Grabbing Squirt Guns While the House Burns: Mask Post #2

Let’s start with the Big Now-Historical Fact: The government lied. They knew masks were helpful at controlling the spread of airborne viruses, and yet key players discouraged mask use at the beginning. At the beginning … when we might have won this thing — when contact tracing might have been possiblethey told the American public that masks would lead to “face touching.”

Most people went along, although I remember a masked woman in my favorite grocery store, saying to me. “Yes, we’ll think for ourselves.” I mean, duhhh. Those hundreds of thousands of doctors haven’t just been indulging themselves in a weird face-covering fetish for decades.

But alleged authorities warned us away from masks. I understand why. In a pandemic scenario, the United States was desperately short of basic personal protective equipment (PPE). Health care workers were about to get clobbered if toilet paper was any sort of a leading indicator, and toilet paper turned out to be a great leading indicator.

Yes, we have no N-95s today. Or tomorrow. Or for the indefinite future unless you work in healthcare. Even then sometimes you have to get lucky. And just last week, CNN reported that “the United States Food and Drug Administration is loosening the requirements for surgical masks, citing shortages.” The situation appears dire in some nursing homes to judge by this title:

https://go.tiffinohio.net/2020/08/ppe-staffing-shortages-linger-as-covid-19-kills-2500-nursing-home-residents-in-ohio/
While not directly related to this blog’s educational mission, I think the (INSANE) problems of convalescent care facilities should not be left as page 9 news. NOBODY SHOULD BE FIGHTING TO FIND THAT PPE BY NOW!

Teachers are still out of luck. It’s August. Schools are opening. Students share pictures of packed hallways and water fountains that have been turned off. We have pictures of smiling teachers in face shields and maybe-smiling teachers with faces covered, crinkly eyes above fun masks made at home or purchased online. Paper and fabric masks of varying quality are turning up in stores and at art fairs. Social media users caution teachers to wear both the mask AND the shield.

Eduhonesty: I wrote a version of this post in late July. Nearly a month has gone by, yet those medical grade masks simply are not out there — not for teachers, anyway.

How did a country with the resources and technological know-how of the United States reach August without decent PPE — especially masks — for teachers? My new Etsy mask? I like the fact that these masks have a pocket for filters. I am using coffee filters. They also have a thin pocket for nose wires, slightly more comfortable on the nose when I bend wires to fit my face, which keeps my glasses from fogging. I love my favorite Etsy masks. But I’d never enter an operating room relying on the witches’ cauldron mask below.

This image has an empty alt attribute; its file name is witchmask-scaled.jpg

I’d never enter a classroom either. I am a retired teacher. Would I substitute now if I had a supply of N-95 masks? In some districts, I just might. That statement’s entirely theoretical, though. I’m not going into those rooms depending on two layers of fabric and a coffee filter — although many other teachers are doing exactly that. Other teachers are using mask versions that involve only one piece of fabric.

Posts abound on social media asking how to avoid fogging glasses. Big indicator: If your glasses fog, your mask is not well-sealed. I’ve worn those N-95s. If the fit is right, the glasses don’t fog. Air’s not supposed to be blowing out all over the place from the top and bottom of the mask. That’s not the idea behind filtering.

But teachers are not being given much choice. Real masks? Caregivers and teachers would love to find those masks — only in many places they can’t. I’m not sure where the masks are hiding. My social media groups are spread throughout the country and the mask fight appears to be taking place on a national front.

The “donatation” is pretty funny — if you don’t think about the implications.

This is a travesty. We knew about COVID-19 in February, and some pivotal government groups appear to have known earlier. We locked down in March. It’s August.

In my view, the current administration didn’t just drop a ball.

Instead, they lobbed a cluster bomb — directly into the heart of American education.

Teachers and Parents: Let’s Bail Out this Lifeboat Together

We desperately need to come up with a less incendiary set of responses to a perfectly natural fact:  Schools provide childcare. Schools have been providing childcare forever.  In the early 1960s, my mom worked as a surgical nurse with the Veteran’s Administration while I was in school. My aunt covered for brief periods before and after I made the three-block walk to Jennie Reed Elementary School.   

Parents and employers work around their local school schedule.  “Jenna” works nights as a hospital nurse. “Dan” gets the kids up and starts breakfast while Jenna drives home. He goes to work and she finishes getting the kids ready for school, staying up until the bus arrives. Then the kids go to school and Jenna goes to bed. My friend Jenna was chronically sleep deprived for a few years, until her youngest boy could manage on his own for a few hours in the afternoon.  

