One of the interesting things about my boring blog-fixing project is seeing how very predictable I am with my mood slumps. I work on a month’s worth of posts in a day, generally, and it seems like in every batch there is just ALWAYS at least one post about how low I feel and what I’m doing about it with food and exercise and moping and shopping.
I am in another low time now, and I am coping by re-reading Maeve Binchy books, buying too many kinds of tea, eating extra vegetables and extra treats, buying extra non-perishables, and openly weeping while listening to Michelle Obama’s podcast on walks.
Our school district has taken a step in the direction of rejecting the hybrid option (which, as commenter Liz aptly put it, was actually “a 40-page document explaining why they just can not open at all”). They haven’t come to the final decision yet, but my feeling is that one way or another we are going to be going remote: either from the beginning, or after we try the hybrid option and a lot of people get sick and we have to shut it down.
But apparently first we are going to do the intermediate step of making sure teachers and other school employees know how little we care about them and their families, and to what extent we consider them daycare workers rather than educators, and how entitled we feel to that daycare, and how entitled we feel to normality even when normality is not currently an option. Some parents are threatening to sue the school district, the principals, the school board, the teachers themselves. One parent said that in her opinion teachers and other school employees should feel grateful to still have their jobs when so many people are out of work, and another parent responded that they didn’t see why teachers and school employees should get to stay home when other people have to work, and that was when I gave up on having a happy life.
Considering ALL the options are terrible and there is NO good option where things are normal and there’s no pandemic and everyone keeps their jobs, then surely choosing the option where we turn this whole thing against teachers/schools is our worst and most short-sighted idea yet; and it won’t even WORK. We will lose some of the teachers and other school employees at the very start, as they quit in the face of parents/administrators insisting they go back when it’s not safe; this alone may be enough to leave the school too understaffed to open. But if, after the first wave of quitting, we still have enough staff to open, we will lose more teachers/employees shortly afterward, as they get sick and/or die, or else quit from the stress; at that point, the school will certainly be too understaffed to remain open, and possibly now too understaffed to do effective remote learning. We will have pushed pushed pushed to get schools to open, and it will result in schools being closed anyway soon afterward—but only after losing people we didn’t have to lose, and traumatizing/demoralizing the rest, and leaving the whole school system worse off than it was before.
Oh, “let’s sue the school district!!” is extremely hot in our area right now. First of all, good luck with that, even in TX, and second of all if there’s one thing our school districts need, it’s to spend a large portion of their already inadequate funding on LAWYERS.
I am growing more and more partial to the never-gonna-happen idea of the entire country taking a gap year. Like, things are now so bad, that that’s my dream scenario.
This is all the while feeling very worried for my daughter’s dad and stepmom (both teachers), while also knowing deep in my soul that had this happened 10 or even 5 years ago I would have been well and truly fucked as a single working mom.
Well, I remain very interested in everyone else’s unique brand of Daily Fresh School Hell, so thanks for the updates. Xx
I too wish we could all decide to skip this year. It really would be easier in the long tun (I’m also in TX).
Back in June, I heard a public health official say we could have bars and restaurants now, OR schools in the fall. So. Just so we know where everyone’s priorities are/were. It reminds me of the gist of something former Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders said, that you could pay for schools now or prisons 15 years down the road. Why are we all so bad at long term planning?
I read something on facebook that basically said “this is just a giant worldwide marshmallow experiment and right now the rest of the world is enjoying their two marshmallows while the US watches sadly with sticky fingers.” And that’s so unfortunately true.
What seems, to me, to be missing from the school discussions is an analysis by the districts/school boards/etc of the community spread in X school district/area, the chances that you will get X # of sick people (adults & kids) in the school at X rate, and a matrix of some kind that shows when it would be considered safe to open, and in what capacity. Lots of PROTOCOLS (clean all the things, masks, etc) from schools/districts. But not what seems more important to me — “We have a 5% (or 10% or whatever it is) positive test rate in our county for the past 2 weeks, at that rate we could expect X teachers/kids to test positive every day/week, so it is safe/not safe to open. If we get the % positive down to 3% (or 5% or 8% or whatever), we will bring back the K-2 kids first.” Etc etc.
I don’t at all mind distance leavening when it’s not safe to be back. (I mean I MIND but I understand obvs.) I would, however, like to hear metrics from those responsible for how the decisions are made.
