For Blended Teaching; It's Not Just The COVID, It's The Stress by Dr. Michael Flanagan
Original Art by Pamela Michaels
*Update: Since this article was published, NYC Schools have gone fully remote as of Thursday November 19th.
Teaching in a school building during this pandemic is giving me post-traumatic stress. And that may not even be the right term; we aren't even past the trauma yet.
My school building in New York City is now closed for the second time (11-17-20) since we opened in September. We have had six confirmed cases of COVID in the past six weeks. Dozens of teachers and staff have been quarantined during that time, along with several classes of students. And the cases keep coming.
I took my eyes off my phone for an hour last night, and BOOM! I picked it up and was notified at 10 pm that the building was to be closed the next day. Again.
But "What? Me worry?" No way! The Department of Education’s top notch COVID testing and tracing corps are on the case! They will let us know when it is “safe" to go back into the building. I mean, our health is their primary concern, right?
Let's all breath a collective sigh of relief. Our lives are in the oh-so-competent hands of middle management and DOE sycophants for a mayor who wants the schools open no matter what!
Why should we have faith in political hacks and bureaucrats? Why should we respect administrators who will only do what the Department of Education tells them? Why, when everyone in a position of power forgets that the students and staff working in their buildings are living, breathing, human beings?
In the same email where we are casually informed that yet another member of our school community has tested positive for the coronavirus—before we can even digest that news—we are instructed to teach from home and make sure kids are taking their attendance. There is, of course, some lip service about trauma-informed teaching, and students having someone to talk to, but the transparent truth is that we are still expected to conduct business as usual. The "New Normal."
Life these days could not be further from “normal.”
Over the last weekend, Mayor di Blasio once again vacillated between closing the schools and keeping them open. There is a constant debate over the infection rates throughout the city. Before opening in September, the city agreed that a seven-day “rolling average” of 3% would close all of the schools in the city.
But now, since we are at 2.74%, the Mayor wants to raise that number. Governor Cuomo muses about 5%. Although some neighborhoods have 4%-6% positivity rates, there are claims of low numbers in the schools. And of course, we are supposed to put our trust in limited, voluntary intermittent testing data--manipulated by politicians. That’s comforting.
This is compounded by the fact that whenever Cuomo and di Blasio are involved, it begs the question, who's running the show, anyway?
They are still pretending that “social distancing” inside a school building will prevent the spread of COVID. All those nasty germs will fly straight out the window! Meanwhile, winter is coming to the great Northeast and now we have to start shutting those windows—our only source of ventilation—or freeze. Hey! That will make the whole "instructional lunch and breakfast” in the classrooms even safer for the students and teachers! Eating indoors isn’t a problem, right?
And the politicians act as if it's all good, that parents should be confident—even eager—to sign up their children to go "Back to Blended."
"There's a deadline!” Chancellor Carranza announces. “It's your only chance! If you don't do it NOW, that's it for the school year!" Trying to force parents to send their kids back during this second wave, since only about 26% of families are actually enrolled in blended learning, a number that’s been decreasing every week.
But now, my school is closed—again tomorrow (11-18-20). How difficult is it for the students and staff to come into the building one day, only to be told at ten o'clock that night to stay home the next day? “Hey, don't worry. They'll check out the building and clean it and maybe—just maybe—we'll all be back the next day!”
Or maybe not.
No worries though, it’s only a deadly disease that some people in the school have contracted. And after all, we have exemplary COVID protocols keeping us safe! And of course, everyone reports honestly when they take that daily health screening before they enter the building. And self-quarantines when they have traveled, or are feeling sick in the morning.
We are pawns in a political game of chess. A game being played by a mayor who has already let some staff die last March by not closing the schools, against a governor who is promoting a book he wrote about how well he handled the pandemic, while we are still in the middle of the pandemic.
Blended learning has many bad points, but right now the worst of it is the stress. Will the school close? Which students and staff have the virus? Why aren’t we getting clear information? Am I, or my students, going to get sick? Possibly die?
No, this is not post-traumatic stress. We are right in the middle of the trauma. Every day.