Teachers Face A Summer Of Soul Searching. What Do They Do In The Fall?
This originally ran in early June. No signs that things are looking up at all.
We know a handful of things.
We know that virtually nobody wants to continue the pandemic shut-down crisis school model in the fall (with the possible exception of ed tech companies that hope to keep cashing in on it). Elected officials across the country are calling for schools to open again, a position that’s easy for them to take because A) everybody is suffering from full-on pandemic fatigue and B) none of those officials will have to deal with the actual issues of opening schools.
We know that nobody really knows how dangerous re-opening schools will be. Will students become super-spreaders, sharing it at school and bringing it home to vulnerable family members? How great a risk will teachers be running?
We know that “official” guidance on how to open schools is in short supply, and that what is out there is, for teachers, mind-boggling. The average teacher’s reaction to CDC guidelines is an eye roll powerful enough to shift the earth’s axis. Teachers have conjectured repeatedly that the members of the CDC must have never set foot inside a school, but that’s not the CDC’s job. Their job is to figure out what safety would require. Somebody else will have to figure out how, or if, that can be done.
Finally, we know that based on everything we think we know right now, the price tag for safely opening schools again is huge. Lots of folks are trying to run numbers, and everyone agrees that the figure will be in the billions—many of them. And simply throwing up our hands and going back to CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Teachers Face A Summer Of Soul Searching. What Do They Do In The Fall?