Plus I wonder if the powers that be set out a goal that it would be safe (or safer) to open school, maybe it would inspire some positive group action? Like “let’s all wear our masks and social distance and get our local rate down to 3% positive so the elementary kids can go back to school!” It feels like maybe we could inspire community action rather than everyone feeling defeated.
My niece and nephew’s school (OH) has said they will reopen in person once their city has <x new cases for 4 straight weeks and that makes total sense to me as an objective measure. I agree about the motivational piece; I’m hoping that once the full horror of this school year sets in (I think it has only partially set in for some) there will be motivation, if not to change public health behaviors, then at least to vote.
The New York Times talked to some experts who ran some models and came up with this:
https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/07/31/us/coronavirus-school-reopening-risk.html
They go through their methodology and there is a lot of estimating involved but I feel like they tried to be very conservative in their predictions. Basically at the time of this article (July 31) they were expecting 1 Covid positive person per 500 people when schools open.
I’m sorry you feel so low! It really comes across in this post as catastrophizing so breeaatttthhhhh, please:). Also “openly weeping while listening to Michelle Obama’s podcast on walks” is the most accurate description of my whole quarantine mood I’ve seen so thanks for that!!!
Our school is just…reopening with masks required for grades 3-12. They rejected the hybrid option preferred by the staff. I TRUST the staff to know what would work best but parents were in favor of reopening (by a rather large margin wtf). I’m in Iowa, where stupidity reigns supreme and Covid Kim doubled down by threatening districts that don’t comply with her proclamation, which requires 50% in person learning. I am so so fortunate to be able to afford part time help because I will not be sending my boys to school. That being said I still have no idea how I’m going to manage my work and their schoolwork. Lots of afternoon drinking, I presume.
Hey, remember in May when parents were all “OMG how do teachers do it? Let’s give them all the $$$!” Also, I think being angry at your school is focusing your anger at the wrong entity. It’s not the school systems fault that we aren’t New Zealand.
I am so angry about all of this.
Well. I had no idea suing the school district was a thing people were actually considering. That’s delightful, isn’t it.
i’m a member of a couple different groups and it seems like this is happening in all the states. For sure here in Virginia.
The problem is that – in the UK and US at least – schools DO function as daycare! We were very lucky in lockdown so far, first I was on maternity leave and then I returned to working from home and my husband was off on paternity leave for 2 months. Then the nurseries re-opened and our daughter has re-enrolled and baby son has started.
But she’s due to start school in September, and if/when nurseries close again, and schools are forced to shut or at least be open in some drastically reduced way, something will have to give. It’s not possible to home educate a 4/5 year old, care safely for a toddling toddler and hold down 60-70 hours of work a week – during regular working hours – between two adults. And while I love my husband dearly, it’s clearly apparent that due to the nature of his job (SO MANY MEETINGS) and his total inability to multitask, if anything has to give, it will be at my end.
I have so so much respect for teachers. Most of my family are teachers. They deserve so much better than this shoddy piecemeal set-up. But this pandemic has highlighted how close to the brink many working families are, and how school is being used to hold everything together. Unless there’s a paid furlough system in place, with a guarantee of no consequential redundancies for working mums who have to take said furlough to care for their kids, I really can’t see a viable solution. And I’d say that’s unlikely here in the UK, where the furlough scheme is just winding down, and absolutely not going to happen in the US. So are we set to be a generation of forced stay at home mums? Or a generation on the financial brink? Or a generation on the mental brink because we’re caring for and teaching our kids all day and working once they’re asleep?
I’ve got no answers here, I certainly don’t think demonising teachers or threatening to sue them is going to help anyone! But I do understand that sense of desperation.
I think we are going to have to think creatively and remember it takes a village. We are creating an expanded bubble of three families who all take Covid precautions seriously will be rotating homes and supervising school days. It’s not ideal quarantine, but it’s better than sending them to school and balances our needs, their mental health needs and the need to reduce community spread as best we can.
Cece, hard agree. it is ALL gendered. all of it. In Canada, we now have the lowest female participation rate in the workforce in over three decades.
Governments will never throw money at this because stimulus packages go to male-dominated industries and settings. They will see paid furlough as paying money to women to care for their own children and how dare those women expect such a thing. They will also not hire lots of staff to create small, safe classes in schools or small, safe daycare settings because that will be giving money to a whole lot of women to do paid caring work.
I promise you all that if K-12 were a male-dominated profession, this would all be 100% different.
