that this moment demands. The people making decisions have either never stepped foot in a public school classroom since they graduated high school, or haven’t been in a classroom in a decade or more. This wouldn’t be so much of a problem if they would involve those of us who are on the front lines in the decision making, but so far, the preferred route seems to be sitting behind their desks and dictating instead of listening. We are at a critical moment. Our education system is in trouble, and we walk into new challenges daily that are being ignored or put on the back burner. We are lessening restrictions and quarantine times at the very same time cases, hospitalizations, and deaths are spiking. Teachers have been asked for far too long to simply fall in line and do what we are told and told that if we really cared about our students there is nothing we wouldn’t do, including sacrificing time with our families, weekends, and summer break to ensure our kids get the best versions of us. We’ve repeatedly stepped up the plate. But never before have we been asked to put our lives on the line every single day when we go to work. Being a teacher has always been difficult, but in 2020 being a teacher has become downright dangerous.
