COVID CONFIDENTIAL

We asked educators to share what it’s like to work in school buildings while the pandemic rages across Arkansas...

PROFILE 1: *COVID* CONFIDENTIAL

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 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.

PROFILE 2:

Our response has been piecemeal at best. Other than temperature checks for students who ride the bus we have not seen many adjustments to the school year. Our local association made several suggestions such as staggered classroom transitions, one way hallways, adjusted lunches to reduce the number of students in the cafeteria but those were all rejected as being too difficult to implement. There is almost no effort to enforce social distancing in the hallways or even in the classrooms. Some teachers enforce masks, most don’t. Some teachers and admin don’t even wear masks when they are inside around other people. As a result we have had many students “move to virtual temporarily.” When a student does have to be quarantined we are not asked about who they may have interacted with or if we ourselves might have been exposed.

For athletic classes I have witnessed zero social distancing or mask enforcement and athletes are the ones I have to remind the most in my class. The staff are required to record our temp each morning when we sign in. The nurses in our district have done an outstanding job. When a student is showing symptoms there is a dedicated room that they wait in until the nurse can come see them and evaluate them. The nurses tend to err on the side of caution and send students home who are not feeling well. We recently started a virtual Friday where all in person students have the option to stay home and teachers can focus on virtual students who are falling behind. I think that will be a big help to teachers and students. The ones that do show up are kept in the auditorium and are supervised by a few teachers. There are no district wide procedures for cleaning or sanitizing classrooms or equipment for students between classes. They do a sanitizing fog through the school on Friday evenings but that is practically useless considering there is nothing being done between class transitions. We still have campus wide and occasionally district wide PLC meetings. Many teachers will sit shoulder to shoulder and don’t wear masks.

I will say that in general our admins are supportive of the staff and many times they have said if you need something let us know. I think the main problem is that most of the staff does not take Covid seriously. I have heard teachers who have had the virus and recovered say that they wish everyone would just get it and get it over with.

Virtual education in my opinion has been a mess. I think overall it highlights the inequalities our students face. The kids who have good internet and have adults to help them are doing ok but most have become unmotivated and some seem to have disappeared completely. They don’t respond to emails or assignments in Google Classroom and some don’t have working phone numbers. The district has made extra efforts to reach those students which is great but this all feels like a band aid on a failing system. I have several students who were A students last year who I have not heard from at all this year. I have tried to take all of this in stride and educate my students the best I can but it has taken a toll on my own mental health. I feel like we have been on red alert since March but the worst of it is that most adults don’t seem to really care that they are putting other people at risk and that makes it very hard to wake up each morning and teach my students. It’s demoralizing and dangerous but it’s not surprising. From President Trump, to Governor Hutchinson and the Arkansas Department of Education we get the same message that we have to have in person school while at the same time not being given any real guidance or accountability on how to do that safely. What I will take away from this year is that we as educators are treated as expendable. At some level I always knew that my job as an educator was expendable through consolidation or cost savings. It wasn’t until now that I realized that our lives are seen as expendable for the sake of “The Economy” and that is a lesson that I will never forget.