/rant
I need a YES! PREACH! button for CeCe’s and Karen’s comments.
Last night I watched a Facebook livestream our latest school board meeting on reopening. The running comments online from parents were so virulent and disappointing I had to stop reading.
Our district is waffling back and forth between a full five-day option and fully remote. We’ll probably be keeping our kids home, but the more I think about it, the more I am in favor of a plan where schools close except that kids with IEPs can get some services in person, and certain preschool programs are open (Head Start, Great Start Readiness Program) because time spent in person now can have enormous benefits for those students later on, and their parents (in many cases) simply do not have the resources needed to substitute for the in person programming they need. The numbers in buildings would be so small that I think it could be done much more safely than what would happen if schools are fully open.
I like this plan too. Also paying one parent in each family to STAY HOME WITH THE KIDS.
I think that sounds like a great plan.
We are at a public charter school (so they make their own choices, separate from the district) and this is basically what they are doing. Distance learning except for managing IEP needs on a case by case basis. It’s clear from their communication that they’ve really considered the needs of staff and community.
And it wouldn’t all have to be in person, as you implied. Just where needed. My kid, for example, will be meeting with her speech therapist and counselor via telehealth, because that’s fine for her. So, the numbers could be reduced even farther.
Our school district just announced that they are going all remote in the fall. And I am glad. I have a lot of worries about working full time from home and ensuring that my 8 year old with an IEP is actually learning, but I really think it is for the best. Stressful for me, sure, but the right thing to do since cases are rising again in our state.
I have a relative who’s school district also just announced they are doing virtual learning and she is beside herself about it, going on and on about how teachers don’t really care about what is best for kids and how the parents need a union and so on.
That reaction is just so baffling to me, but I would not be surprised if she joined some sort of lawsuit.
THE PARENTS NEED A UNION lol that is a new one.
Amazing. My anxiety was that the school wouldn’t provide meaningful distance options, because I was worried what pandemic in person schooling measures would do to their mental health.
I have a 5 year old entering Kindergarten, and I frankly doubt remote learning is going to be effective for her. My 5th grader did pretty well in the spring, but this is definitely a new level challenge. I keep reminding myself we will do what we can, but if this year is a wash so be it. We will figure out what we have to do to make up for it later, when the world rights itself again.
I’m reminded of another recurring thought I’ve been having, which is that there are going to be many, MANY kids OF ALL AGES who are just going to be left home alone. Even if it were affordable and safe, there is not enough childcare available in the entire country to support the parents who will have to work, no matter what.
YES TO ALL OF THIS. I am a school counselor and I had to log off of social media for several days after reading the comments during our school board’s fb live meetings. It was a mistake to read them, obvs. People who do not work inside our buildings genuinely do not understand how impossible it will be to do what they are asking. Our district has a virtual option as well as an A/B day option, and people were LOSING IT that their kids couldn’t go five days a week. What they don’t understand is that our teacher/student ratio is the same. If 50% go to virtual, then 50% of the teachers go virtual. We will still have a 30:1 ratio in some classes, which is why the district decided to go A/B day. Many times during flu season there are not enough subs, so guess what we do? We divide up the students and add ten kids into each of the other teachers’ classrooms. Which obviously will not work. There are so many issues and we know very well that it will not work, and yet we are doing it anyway. It’s infuriating.
I had a dream last night that I got to school and had a 102 degree temperature, and it was so terrifying. I have bought an air filter, a plexiglass screen, a million masks with filters, and I am just hoping for the best.
Our school district just announced that it will “start” fully online, except for students with IEPs that require in-person learning. I am glad, except that my university has doubled and tripled down on in-person instruction. They have given no guidance about what professors should do if they have tiny kids at home. I’m increasingly frantic, not for myself (I have teens) but for my colleagues.
I don’t know what the answer is but it is not sending kids back into what was already a major illness breeding ground in the best of times. My kindergartner is doing straight online schooling for at least the first half of the year. We’re just pulling my preschooler for the year. Not sure how I’m going to manage monitoring online Kindergarten from 8am to 3:30pm every day while working full time from 8:30 to 5 but ¯\_(ツ)_/¯.