I read a tweet that said we were endangering teachers so rich people did not have to pay for childcare. I’m sure that’s true in some cases. But it leaves out a much larger group of people – the working poor and the working just-getting-by.  I worked part-time when my first child was a toddler – 30 hours, “Director of Corporate Communications” and a chance to write and regularly share time with geeky programmers and other fun adults. But I quit when my second child was born.  I ran the childcare cost numbers, realized I would be working for fast-food wages at best, and decided to stay home. I remained the classic soccer mom until my youngest was in middle school, when I entered teaching.

Childcare – never cheap and sometimes nerve-wracking, especially right now.

Schools historically have provided a safe haven for children so that people can work. Parents rely on schools for this purpose, especially since few families can now survive comfortably on one income.  Employers recognize this fact and often schedule around that window of working opportunity.

SO PLEASE LET’S STOP POINTING FINGERS AT EACH OTHER.

TEACHERS, THOSE PARENTS MAY RISK LOSING THEIR HOME AND LIVELIHOOD WITHOUT CHILDCARE. MAYBE THEY GENUINELY CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY FOR CARE– ESPECIALLY IF THEIR HOURS HAVE BEEN CUT BACK OR THOSE HOURS ARE ERRATIC.

PARENTS, PLEASE, PLEASE STOP BLAMING TEACHERS FOR YOUR PREDICAMENT. THEY DON’T WANT TO GO INTO THE 2020 SCHOOL BUILDING?  GO ONLINE AND LOOK AT THE PICTURES OF THOSE ROWS IN THE ROOMS WHERE ALL THE FUN, FUZZY PLACES HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED DUE TO CDC GUIDELINES.  THE SCHOOL YOU WANT IS NOT THE SCHOOL YOUR CHILDREN WILL GET — NOT THIS YEAR ANYWAY. YOUR CHILDREN WILL NOT BE CLUSTERING ON THE LITTLE RUG IN FRONT OF THE ROOM OR HUGGING IN THE HALLWAYS. PARENTS OF OLDER CHILDREN, GO BACK IN YOUR MEMORIES AND VISUALIZE THOSE HALLWAYS AND BATHROOMS — EIGHT PASSING PERIODS FILLED WITH A CRUSH OF BODIES EVERY SINGLE DAY. DO YOU REMEMBER BATHROOMS? DID YOU ALWAYS WAIT FOR THE SOAP DISPENSER? DID IT ALWAYS HAVE SOAP?

Please, let’s be kind to each other. Let’s understand that parents and teachers both have their backs up against the wall. Nothing good comes of pointing fingers at each other.  In fact, this finger-pointing does genuine harm. The parent-teacher relationship ends up damaged, a relationship often pivotal to academic success.  Teachers feel unsupported, while parents feel that teachers don’t understand the problems closed school buildings create – and the two groups waste their energies.

We should point our fingers at the government and other leaders who led us to this place, who underfunded schools for so long that those schools are difficult or impossible to ventilate and clean correctly. We should point our fingers at the decision makers who brought us to the point where we have over one-quarter of the world’s COVID-19 cases yet only 4% of the world’s population.  All this scientific and technological know-how and the better part of a year to prepare and…. What did we get? A spectacular mess.

America’s teachers are not responsible for the mess. Parents obviously are not responsible either. To my readers who want to write an angry tweet, letter, blog post or meme: Who do you believe made the decisions that brought us here? If you are not sure, you might do your neighbors a favor by finding out and posting your findings on a local, neighborhood app. Point your angry tweets at the responsible parties.

Teachers and parents — we are the workers, cobbling together our children’s educations. As the school year begins to unfold, I hope we can take it easy on each other. The outside world seems to be doing a good enough job of making us miserable without any extra help.

Another use for neighborhood apps: Making childcare arrangements that work during uncertain times. Can you trade time? What can you trade in return for time? If the infrastructure is not holding up to demands, what can we build to replace it?

COVID-19: Highlighting Decades of a Funding Crisis in a Time of Union Busting

Teachers have been talking about the funding crisis, even as legislature after legislature made it harder for them to act. No unions allowed. No strikes allowed. No voices for the teachers allowed — the teachers, who are honestly the only adults in any real numbers who can speak up for underprivileged children in schools. Frequently now, you can lose your license and even retirement for striking. So we simply march forward into classrooms.

And the unseen remains unseen. The people who might stand up for America’s least-fortunate children have become versions of corporate employees, forced to say the politically expedient thing — because speaking up today in many states can cost you your position. They go to work without much voice in the larger world, without the supplies they require, for the sake of their students.

