Time to Get on My Soapbox: For Those Who Don't Understand Why Teachers Want to Stay Home

Since Coronavirus hit the United States in March, teachers have been working their asses off to provide students with an effective and equitable education. Despite challenges like students' lack of technology, support, supervision, interest, and/or incentive, teachers dragged themselves and 100+ students, kicking and screaming, over that end-of-the-year finish line. Then, most teachers have spent their summers going to virtual workshops and planning for the fall because they never want to feel as unprepared as they did in March when everything changed over a weekend.

As summer slowly starts to crawl to a close and September looms ahead, President Trump is insisting that schools plan to reopen in person. This is regardless of the growing number of cases, increasing death tolls, and lack of any funding, plan, or support from the federal government.

I'm sorry, but that's a big nope for me.

First of all, it's really easy to assume everyone understands the ins and outs of day-to-day teaching, but the reality is parents and students (and even some administrators) don't actually know what's effective or ineffective teaching. So, hi! I'm a teacher, so let me explain the effectiveness of in-person versus remote learning. First question: is remote learning as effective as in-person instruction? Nope, not at all. It's not even close. Next question: if we return to in-person instruction, will that improve the quality of instruction students get during the pandemic? Absolutely NOT. Unfortunately, here's the thing. Almost all of the benefits of in-person instruction vanish when you take the necessary precautions to meet in person and not spread Coronavirus like a wildfire.

Don't believe me? My school district just finalized their plans for in-person instruction. Their first step involves going one-to-one with technology. Here's what day will look like: One-third of the student population will be in school each day, which puts each class at less than 10 students. Students will complete assignments on their district-provided laptops, whether they are at home or in school. This prevents germs from spreading through worksheets (and it keeps the teacher from having to create two

different versions of everything). There can't be any partner or group work because working with others would require being closer than 6 feet. Students who are home that day won't have immediate access to their teachers for help — I should say, I assume they won't — because their teachers are busy working with the students at school that day. At most, students will attend school two days a week (but most weeks they will only go one day because it's a rotating schedule), which means parents will still need childcare 3-4 days a week. Ultimately, students will be working independently on the computer for the majority of their time in the school building.

Excuse me, but how is this any different or better than remote learning? That one day parents don't need a babysitter? Is that worth the chance that children and teachers may get sick? Is it worth the number of teachers and children that might die as a result?

Secondly, the country already asks too much of teachers and schools, which is why there is such an urgency for schools to reopen. Teachers are educators, social workers, parents, therapists, disciplinarians, coaches, cheerleaders, bodyguards, nurses — I could keep going, but you get the point. Schools and other school staff also provide so many services to the community: free/reduced-price lunches for struggling families, social services and interventions for domestic problems, community events, and yes, realistically, free childcare. Schools and teachers juggle all of these different responsibilities and only ever complain about not getting the funding to do all of our jobs more successfully.

The real issue is our society puts almost all of its problems on the shoulders of two groups: teachers and police. Current trends are leading towards redirecting police responsibilities to other social services and professionals to lighten their load and help them do their jobs more effectively (and with less unwarranted violence.) We need similar reform for teachers and schools. I know it's a pandemic. I know the world is a straight dumpster fire right now. I know there's already so much we need to fix but can't. It's understandable if we can't fix this systemic problem now, but can we at least not expect teachers to risk their lives in the meantime?

Lastly, we need to focus on issues we can actually fix. A lot of parents are probably thinking: I know my child struggled with remote learning. Guess what? I know they did. Teachers struggled too. It was new territory for all of us. We did the best we could with the resources and training we had at the time. However, the fix for bad remote learning isn't putting kids back in school. The fix is to ask: how can we improve remote learning to make it work better? If we spent a fraction of the time we've spent trying to figure out the enigma that is in-person instruction on making remote learning work for our students and teachers, we'd actually start making progress instead of just running in place.

Because here's the reality, everybody: we're going back to remote learning at some point. Maybe not the first week of school. Maybe not in September, or even October, but definitely by the time cold and flu season hits. The second wave is coming, and we haven't even come up for air from the first one.

We all want to think we've beaten Coronavirus. We all want to return to normalcy. We all want our lives back to the way they were. I miss teaching in my classroom. I miss being with my students. I miss it all so much more than I ever imagined I would.

The truth is there are a lot of really strong reasons to wait to reopen schools, but one thing stands out to me the most. Even if it all goes right and not a single person gets sick, it's not going to be the same level of education we expected before Coronavirus.