Has anyone asked teachers?
Has anyone asked teachers our opinions on the upcoming school year? Has anyone at all even once considered the physical and emotional well-being of the ones charged with educating your children? I’ve seen parent surveys, student surveys, community surveys, but NOT 👏🏻 ONE 👏🏻 FOR 👏🏻 TEACHERS.
Just a few months ago, when we were asked to take our curriculum and make it virtual, to become tech support and counselors, and to be available pretty much 24/7 for our students and their families, we were heroes. “Teachers deserve more,” “teachers have completely reformatted their lessons in 48 hours,” “I don’t know how my kids teacher does it!” Yeah. We did that. We stayed up until all hours of the night and early morning, making sure our students, our KIDS got the very best we could give them. And we thought “wow, it’s nice to feel respected.” And trust me, that’s not WHY we do it. Respect and money are not top reasons why anyone becomes a teacher. But, it felt good.
Now here we are. 4 months later. Guess what? We’re not heroes. We’re babysitters. Sacrificial lambs. We mean NOTHING.
I want to be back in my classroom so much. My heart hurts thinking about another day distance learning. BUT, more importantly, I want my babies, their families, my colleagues, their families, myself and my family to be safe. Am I saying we should be 100% virtual this fall? No. Maybe? I don’t really know. Look at how much changed from April to June. That’s how much can change from July to September. What I absolutely DO know, is that teachers haven’t been asked how we can best facilitate academic learning, social-emotional growth, our students getting their services, and making connections with our students this coming year. We also haven’t been asked “what are you most comfortable with?” (Which I know is a question on several surveys, at least in my state, for students and parents).
There has been a lot of talk about “hybrid learning,” so half in the classroom, half at home, with rotating schedules. That sounds good, on the surface. But here’s my questions:
1. How am I supposed to teach virtually and in my classroom at the same time? When we were virtual, we were expected to be available at any moment during all school hours for phone calls from parents and students. If I’m in the classroom... what am I supposed to do? Stop my lesson to answer my phone? How am I going to keep track of work and attendance of online students? Am I going to get more planning time to create the online work along with the in-school work? Is it just going to be “send home a packet?” Because maybe it’s just me but as a teacher, I do not want my students doing a PACKET for half of the school year. They won’t learn anything, trust me.
2. What about teachers with their own kids? If their own kids are home half the week, but in school the other half, what is the parent to do? What if both parents are teachers? Or if, like most families now, both parents NEED to work.
3. What about my sick days. If I have to quarantine for 2 weeks due to covid exposure, do I have to take that time out of my sick days? I only get 8 sick days. I’d have to also use 2 of my 4 personal days. And that’s assuming that I was exposed but did not catch it. If I actually get Covid ... what then?
4. DOES ANYONE KNOW HOW HARD IT WILL BE TO SOCIAL DISTANCE IN A CLASSROOM??! No. Because the people making these decisions have barely ever stepped foot in an occupied classroom.
5. Students won’t be allowed to share supplies. That’s been made very clear. Soooo... is their supplies coming out of my own pocket money? Probably, since we barely get extra notebooks during a regular school year. 🙄
Has anyone asked a teacher? Has anyone bothered to consider the fact that teacher are humans too?
You may notice that my questions lean every which way. Yeah, that’s because I have a lot of thoughts and feelings on this, I am a key part of this equation, and yet I, and all of my colleagues across the country, have not been asked. More so, we’ve basically been told “this is part of the job. You have to make sacrifices.”
Remember when we were all saying that nurses didn’t “sign up” to deal with not having PPE during a pandemic? Yeah. If you’re one of those people and still don’t understand why teachers matter in this, then shame on you.
If you think that “nurses signed up for this” and also believe “well this is what you went to teaching for” shame on you too!!!
This is turning into a blob of a rant.
I miss my kids. I miss my classroom. But I also miss being respected. I’m not asking for teachers to be called heroes. Just, at the very least, consider that we are humans.