Stop-gap measures provide just enough supplemental funding to shut the protests up in poor, property-tax based districts. Myths of lazy teachers were used to shut down the unions, the principal power that poor school districts could bring into any funding discussion. Myths of self-indulgent teachers are being used now to ignore what teachers are saying about school safety. It takes a fifteen-year-old girl in Georgia with a cell phone to somehow break through the hubris that led to opening all these schools in viral hotspots. Check out the following if you missed this story:

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/us/9-students-staff-test-positive-for-covid-19-after-georgia-school-hallway-photo-goes-viral/ar-BB17MHNb

Here’s a map that I think should have entered this discussion awhile ago: https://dc.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/2018/03/08/67017/#sthash.VS6OyZ4L.dpbs *

See the source image

And the years keep going by. In a property-tax based funding system, I bought my own paper, my own ink cartridges and endless writing and art supplies for students. Hell, I bought my own furniture. That tall stool I needed? Only $10 at the Goodwill, a real find. Before computers became widely available — only the last few years, and even then not available to take home except in the high school — I worked in a district that once even toyed with declaring bankruptcy. I expected to buy supplies. I haunted second-hand stores and garage sales. I remember the Walworth County Fair used book sale, where I once got a wonderful set of children’s encyclopedias.

My spouse earned enough so that I could accept my salary. I managed to make everyday life work. That unlockable door? My active shooter plan where we all fled out the middle school’s windows, meeting together some blocks away at a familiar elementary school got my door fixed and a lock installed. I had one or two students who looked like they might not fit easily through those windows, but I was fully prepared to break windows in any shooting scenario. You can find the safest and most effective ways to break windows online, by the way.

Eduhonesty: Those high school hallways in Georgia? Remember your own high school hallways, reader? They all look like the Georgia hallways, except in rare areas with steep enrollment declines. Hallways automatically fill up with wall-to-wall bodies between classes. There’s no way to avoid that glut that does not lose significant class time. Administrators could stagger passing periods but then a 50 minute science period becomes a 30 minute science period — and there are still a bunch of students remaining in the hallway while the bathrooms fill up. I should note, too, that if you create an effective 12 minute passing period, certain students will turn that into a 12 minute bathroom break.

(True story: I worked in a high school with a three-minute passing period. The administration got tired of dealing with referrals for tardiness and instituted a policy that no referrals were to be made until students were at least 10 minutes late. I had a student who kept turning up maybe eight minutes late, day after day. In exasperation, I wrote a referral. He said, “What? No! I get ten minutes!”)

Can’t strike? Most of America’s teachers cannot. Can’t protest? In many places, teachers risk losing their positions if they do. So who is going to advocate for our kids? Fifteen-year-old girls with cell phones? It seems so. We should be extremely glad our kids have cell phones.

Strikes were never simply about teacher salaries, although anti-union voices tried to paint them that way. They were about broken copiers; missing textbooks or software; lack of technology; shortages of supplies; inadequate health insurance; shortages of school nurses for the ill; shortages of paraprofessionals to help special education and bilingual students; lack of equipment for those school nurses and paraprofessionals; student lunches that started at 10:30 AM and ran all day due to lack of space in the cafeteria and the ovens; and work orders that took months to fill or were never filled at all.

Why are some teachers so frantic right now? I want to answer that question: Schools in poorer areas are often held together with string, spit and bailing wire. This situation has been progressively worsening, as we shut down the unions and muzzled the teachers. Those CDC recommendations? I am certain many teachers feel — know — that their district has never had the resources to start a fully-supplied regular year. Those CDC demands?

PIPE DREAMS.

When I had forty students in my class and only 33 desks, we walked down the hall and borrowed from a teacher who had a planning period — for nearly a month. Tall, helpful young men banged desks against door moldings as I gently chided them to be careful. Then we had to get everyone seated and off the radiators.

I am a master of working around broken copiers and computers. But that effort sometimes involves passing out supplies and collecting papers. My colleagues don’t want to collect papers from that kid who coughed all over his work — not right now. I have already taken myself out of the picture. I’m a retired teacher who was substitute teaching until this year. (See https://www.eduhonesty.com/prediction-subs-will-become-an-endangered-species)

Teachers in my last district are lucky. They can actually open windows. In many places, no matter how many students are sniffing and coughing, rooms may have no windows or windows that cannot be opened. Air circulation can be iffy. In unlucky rooms, body odor and perfume combine with subtle smells that sometimes trigger mold allergies.