My exact reaction too: online 1st grade and working I’M SURE IT’S GONNA BE FINE *SOB*
My high schoolers are 3 days into Online Learning, and it’s been better this semester than the end of the last school year. The students are required to be online (so far) and most of the teachers have been able to figure out Google Classroom. My middle kid’s geometry teacher seems to be an exception and is a technophobe. This doesn’t bode well for the semester, but really, who needs geometry in real life (with perhaps some engineering exceptions)? They’re out of the classroom until at least October.
Middle School started today, also on Google Classroom, and this school is determined to get back into the building as soon as possible. We’re supposed to get a “Plan to Reopen” from Gov Duchey (Ducey, fine) this week, but he’s useless.
I am no longer able to fret about this. What happens will happen. We will deal. We will quarantine family members as necessary. I just need my oldest to graduate high school before she turns 20 (she’s a Junior this year and will turn 18 before the end of the school year).
Are you in Phoenix? We are starting here in Tucson on Monday—thankful for Pima Co decision to delay in school start but would have done online for three kids regardless. Our governor (Duchey *snort* my preferred moniker as well) has failed utterly and I am incensed that we chose bars and restaurants And SALONS over schools Reopening safely. I teach at community college and have been converting to online virtual over the summer. Hopefully the University opening and return of the Snowbirds (shouldn’t they stay HOME this year?) won’t send us back over the edge but I am pessimistic.
I too have wondered about the Snowbirds. Canadian borders are closed to recreational travel so driving there is out, and most people travelling to the US from Canada can’t get health insurance right now anyway. I don’t see how they could go south. Mind you, I am thinking specifically about Canadians that go south for the winter, but I guess maybe there are Snowbirds from the northern US too?
We mostly get snowbirds from East and Midwest US but I am sure there are some Canadians floating around here. I honestly will lose it if the roads fill up with license plates from Wisconsin and Pennsylvania and New York this fall. I feel like we are the only people who are staying home. And don’t get me started on my CA relatives traveling all summer!
I think I actually posted a comment about what our situation is here with schools (recap: daughter doing a 50% hybrid going into high school, waffling about our son who has the option of 100% remote vs 100% in person in grade 7, both with mandatory masking).
But can I just say how this whole pandemic has really made me lose faith in people? Like, I always thought that sure, there are some selfish people, and yes, there are assholes everywhere to some degree, but… let’s see, how to put this… You know that John Oliver bit during the 2016 election where he compared the flaws of Hillary Clinton to finding a despised raisin in a cookie, but then went on to call Trump a Monsoon of Raisins? (And if you haven’t seen it, go and find it and watch it. It was FANTASTIC!) Yeah, I kind of thought the jerks in society were like raisins in cookies (if, like me, you actually like raisins, just embrace the analogy anyway and pretend you don’t), and now I’m feeling like I’m discovering that in fact, we are in a Monsoon of Raisins. We’ve been drenched in raisins to the point that they’ve completely saturated society and we’re up to our eyeballs in ’em! To perhaps take the analogy too far, the RAISINS ARE NOW THE DOUGH which, is studded with the odd reasonable person, not the other way around like I’d always assumed.
I love this analogy. And it is so true.
This comment hits home so hard. The 2016 election made me feel like instead of a few raisins there were perhaps a regular-sized container of raisins in the US. You know, the size one buys at the store when one is going to bake a few dozen oatmeal raisin cookies. This pandemic has revealed that there is in fact a monsoon of raisins. We’re drowning in GD raisins here and no one has a plan for getting the raisin situation under control. FB just keeps putting up promotions for deals on raisins, the press often seems more concerned with discussing whether raisins are really that bad than pointing out that we’re drowning in raisins, our administration reduces and defunds raisin-amelioration efforts. IT’S RAISINS ALL THE WAY DOWN *pant pant pant*
I love that you took the raisin thing and ran with it: “IT’S RAISINS ALL THE WAY DOWN”
I feel very seen!
Feel entitled to normality even though normality is not an option
Perfect summary
We have waffled around and finally enrolled the 1st grader in the public school which is doing full virtual for the foreseeable future. Then, they sent out an email to see if anybody would be interested in full day child care, provided by the Y, at the schools, which would support kids doing virtual learning. I was so confused by this. I know the Y has been doing summer camps with little to no issues, and presumably it would be LESS students. But still. How would this work??? How is it different from just returning to school???
They are offering the Y thing here in the Dallas area. I think the intention is to offer a lifeline for parents whose options are, literally, leave my child at home alone so I can work, or quit my job and immediately sink into poverty (if I’m not already there).
