When being a teacher turns embarrassing
If you care about kids, show up to work
In Monday’s Memo I mentioned that I headed back to school this week, and that I was looking forward to it. I had no idea that so many of my colleagues in other parts of the country would feel differently about the prospect to returning to our life’s work. For instance:
The story explains that “fears” of the Omicron variant of COVID led to 616 teachers (just short of 900 when teachers’ aides are included) in the San Francisco Unified School District joining a planned “sick-out.” Despite feeling fine, these educators phoned in sick in the hopes of pressuring the school system to shut down, or perhaps change to a remote learning environment in the face of potential COVID-spread.
They were far from alone. The same thing is happening in Chicago Public Schools, where the teachers’ union has gone on sick strike, demanding that students be kept at home rather than report to school for in-person learning. The lockout has now gone into its 3rd day.
Though I think there’s a certain level of shamelessness that factors into this kind of behavior, it’s still shocking to see these demands made even as:
Football stadiums have been packed shoulder-to-shoulder for months without any serious increase in COVID-related hospitalization or death
Every other profession is expecting its employees to come do their jobs
Countless school systems around the country (including my own) have been back to work for a year and a half, many without mandating masks
How my fellow educators can see everyone from accountants to acrobats, lawyers to lawncare specialists, zoologists to Zamboni drivers going to work every day, but still feel entitled to take more pandemic paid-leave, I will never understand. Nor will it cease being an embarrassment to me anytime soon. What makes it worse, when teachers don’t do their jobs, it increases the burden being felt by those Zamboni drivers and accountants who have to provide for childcare on top of everything else.
That’s why, with as many disagreements as I may have with MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough from time to time, I couldn’t help but nod in agreement as he responded to the Chicago Teachers’ Union:
I appreciate Scarborough’s perspective, and don’t sense that his words were intended in an abrasive or mean-spirited manner. It may be that some of the teachers objecting to a return to their work are legitimately (and with good reason) fearful for their health.
I work with some colleagues who, though they are coming to work each day, have pre-existing conditions that make them high-risk. I would not think poorly of them at all if they decided to find another profession where they could better manage their potential exposure to germs. Truthfully, that’s always been one of the realities of public education even before COVID – it’s one of those jobs where close, personal contact with a wide variety of people is a given.
So as much as I’d hate to lose any devoted teacher, the entire profession itself cannot grind to a halt because some are feeling uncomfortably susceptible to infection. Acknowledging that is not an attack on anyone, though leading progressive writers would disagree:
Teaching can be tough, and some teachers might be under-compensated; but the exact same thing can be said for every other profession I can think of. And even by the softest standard imaginable, what Scarborough said isn’t cruelty towards educators. In fact, I’d argue the precise opposite.
If teaching is a noble profession, if the work we teachers do is really invaluable, vital, and fundamentally important to the future of our civilization, then it isn’t something that we can haphazardly shut down for a year here and a year there.
Ironically, it is the teachers’ union that is conveying the false premise that what happens in classrooms is expendable. It is Aaron Rupar expressing, even if unintentionally, that the work his parents did wasn’t essential - that it could be facilitated just as effectively by an iPad and some worksheets. I fundamentally disagree – maybe because I’m a teacher myself, or maybe because the evidence tells me so…
I guess if that kind of news right there doesn’t motivate you as a teacher to get back into a classroom, get back to work building relationships with young people, get back to investing your time and interest in their lives and problems and needs, get back to being a sounding board and trusted mentor for kids who may not have anywhere else to turn, get back to being perhaps the only smile and encouragement a student gets all day…if all that doesn’t mean more to you than negotiating mask policies, COVID protocol, demanding cost-of-living salary adjustments, or whatever other issue you want to press while using kids as leverage…then is it unfair of me to suggest that you might just be in the wrong profession?
ICYMI
I recorded a video about the masks this week, and the jaw-dropping admission from medical experts now telling us, “Oh, yeah, by the way, cloth masks don’t work at all in stopping COVID.” You can see it here…
Also, here are a couple articles I wrote this week that you might appreciate:
Peter, you’re going to think I’m a total wimp. I called off today because windchill is -12 and my classroom has no heat. I sit on an outside wall pounded by cold wind. There’s a door leading to my room that also leaks air. I told maintenance and they have done nothing. The school didn’t even call a delay today and I said I wasn’t teaching in an unheated room all day again with no heat. I was sick a majority of Christmas break and haven’t fully recovered. Teaching with no heat yesterday didn’t help things. Do you think it’s unreasonable? I know it’s unrelated but man, I’d think that supplying the basics — like heat in subzero windchills — is a reasonable request to continue teaching. :-/
Amen!