Some of the problems I list can be avoided in COVID-19 times. No one would stuff 40 students in one room now, right? Reader, I’m not sure. Many schools have been overcrowded for years, adding modules outside and staggering schedules. One year, I worked in an interior converted, concrete storage closet. That room had no ventilation. But at a certain level of crowding, can that converted closet be left empty? Will it be left empty?

Those people saying children must be in school should spend one day in a middle school or high school. They should use a student bathroom, before sitting at a table in the cafeteria. They should take a trip back in time and participate in one of the seven to ten or so passing periods, a number that depends on how much time is spent in each class. That Georgia passing period? That crush of bodies happens over and over again, all day long, every single day.

We are having hybrid school across the country right now. I have written a hybrid post. This post is about coronavirus safety. But it’s also a warning in a time when unions have been struggling against anti-union sentiment. Those teachers who lost their ability to strike? Who can no longer risk speaking up for fear of losing their certification and even their retirement? We need their voices desperately because they can tell the truths that remain unseen.

Unfortunately, over the last few decades, well-orchestrated forces managed to silence those voices. As I write this, I wonder how many people in my country understand what has happened. How many Americans understand the cost of the many voices that fell silent?

We are not talking about self-indulgent people who do not want to work. These are people who love children so much that they are willing to start work with six or more years of education and a masters degree for less than $40,000 per year. They are people who love children so much they will spend hundreds of dollars each year to buy supplies for the students in their classroom. Some spend over $1,000 of their own money. They are people who keep walking back into that classroom, even as the disrespect is hurled on them because — gasp! — they don’t want to step into the line of fire in hopes of a marginal academic advantage over online learning — an advantage apt to be wiped out by the closures and quarantines likely to follow the live classroom experience. Those voices know that in some parts of the country, some high school students are about to get gruesomely ill. A number will die. A greater percentage of older, working adults will die.

Teaching is not a job. It’s a calling. I regard this country as remarkably fortunate. Among other considerations, I think that if the teaching profession were not heavily female, this whole house of cards might collapse. America’s schools would never be able to staff those classrooms. But it’s not collapsing. Women are posting about their anxiety attacks, asking for advice and then going into work.

(According to a study by The World Bank, today 87 percent of American teachers are female and those numbers continue to increase annually.)

https://www.theatlantic.com/education/archive/2019/02/the-explosion-of-women-teachers/582622/ and https://www.thewesterncarolinajournalist.com/2016/05/04/the-history-of-women-as-teachers

I’d like to close this post by suggesting that I understand why we are all afraid of the national strike. They can take your license and even your pension in some states, wiping out your ability to find work at the same time they steal your retirement. That’s scary as hell. Are we at the point where fear is going to rule those interactions between teachers and other stakeholders? Because we are ALL stakeholders in children’s education. Right now, I think that preparations to get back in the classroom will trump attempts to organize and communicate with each other.

When school has begun, and the crazy has quieted down, though, I’d like to suggest teachers revisit the issue of organizing themselves. The internet is a mighty resource. #MeToo women found each other. Teachers can find each other. We can start to fight back and take off these muzzles. We can speak up, understanding that we must be the voices for students in a time when many adults have no idea what the average school day looks like and feels like in underfunded areas. Soap anyone? How many of us bought hand sanitizer before COVID-19 to help those more-fastidious students who were not always lucky enough to find soap in the bathroom?

We need to tell the truths that get buried by nights of grading and week-ends of lesson preparation. We need to revitalize America’s unions so that we don’t have to fear for our jobs when we tell awkward truths that administrators would prefer not to share. They myth of the lazy teacher — they form such a tiny percentage of the field — has been used to silence voices and eliminate tenure in many areas. That’s honestly a travesty of justice.

This country is completely dependent on those 87% of women and 13% of men who are educating its children. If we found each other and worked together, we would form a fiercely powerful force for the betterment of education and worker’s rights. Teachers should not be sacrificed to a greater good tied to a political agenda — especially a political agenda concocted by the same people who brought us 26% of the world’s COVID-19 infections when we have only 4% of the world’s population.

For more: https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2018-02-27/in-most-states-poorest-school-districts-get-less-funding

*I strongly recommending checking out this link to learn how West Virginia did an end around legislation that prevented striking.  https://dc.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/2018/03/08/67017/#sthash.VS6OyZ4L.dpbs 

When Ava’s Teacher Passes Away

Sad memories that cross the years: I go back to an eighth grade girl who tried to hang herself. After a few days in a hospital ICU, she finally succeeded. The family allowed doctors to turn off the machines. Grief counseling began. Our school district offered help to teachers and classmates, no questions asked. If you have to leave class, here’s your pass. Don’t cry in front of the kids and rescue kids before they break down in front of each other.