It COULD work, if only the parents who truly need it use it (our district has had some success with a pilot program this summer), but how do you target a program that way? And, same issues with teacher/coach/staff safety and so on. ROUND WE GO.
Here, there’s a skating rink offering the same as these YMCA day-care programs. A skating rink. It’s so random, and yet, there are people who need it. Wild.
I am taking part in a recorded Zoom conversation between parents and teachers today, where they voice their concerns and teachers explain how teaching/learning/classrooms work. Our plan right now is to be fully online and the community is supportive but anxious.
I am not at all sure now I feel about this “video recorded Zoom call plan,” but it does seem like the best of the available options for explanation.
I have some family members that has gone down the rabbit hole of Republican conspiracy theories, (you know, all Democrats are devil worshipers and that liberals have this huge child sex ring that they are trying to build bigger and hide from the Republicans and Donald Trump is calling them out, Covid-19 is fake, etc.). I have learned a lot of what the conspiracies are from posts family members have posted. They are now posting that face masks are part of this child sex ring and are muting children so they can mask their cries for help etc. Now that Facebook is taking down misinformation there are complaining that the conservative voice is being erased.
My one relative is going to every school board hearing, posting on every school page, going to any anti mask rallies, anything you can think of demanding that children should not wear face masks at school………but here is the kicker, she has never had her children in school. She has always home schooled. I wonder how many of the parents emailing, demonstrating, and complaining are not really the parents of the kids that go to those schools or are in the district. Maybe some of them don’t even have school aged kids? I am hoping this is the case because it breaks my heart that so many people don’t care about our teachers and other school staff.
We live in a state that is having regular school hours five days a week. The only precautions being taken are online options and to clean everything. The governor put a mask requirement in all schools. I worry what will happen in September when school have been back in session for a few weeks.
I know this can just be a conspiracy theory built off of another one. It just makes me wonder if she is the only one doing things like this. I also know that things are done and said negatively on both sides. (like being violent to someone because they are not wearing a mask/or being asked to wear a mask) I just have really had my eyes opened to what people are willing to believe of other people. Before 2016 I would of thought of these family members as the nice, wholehearted people. Trumpism really changed the way I viewed others and really damaged some relationships.
I think maybe we’re related! I’m shocked and saddened by what I see from some of my family members. This all will make me think twice before attending another family reunion (if such things are ever possible again).
YES! We were going to have a smallish outdoor get together a few weeks ago and I was having panic attacks not wanting to go and not wanting certain family members near my 90 year old grandmother. While at the same time feeling bad about not going because it was for her birthday, and I have missed the last few birthdays for various reasons. I was so happy when my aunt canceled. (It is her family that are the issue, and I know my aunt is taking the virus serious and is really concerned about her mom getting it), I know that at least 6 of her 8 kids are strong anti-mask, covid is a hoax believers.
During the 2016 election I was saddened about what I was hearing from them but thought that there was a possibility to still enjoy being with them and keeping a relationship with them. The last few months between the covid comments and the black lives matter comments, I unfortunately don’t think it will happen any time soon. Due to the fact they can’t talk about anything else but their beliefs. It breaks my heart, they are my only cousins. I think that themselves ten years ago would be shocked at the hurtful prejudice things that they are now stating and posting. I hope that they will have an awakening from their current mindset.
This morning I overheard a conversation between people that I don’t know. (I wasn’t close to them, but it was a very loud conversation that I couldn’t help overhearing). One woman was in tears because she’s worried that her district is going to make the call to go virtual at their board meeting tonight (I’m pretty sure this is the nearby smallish district that has 50+ high school students who have tested positive in the last month). She’s a teacher and a single mom and has a rising kindergartener, and doesn’t know how she’ll manage teaching virtually and helping her kid with kindergarten at the same time. I was feeling so sympathetic to her because it’s such an impossible situation to be in… until she added in that she thinks “this whole things is blown out of proportion” and that she has been tutoring kids all summer and they’re all fine. Because one-on-one tutoring clearly carries the same risks as being in a room with 30 other people for 7 hours a day…
I’m interested in hearing how people are weighing their school choices in this regard: we are probably going to keep our kids home this year (our district might cancel classes for everyone anyway, but hasn’t yet), but our district’s virtual learning option sounds terrible: about 3 hours of online meetings a day for my first grader, which he will definitely refuse to do. We’d rather go for straight up homeschooling, which we feel confident we can get our kids to do happily (because they choose to read and write a lot on their own, and usually enjoy math), but we don’t want our perenially underfunded school district to lose funding, or for teachers/support staff to lose their jobs. I’m just curious how others are managing this part of the decision.
