Thoughts from the Front of the Class by Hettie Norlund

For those of you watching the news and hearing the “rush to get teachers and kids back to school”. Yeah, ya know the last 6 months when we couldn’t go out to dinner, grab a quick lunch with friends, go to funerals, attend weddings, see grandparents, go to football games, use tickets to the theater, hug our friends, shake hands, support small businesses... remember that? Some of us have been in the classroom, face -to-face with students since September.

We have dealt with kids on quarantine, teachers on quarantine, the term “essential personnel “, the term “critical infrastructure “, having temperatures taken, triage rooms, cleaning desks (and chairs) after every class, hi-bred combo of face-to-face and zoom to reach all our kids, students without Internet, students coming to school sick because parents have to work... Let’s be honest here, it’s not the kids mental health, they are amazingly resilient. It’s not our “concern for educators “, we’ve had training to protect our students from “active shooters”. It’s about money. Get parents back to work.

Education right now? Almost impossible. Kids can’t group to exchange ideas, most have been sent home due to contact tracing, 15 days out means 15 days without instruction. When they come back, reteach the rules and get them caught up while the kids that were at school ...? Then the next round of contact tracing quarantine.

But hey, they still take “The Test” at the end of the year; and while the results won’t impede the student progression to the next grade, it will impact teacher’s VAM scores. And hey, don’t vaccinate teachers before sending them back to school... we’ll be fine. We always are. You want a group of guinea pigs for “is it safe to gather in groups of 30? 40?” Yeah, just like protecting kids from a shooter with a stapler, we’ll do it.