Words can’t capture the sadness that permeated that year. Fifty years from now, that girl’s friends will remember what happened. Her close friends may cry sometimes, cry for the friend who never went to college, never made it to the wedding, never saw the baby, never shared a bottle of wine with her own sweetheart — the friend who never got to launch her own life.

In the past, years like the one I describe were rare. Tragedies do happen in schools. Determined little girls with button noses finally lose their fight with cancer. Drunken, partying teenagers lose control of the car. Strong, healthy young men simply swim out too far.

But we are talking about embarking on a learning experiment that might make those tragedies commonplace rather than rare in some areas. What does it mean if 1,834 people have died so far today from Coronavirus? The trend is beginning to improve, but Texas had 8,479 new cases a couple of days ago. At coronavius.jhu.edu, the U.S. case-fatality rate is listed as 3.3%. If that rate holds, 280 Texans can be expected to die. At least a few of them may well be be teachers.

The kids are fairly safe. Currently 0.026 of deaths are occurring in persons 0 – 14 years old. But spread that 0.026 across the country and a few children do die. Mathematically of that 280 people maybe one death would fall into that category of 0 – 14 years. Obviously we cannot predict deaths exactly. Maybe no little kids would die, maybe two would die. Regardless, the number’s tiny. But let’s look at teachers 45 to 64 years of age: they form 16.7% of COVID-19 deaths. Doing the math, 47 persons in that age group will die. It’s remarkable how the death rate rises with age.

That’s 47 people in a key age range and those are the numbers for just one day. Texas reported 9,408 new cases yesterday. That’s 310 eventual deaths if that 3.3% holds, or 52 deaths in that 45 – 64 age range. And while the risk is lower for younger teachers, it’s still substantially higher than it is for the kids.

https://www.acsh.org/news/2020/06/23/coronavirus-covid-deaths-us-age-race-14863

Any death is too many deaths, but we are in the middle — I hope we have reached the middle — of a pandemic. Deaths will happen. Regularly.

We broke out of our sheltering too soon. I hope we have learned a lesson: we must be careful not to return to the classroom too soon. Current U.S. deaths total 160,090. That tiny percentage of young kids who are endangered by the virus? They should be a concern in and of themselves, but the main problem is simple. Kids get sick. Then they get everybody else sick. I spent almost a month on antibiotics a couple of years ago — and quit subbing elementary schools after that. (I am a retired teacher who sometimes substitute teaches.) That second illness was particularly memorable — eighteen days of bug-killing drugs, fleeting on and off fevers and an insane number of nosebleeds. I can remember the too-hot little hand of the nonverbal special education student, an early elementary boy with large, dark eyes and dark hair. I figured out how ill he was while walking him to the bathroom, late in a long morning of exposure, and the better part of a miserable month before I quietly quit taking positions involving nonverbal and elementary students.

Working people between 25 and 64 years of age? That was me, holding that poor boy’s sweaty hand. A stunning 19,762 of people in the 25 – 64 age category had died from this virus by June 17th. It’s worth noting that total deaths then tallied only 103,339. Numbers have climbed rapidly. I’d guess the actual total to be higher than recorded deaths, too. Some fatalities attributed to heart disease, strokes etc. may have been coronavirus instead — it took awhile before the blood clotting aspect of the disease was understood.

Eduhonesty: If we do too much too soon, many schools will end up with inevitable losses of staff members. Yes, kids can and do spread this virus. Let me return to the end of my previous post. I want to highlight what happens when a beloved adult passes away.

Grief happens, grief that can set the stage for years of sadness and decades of nightmares.

Let me offer a scenario that might unfold soon in this country:

Ms. Jones always stood near the door, smiling every day as “her” kids walked into their classroom. Sometimes she sat in her chair at the front of the room, behind the Thor Kleenex box holder and the Avengers bobbleheads. Her pink sweater was always hanging over her chair. She gave out Dojo points for good behavior, and snacks if a kid’s stomach hurt because he or she missed breakfast rushing to meet the bus. She helped students find fun books. She talked to them about their interests, encouraging them to explore new ideas and try new activities. “You can do it! I will help you,” she would say. On a lucky day, a kid might even get to help her feed the fish in the aquarium in the corner.

Then Joshua got sick. Or maybe a few kids got sick before one of them was tested. Suddenly, everybody had to go home. And Ms. Jones never came back. For long days, maybe weeks, that pink sweater hung there. Then one day, the sweater, the bobble heads and other favorite bits of the classroom just disappeared. Counselors talked to everyone, of course.