Omg. This! We don’t know what the online option is yet. District is 2 on, 3 off. One group is m/t and the other is t/f. And I 100%!do not trust the other parents in the district to be quarantining to a level that will not have this all blow up in a month (we went from 4ish cases/week to something like 24 after the Fourth. Then we settled back down to like 6-8/week and today had FIVE In one day – the high school just had to have an in person ceremony. I’m sure there were parties that went along with it. I was out of town in a quarantined manner)
But, those parents who HAVE to work? Who have even fewer good choices? Who cannot afford the private pod teacher and fencing coach? I don’t want them affected by my decision to opt out.
Aaahhhhhhh
A friend suggested choosing the online option and then doing it on our schedule. Which I may. But if no one is ever leaving my presence again, I would rather me be in charge of the schedule and it will not have hours and hours of screen time. And I know that actual homeschooling is so much more efficient. But I don’t want the district to lose funding (even though I’m not fully convinced they spend it as wisely as they could.
Blargh.
I wish I was a New Zealander!
We have a first and fourth grader and decided to do home school for this year. Our county is staring virtual but who knows what the year will look like. So we decided to just do our own thing for safety and consistency this year. I know we are lucky to be able to choose to do this and actually implement it. But virtual schooling was not great in the spring and none of us wanted to go through that again.
Our school district is focused on a return in-person. Masks will be mandatory and there are some supposed cleaning protocols. There is a 100% remote option but there is no information available to families about what that will be like.
We have just one kid who is a sophomore in high school. We are hoping to enroll him in our district’s long-standing online school, where they meet in person 1 day per week and also can do a couple classes in their home high school. This seems like the best option for us and our student. But our school starts the 17th and our interview at the online school isn’t till the 10th, so I am feeling anxious about not having everything sorted out yet.
I have so much sympathy for teachers, for parents of young kids who have to go to work, for kids and families who rely on food and other services delivered by schools, because there really don’t seem to be any obvious good solutions and no one seems to be thinking very far past the obvious ones. What about (as suggested above) most students learn remotely with very limited in-person for students with IEPS or who receive OT/PT/psychologists/other services? Splitting students with working parents up between schools and YMCA-type care programs? Instead of school buses picking up kids and taking them to school, have the buses pick up food and drop if off to students who get free/reduced price lunches? One-on-one or small group tutoring appointments available, preferably outside – same for meetings with counselors? Help parents create pods of a small number of families, to foster some social opportunities during remote learning? Dammit, Americans are supposed to be ingenious but we seem to be so focused on doing school business as usual or not at all.
Our school system is fully online for the first semester. If things are going well, there will be a hybrid second semester starting in February with up to half the students in the building at any given time. I think that the chances they go back at all next year are very slim.
It seems like the best out of a range of terrible solutions, but I am incredibly lucky that my kids are older (middle and high schoolers) and my husband is working remotely at least through January. I went back to law school in my 30s, just graduated, and absolutely need to work to pay back my loans. I don’t know what I would do if my kids were younger and one of us had to quit our jobs to stay home with them. Everything seems impossible.
My kids are too young to be in school and I still spend virtually all day every day in complete paralysis about this situation. Mainly it’s (to use Shawna’s analogy) that “i didn’t know the raisins were actually the dough.” Like, there are SO MANY of us who are desperately going to try to vote Trump out this fall, but OMG I did not realize just how many horrible, horrible, selfish, unfeeling, selfish, hypocritical humans still remained on the other side of this fight. It completely overwhelms me. I’ve always been upbeat – like, mocked for my unwavering optimism – and i am just utterly full of despair these days. How can there be so many people like this. How.
I wonder the same thing and it is breaking my heart. I feel like I’m trapped in a Tom Cruise movie and many of my neighbors and family members have just collectively peeled back their friendly disguises to reveal some really ugly points of view.
Yes! This is exactly how it feels.
