9 minute read
Fear of the unknown replaces the joy of new beginnings.
THE SEPTEMBER RETURN
By Elizabeth MacGregor
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Elizabeth MacGregor is a former teacher, guidance counselor, and Head of Guidance at Toronto area school boards.
My teacher friends post their fears of a September in-school return to class, on Facebook and Twitter. They write of compromised immune systems, elderly parents, the fear of walking into a school, with hundreds of students, and accidentally touching a door, a wall, or a student running to hug them, and then bringing Covid home to their families.
They worry about standing at a classroom door, mask on, welcoming new students, whose masked faces they have never seen before, or standing in front of their class, unable to fully see the expressions on the faces in front of them. The quivering lips of a frightened student, ignored in a masked expressionless face, until the eyes fill with tears. The shy student, terrified of answering questions, their fear invisible behind their mask, could be traumatized by a prodding teacher. Teachers fear for the physical and mental health of themselves and their students.
A physical education teacher, who formerly high- fived her charges at the end of each class, stopped doing that last March, fearing the virus. Her students became disengaged, and finally told her they felt she didn’t care about them anymore. She now fears how to make social distancing, masks, and no change rooms a part of her teaching day.
A technology teacher worries how to teach robotics when you must physically touch apparatus to teach, and then return home healthy to greet her three children under the age of twelve. A teacher of children with special needs, whose students regularly engage in physical contact, hugging each other, or throwing punches, depending on the child
and the day, wonders how to curtail this activity, without touching them.
A kindergarten teacher weighs the pleas of her parents to forgo her salary and take a leave of absence. Many of her friends have already submitted their applications. Retire or return is the question on the older teachers’ minds. Their loss of pension concerns may be put aside by their fear of contracting this virus. They do not share the optimism of youth or their lack of fear of dying.
WITH ANTICIPATION COMES EXCITEMENT FOR WHAT LIES AHEAD
As July wanes, I always feel the gentle tug of the school year approaching. Schools still have their “Have a Safe Summer” signs up, while there is increased activity of tradesmen and custodians around the buildings.
Having retired in 2018, this is a reminder of how I felt in late summer and fall for many years. Each school I have worked at had its own return to school protocol, and the similarities were greater than the differences.
The middle weeks of August were spent mentally preparing for the week of registration at the end of the month. I would approach the school wondering what would await me. As I entered, the smell of fresh wax and the shiny clean floors symbolized signs of a new beginning. As the year progressed, the floors would accumulate grime and look old, unless there was a special occasion to pretty the school up for, and it was striking how much nicer the school looked with clean floors. The optimism of the September opening was mirrored by their shine.
Hugs to returning teachers and secretarial staff, listening to embellished summer vacation stories, would start most encounters. Teachers would wander into the building to organize their classrooms at a leisurely pace, while I and my team of counsellors would work to match students with
classes, teachers with courses they were qualified to teach, and take phone calls from worried parents who needed us to not put Johnny in the same class with a student he fights with.
THIS YEAR PROMISES TO BE A WHOLE DIFFERENT SORT OF THING
Speaking to teacher friends, I hear only fear this year. Administrators, teachers, teaching assistants, secretaries, cafeteria and custodial staff, bus drivers, and students are being asked to roll the dice on getting very ill, perhaps dying, simply by returning to school, a place of work, a place of learning.
I keep trying to picture this. We have been isolating at home and now the risks of transitioning all these people to a busy environment are being assessed. Can contact tracing work with so many households involved?
I imagine entering the school, with a mask on, with no hugs, no shared stories, grabbing some hand sanitizer if anyone has remembered to fill the container that has hung on the wall for years. If not, a quick visit to our washroom to wash my hands after touching the back door that 2,000 students would walk through in September. However, would there be soap on hand, since the board stopped supplying soap a long time ago. The paper towels would also be absent unless a staff member bought some.