“Ava” tried to make sense of what happened. Joshua and the other kids hadn’t been that sick. But somehow Mrs. Jones had gotten very sick, along with Megan’s grandpa and a few others. Ms. Jones had not survived. Megan’s grandpa was still in the hospital although Megan said he was going to get out soon. He was going to go to a special place to learn to walk again. How could an older person forget how to walk? Ava wondered. Could that happen to anybody? And what about Ms. Jones children, Justin and Hannah? They were in high school, she knew. She had met Hannah, who used to pick her mother up after school. Thinking about Hannah made Ava cry.

No children die in this scenario. The probabilities strongly favor those children making it through the streak of coronavirus. Maybe none of them will even get severely ill. That’s a tiny, tiny death rate for those elementary school children.

But let’s not make any mistake. The kids in Ms. Jones class just got emotionally nuked. Their whole world suddenly exploded in a shambles of ruin and pain. Especially if Ms. Jones is the same age as their parents, that world became exponentially more terrifying. Why not dad next? Why not mom? Why not anybody? Because children don’t understand percentages. They do understand gone forever — most of them anyway. The littlest ones may have trouble understanding that idea at first.

Politicians talk about this pandemic in terms of survival. The children will survive, they say. They don’t say the adults will survive because they know that’s not true, not for all adults. They emphasize cleanliness and masks instead. Hello, certain governors? Hello, those of you who have looked at charts like this and decided the children are safe?

Actually, a few of those children won’t survive. Unfortunately, 0.06% is not zero. But that’s only one risk. A huge risk is being ignored. What about mental trauma that we will be inflicting on our children? It’s been more than fifty years since my grandpa’s funeral. I still remember moments of that funeral. My grandma’s death kicked off a health anxiety which has dogged me ever since. Here’s an especially scary one: “While the jury is still out on whether trauma directly causes schizophrenia, according to research conducted by the University of Liverpool, children who experienced trauma before the age of 16 were about three times more likely to become psychotic in adulthood than those who were randomly selected.”*

We can’t put numbers on psychological risk. Everyone manages — or fails to manage — grief in their own way. But those leaders reopening schools should not ignore the psychological harm that opening schools may cause. “Ava” will never be the same after Ms. Jones fails to return to her classroom. Ava will almost undoubtedly “manage” — but what does manage mean? Scared to death is one possible definition of managing in this scenario, the one where Ava has panic attacks whenever anyone she knows enters the hospital. Maybe a low thrum of anxiety will begin to run through every single day of Ava’s life.

Children bring greater and lesser degrees of resilience into experiences that shape their lives. Some live in the present and devote only brief windows of time to past, unhappy events, while others obsess over those memories. What we must NOT do is assume children’s resilience, assume that our children will be able to handle whatever we throw at them.

It’s been the better part of a decade since that girl in my school decided to kill herself. I guarantee readers that all of her teachers remember her face, her laugh, their own personal classroom moments with her. Death marks us. Death takes us on journeys into the past that we can’t always escape.

Ava will never be the same. Maybe in a few years, the conversation won’t automatically bring tears. Kids in Ava’s class will work through what happened as best they can. Maybe Ava will sit down on a bench at recess to talk to a red-haired boy who had also been in Ms. Jones class.

“She sure loved all those Avengers movies,” she will say.

“Yeah, she sure did. I just got a fish that looks a lot like Fred. He’s got one of those long orange tails.”

“I liked those fish. I hope her kids are O.K.”

“I miss her a lot.”

“I miss her too.”

Children love so easily and so fiercely. Because of that, children can be hurt forever. And sometimes, children can even be broken.

That research study from the University of Liverpool is real. The mortality rate for children should not be the only number used to decide on school openings.

*https://www.brightquest.com/blog/can-schizophrenia-be-caused-by-trauma

I’d like to ask readers — don’t think of schools, those faceless brick and concrete buildings, when the talk of starting school comes up in your community. Think of Ava. Think of the young children you know personally who will walk through those big double doors every day.

Is opening safe? Safe is not only measured in numbers of the living and the dead.

Magical Thinking Makes Bad Public Policy

Of course children get COVID-19. And what is “very sick”? Children don’t get very sick? In fact, the data supports this position. Mayo Clinic reports that children make up only a tiny percentage of diagnosed COVID cases They tend to recover within a week or two. For children, this disease can be more like the traditional cold than a severe flu.

Still, Mayo reports “symptoms can include:

  • Fever
  • Runny nose
  • Cough
  • Fatigue
  • Muscle aches
  • Vomiting
  • Diarrhea

If your child has symptoms of COVID-19″ they advise calling your family physician.

