COVID is not failing our students, you are. Let’s stop using it as an excuse. Ask your schools what they need and then stop at nothing to get it for them.
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The imperative seems to be to keep the building open at all costs. It doesn’t matter who gets sick, how many get sick – as long as we have one or two adults we can shuffle from room-to-room, the lights will be on and school directors can hold their heads high that they weren’t defeated by Covid.
After trying the teachers lounge and realizing that I could never get there fast enough to get one of the coveted spots, I looked for other options.
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His passing was sudden, and it was tragic. We were told the news by our principal at 8:15 on Wednesday morning January 5th. It was like being physically hit by a truck. After being hit by that truck–carrying the weight of 15 years of camaraderie–we went up to our classrooms to teach for the day. It was the longest day of my career.
She turned up because regardless of what the system throws at her, she turned up for her students, just like she has done for 20 years.
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Schools will remain open even as they are unable to require vaccination, mandate mask-wearing, or take any other common-sense public health measure to mitigate the spread. DeSantis saw to that in November with a special legislative session to pass the desired laws.
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In short, if you haven’t done everything you can do to prevent an outbreak sweeping through your school and your community – DON’T. BLAME. TEACHERS. BLAME YOURSELF.
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San Francisco Mayor London Breed is leading a recall effort to replace three of the city’s seven school board members. Her neoliberal supporters would prefer to replace all seven but the four board members elected in the last election cannot be recalled. If they are successful, Mayor Breed will appoint the replacements. Along with board member Jenny Lam who Breed appointed previously, these new appointments would make four of the seven school board members Breed appointments rather than elected representatives.
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In the United States, standardized testing was invented by eugenicists trying to prove white Europeans were better than darker skinned immigrants and thus deserved a privileged position in society. This is no hyperbole – in the early 20th Century they were literally used to justify the forced sterilization of tens of thousands of mostly poor, brown-skinned people.
Read MoreNorth Carolina, a new law has taken effect for those days when a teacher needs to use their leave. It used to be that $50 (about half the cost) of a substitute would be deducted from their pay. Now, it seems that the reason for the absence will be reviewed and if it does not satisfy the administrator, the full cost of the substitute will be deducted.
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As the book makes clear, every time a public good is privatized the public loses some of their democratic rights over that lost good.
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I love teaching. I do. I really love teaching. But all this other stuff makes it hard to keep coming back and doing this thing I love.
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Preventing access to weapons is another. America has a gun problem. It’s less about the right to bear arms than it is the right to RESPONSIBLY bear arms. Trigger locks, gun safes, unloading the ammunition and locking it in a separate place, and keeping the keys away from children would not only help to prevent school homicide but also the many tragedies that we read about every year when children play with loaded firearms.
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Or, you could design a project that jaded teenagers could get excited about and throw themselves into.
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If students get an excellent education, that’s seen as a personal benefit to them, alone. But if a student athlete gets signed to a sports contract, that enriches the team and the corporation orders of magnitude more than the athlete.
The College Board has taken a test and turned it into an experience. The effort could not have been cheap, but when the relevancy of one’s products is being questioned by the market, it’s time to pull the new, improved, advanced version off the shelf with slick sales pitches built-in–here are our AP tests you should take!
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But teachers… We seem to have a perpetual “Kick Me” sign taped to our backs. We’re underpaid given the years of schooling necessary for employment. We’re given huge classes and few supplies. (In fact, we’re expected to buy pencils, books, tissues – whatever our students need.)
I know this may sound incredibly hypocritical, but I still love teaching. I have not missed a day of work in five years. I am still trying to be better at my job. I admire my colleagues for their skill and dedication. I respect my administrators for keeping the school running, even though I know what they are going through. And I want to be there everyday for the kids.
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This was my second bout of Covid. The first time I had Covid, I breezed through it. I was not so lucky the second time around. It is important to me that people understand that each variant affects people differently. Stress affects the severity too. It is also important to me that people get treated for moderate to severe symptoms right away. Don't tough it out as I did.
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