I am feeling the same as many of you. Our district (in CO) has decided to offer 100% virtual, which you commit to for a semester, or a hybrid option where half the kids go MW and half TTh and the rest is virtual. We are starting the hybrid option…but I am concerned that after three weeks in school, it will all go to hell and we’ll be online anyway. I don’t see how the teachers and staff are going to keep from spreading it to each other, especially with the help of the tiny vectors, who will also be bringing it home. But boy – in our (quite red) district, the number of folks who are completely INCENSED that there is no 100% in-person option is ASTOUNDING. Like, the school board/teachers/whoever decided that they just didn’t want to do it, not that there is NO POSSIBLE WAY TO KEEP YOUR KID SAFE. It does, indeed, make me despair for humanity.
I admit to not reading all of the comments because… mental health. But, I read an article about how in 1918 and 1919 all schools…were held outdoors. They had the open-sided tents, so they could work in the rain, and if it was a place that was hot, there was shade and fans. If it’s a place that is cold, they had these huge bundles and heated soapstones. It worked. Kids didn’t get sick, there was no spike, they learned (perhaps even better than they do in regular settings). I get that it would be VERY DIFFICULT and VERY EXPENSIVE. But…why isn’t this even being talked about? Oh wait, I know. Because we have NO LEADERS. NONE.
::weeping::
I read that article and have been ranting to all who will listen that I think this could at least be considered especially where I live. It rains or is grey lots between November and May but it seldom gets below 40 or above 70 during the school year – at least CONSIDER building outdoor covered shelter type things for kids to go to school in. If they could swing this in 1918 surely we at least think about it now??
Yes, also read that article and also won’t shut up about it. Also the pictures were AMAZING! Someone above said that Americans are supposed to be ingenious but that we basically have no idea how to do school this year. I wish we had as much gumption now as we did then. Instead, we chose to open Chuck E. Cheese and six flags and Disney world and bars instead of schools. So educational inequity will worsen, women will drop out of the workforce at record rates, and also just for fun we’ve now created a false divide between parents and teachers. :-(
Very interesting. You would think, at least at middle and high schools, they could just truck the desks out to the football field or something. If we cared. At ALL. I guess it could be a problem if they need to charge technology (my oldest kid is going into first grade so I have no idea how high school works) but at least try? Obviously it won’t work for long in Minnesota, for example, but maybe if we did it for 2 months we could curb the spread.
While I think outdoor classes could slow the spread in an area with COVID somewhat under control and might be worth a try, I want to point out that COVID is more contagious than the flu. Plus people with the flu are contagious at most one day before symptoms, while people with COVID are contagious for 1-5 days, maybe more, before symptoms. This means that outdoor school now would be less effective in slowing the spread of COVID than it was in slowing the flu. COVID is deadlier than the flu and we are just now learning about the long(er) term impacts of COVID on the heart and lungs which are not an issue with the flu. In a place with a high infection rate I wouldn’t want to take the chance with outdoor school when today’s technology allows for remote learning, as much as I personally dread remote learning for three kids between PK and 3rd grade, one with an IEP, an infant, a job and no childcare. This fall will suck.
Do we know the death rate from the 1918 flu (I don’t want to call it S– flu)?
Most of the articles that come up when I search are from the spring, and our understanding has changed pretty significantly.
Re: outdoor classrooms, the parents here in the DC area are insisting that they won’t work because it’s too hot here. Yes, it’s hot. Look at your handouts, and you’ll see that we’re trying to pick the least-bad solution. Maybe that’s sweatiness.
I am a teacher in a public school and a parent with three children in public schools. I would like to thank all you – Swistle and commenters – for your very thoughtful and sensible comments. It was very soothing and restored some of my faith in humanity. Never change.
Also, I misread the second part of the title as, “Teachers in a Panic” and felt very seen.
I’m sorry you’re in a low place. I am, too, but I haven’t figured out what coping methods might be effective. I’ve always admired your instincts about self-care (though that phrase kind of irritates me).
There’s a woman on IG singing that the pandemic isn’t over just because you’re over the pandemic.
Also this (hope I do it right) from an MD who’s a suicidologist and emergency psychiatrist:
https://twitter.com/tylerblack32/status/1286713750624641027
Add me to the list of people who are just so sad to learn how many jerks are moving among us, with an asterisk to indicate that it turns out a lot of them are in my actual extended family.
(out of curiosity, are the lows timed to some specific Cycle Point? Some peoples’ bodies do that and it is… pretty weird. And also seems kind of mean. Other people just have lows at some frequency. Other-other people have event-based lows – the day after an anticipated event, or the day they reckon with their bills and budgets, or something like that.)