These reports contribute to some calls to open elementary schools. That above list all sounds like typical school stuff. Kids are out every year with similar complaints.

But…

Here’s the magical disconnect from reality: My dad listens to conservative talk show radio and he asked me a few days ago, “Is it true that no student has ever given a teacher the virus?’ Searching this, I find that those infected teachers are thin on the ground, although I suspect the existence of a number. Almost no one can ever prove the provenance of a microbe, not without sophisticated DNA testing.

Before we engage in wishful thinking, we should consider the facts.

Fact 1: In hot spots, many schools closed in the spring. Regardless of transmission rates back then, there were simply a lot fewer sick people at the start of the pandemic. Those hot spots of March are nothing like the hot spots of July. In March, if your county had 46 cases, that was a big deal. Now if your county has 46 cases you are pretty much considered to have been spared. The numbers have climbed rapidly. For the issue we are discussing, numbers are crucial.

Summer vacation shut down further school infections during the last school year. In affected areas, the summer school that existed was often online. This proposed live experiment of child to adult transmission was mostly not happening in June, July and August.

THAT experiment will actually start with this school year.

Fact 2: Numbers cannot be trusted. I recently read that COVID-19 has an RO of 1.7. Before we panic, though, I find many alternative sources with smaller numbers. Try: https://rt.live — this is state specific. (Who exactly are these authors, though?) Trying to find useful numbers feels a bit like falling down the rabbit hole. The numbers are “not strange, weird, off, nor crazy, their reality is just different than yours,” the Cheshire Cat might say. Numbers change, too. When people shelter, RO naturally goes down. When the beaches open, suddenly 1.002 can become 1.3 — and small numbers are huge when thinking about RO. An RO of 2 means each sick person is getting two people sick: in a short period of time, that’s an explosion of illness.

(For those who have been ducking that R: Pronounced “R-naught,” the RO reproductive number is an indicator of how easily a disease spreads. The number is important because government leaders are using RO to determine where outbreaks are growing, shrinking or holding steady. Simply, if RO equals 1, then each sick person infects one other person. In that scenario, the disease numbers stay the same over time. When RO is greater than one, the infection is growing. When it is less than 1, the number of infected persons is shrinking.)

Testing has been a mess in this country. Testing is still a mess in some places. Many people are not being tested. Yet our data depends on that testing.

Again, the official numbers cannot be trusted.

Fact 3: Israel. Kids in Israel sure managed to get the adults sick. Check out: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/.premium-america-wants-to-reopen-schools-here-s-how-to-learn-from-israel-s-mistakes-1.9006697

“Rushing to get kids back into the classroom this spring was one of the reasons infection rates skyrocketed in Israel – offering a teaching moment to the world,” the article begins. I’ll add one powerful paragraph from the article.

“Once you open schools, be prepared for them to close and then reopen. Repeatedly. Expecting schools to welcome students without expecting infections to frequently occur is an exercise in magical thinking.”

Fact 4: We have had far too much magical thinking already. National and local leaders have been indulging in magical thinking throughout this crisis. Maybe it will be gone by April. All we need are enough doses of sunlight and bleach, right?

The fantasies have to stop. Maybe the lost city of Atlantic will be discovered by the bored crew of a nearly empty cruise ship. But I would not bet teachers and students lives on this possibility — or the possibility that maybe somehow kids won’t spread the virus. Maybe a highly contagious respiratory virus will stay inside children’s noses. More and more data suggests kids can, of course, spread this virus. Can I just say, “Duhhh”? And this idea that kindergarteners and other little kids can manage full days in masks?

Oh, yeah. This will work.

For those who like corroboration, I offer the following from two days ago: https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/study-hints-young-children-may-spread-covid-19-easily-adults-n1235301. I loved a quote by a doctor in the last paragraph: “…COVID-19 can be shed in the stool, it can be in the mouth and the nose. Kids touch that. They are little germ factories.” Parents know that. Teachers may know even better than parents. They are the ones listening to the cough, cough, cough all winter as they keep replacing the classroom Kleenex box.

Middle school and high school students are their own too-often-ignored category. They get sicker than little kids. They also get around a lot more. I pass a high school sometimes that’s across the street from a Starbucks and within walking distance of a mall. If we open that high school, I guarantee those kids will be buying frappuccinos like last year before ambling in groups toward that mall. At best, we can hope they will keep their masks on, but I frankly wouldn’t even bet my pocket change on those masks.