I try to picture a student entering my office for counselling, both of us masked as required in a small inside space. Laughter, banter, storytelling, are all tricks of teaching and in the counseling office these strategies help students in an uncomfortable,
unnatural setting. Teenagers do not freely bare their souls to adults. You earn their trust. With masks covering their faces, the student with suicidal ideation, with anxiety, depression could hide so easily. I can imagine misinterpretation of my attempts at humour due to not seeing my facial expression. The relationship between us would be stilted and perhaps ineffective.
A private school teacher in the United States recently documented the results of a return to school experiment that took place in May, in anticipation of September. He wrote how difficult it was for his students to pick up on humour when he spoke, since the teacher and students wore masks. The students could not see irony in his facial expressions, so his lessons fell flat. His style of teaching was one of warmth and engagement and without humour, his students were bored and not absorbing his lessons. The value of in-person teaching was being sorely compromised by the mask wearing. His conclusion was that a full return to school in September will be unsuccessful. These were highly motivated, handpicked students for this experiment. The masks started to slip down their faces, and boredom set in within a few weeks.
IS IT POSSIBLE TO SOCIALIZE IN A SOCIALLY-DISTANCED WORLD?
I cannot imagine students not hugging and kissing as they greet each other on the first day of school. The corridors in a high school are always jammed when school starts and finishes and every time a period ends. The noise, the laughter, the horseplay teens engage in while walking through a school would not respect the rules of social distancing. This is how and where they socialize. The burst of September craziness seen in Ontario schools is energy difficult to harness.
As we see more youth get this disease, my heart aches for parents, students, teachers, support staff, administrators and the difficult decisions they will have to make.
Do you send your child, and then maybe they get sick and bring the disease home? Every year, at every school, many students are ill by the end of September with colds and flu. Students have come to my office to see me, coughing and sneezing on my door, on my desk, on my phone as they called their parent. I have had students who were sent to school so sick they have slept in my office. I have had sick parents come in and insist on shaking my hand to introduce themselves. Will students wear masks? Will their parents, who casually wander into offices, wear masks?
And all of this is taking place as the cleanliness of schools has dropped. Teachers have been buying vacuum cleaners, paper towels, tissues and cleaning supplies to clean once their students have gone home. This was before a pandemic.
They do not believe the schools will be able to supply enough soap, hot water or paper towels for the many times a day students would need to properly wash their hands. They are also aware that many students never wash their hands at school. It’s not their habit. Supervision will be required, but by whom?
And what about supply teachers, who go from school to school, potentially spreading the virus in the same manner as personal support workers in long-term care did? If a student falls ill, do the whole class and their teachers get sent home? Or, do they send the whole floor of classes home? How about the teachers who rotate from class to class, in high school? Does every teacher who came into contact with that student stay home?
SOCIAL STIMULATION AND THE REALITY
The argument that kids need the social stimulation of school is being suggested by parents and psychologists as a reason to return to school in September. They feel that students are lonely and bored, and lacking social enrichment. Social interaction opportunities will be minimal or severely limited by the wearing of masks, no recess, no mingling, no eating lunch in a cafeteria, social distancing and shortened days, all of which are being suggested by various boards of education.
I see teens around my neighbourhood gathering in large numbers with others who are not part of their family. While kids need to socialize they will have to practise social distancing and teachers will not be able to supervise all the places students can find to connect with each other.
CAN THE SYSTEM HANDLE THE PRESSURE?
The education system, having been starved for funding for so long, is not an agile entity that can transform itself without a lot of financial and planning help. A successful plan would need to include more buildings, reduced class sizes and more teachers. This is unlikely to happen. Education delivered in person won’t continue into October without a robust plan. No plan is not a good strategy, especially in a pandemic.
A return to school should not be allowed to mimic the long-term care scenario seen in many jurisdictions or it could start the second wave. I hope this isn’t the case and that our places of learning remain safe places for teachers, students and families.