Eduhonesty: Some locations can open schools. But others should keep the doors locked and the cafeteria closed. The Johns Hopkins COVID-19 map shows 153,000 dead from this airborne virus.

Let’s save the magical thinking until we uncover some more magic of our own. And let’s allow our teachers and students to stay home where the numbers look too risky. In this fight, there should not be “acceptable losses.”

P.S. An issue that does not seem to be hitting the table deserves a mention here. So we open, and Mr. Smith the gym teacher catches COVID-19 and does not survive. How do his students feel? That’s a crazy load of reality for a kid. What if that kid is or was sick? That’s a recipe for lifetime of guilt and remorse.

“If only I had not gone to school…”

https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/coronavirus/in-depth/coronavirus-in-babies-and-children/art-20484405

Cars Crashed but We Have to Keep Driving

Distance learning has been called a failure. Parents, administrators, teachers, school boards and even people who only sideswipe education from time to time — so many stakeholders and others are calling last spring’s at-home learning a failure. Many of them are entirely correct, too.

But before we just take a quick snapshot of that car crash, let’s step back from the accident scene for a moment.

My daughter’s school was lucky. They had an extra day or two to get ready for what was coming, because they anticipated a shut-down that others only half believed. Some schools had virtually no notice before everyone was sent home. The lucky ones got a week or two to get ready.

What does “get ready” mean? It means nothing less than moving an entire curriculum to online instruction — sometimes in districts where many students do not/did not have the hardware necessary to access that instruction. It means figuring out how to do something that we has never been done before… that no one ever planned to do until America’s school districts crashed into shut-downs and quarantines. Zoom, Google classroom, Facebook… How to establish groups? How to protect privacy and keep information safe? How to provide services for students unable to manage the remote classroom — whether because of lack of internet connection or because of more complicated academic, emotional and physical issues? How to…? How to…? Administrators and teachers were building this new “distance learning” plan from scratch without a template and without experience to draw upon.

Eduhonesty: We crashed the car. I’m not going to say, “big deal” since obviously any academic crashes ARE a huge deal. But when my daughter backed my car into her dad’s car, when she hit that new-car bumper at the dealership, when she sideswiped the neighbor’s car… I have more than a couple of stories. My girl was a bold kid. When she did these things, I did not say, “That’s it! No more driving for you!”

I understood new skills take time to develop, and some personalities naturally tend to go fast. I kept reminding her to slow down, cautioned her not to trust other drivers, and I let her learn. I’d trust her to drive me anywhere now.

We learned from those remote learning efforts, learned more from the remote learning fiascos and fails. When we have to go online now, we will do it better. Many districts have recognized and studied what went wrong. Many have held discussions, both formally and informally. Teachers all over the country are using social media to share what worked, what did not work and what kinda-sorta worked and might work with the right tweaking.

More and more districts are declaring an intent to start with online instruction. Not all parents are happy. Some parents, teachers and academic researchers are justifiably worried about the impact the coronavirus will have on the achievement gap. In this time when we are exquisitely aware of past academic injustices, the fact that we may be hurtling into another version of unequal education is especially poignant. This is the year when schools should have made a fierce and renewed attack on the achievement gap — and virtual learning is going the wrong direction.

But it’s also going the ONLY direction — at least in many locations. Not all accidents are avoidable. You can be doing everything right when the guy stealing a car loses control as he rounds a curve at maybe 90 miles per hour. Squeal, screech, crash! Glass all over the road, a shorter car and the firemen with the jaws of life. Another car rolling to a stop a full block down the road. (That was me, not my girl.) COVID-19 is like that crash.

In parts of this country, Zoom, Google, Facebook classrooms are the best of the bad options. Opening schools is not safe. If I divide todays total death rate into today’s total number of cases I get a mortality rate around 3.5%. That’s not the true rate — testing’s been too messed up to get a trustworthy count of cases or deaths, and not everyone who was ill has been tested. I’m confident the mortality rate is lower than my math suggests, less sick people being less likely to be tested. But we have over 150,000 deaths now — that’s a city of dead, not a village.

We are leading the world in COVID-19 cases by a couple of million people — despite the fact that we have only 4% of the world’s population. The current number of U.S. cases is 4,407,052. Brazil is coming in second with 2,423,798. (https://epidemic-stats.com/coronavirus/). What that means in practical terms is we have hotspots all over the our map.

Many areas will be forced back into virtual learning for awhile.

But we won’t give up. We won’t quit trying to improve virtual learning. We will keep adding as much necessary new technology as we can afford. We will take care of our kids as best we can. Our best will be getting better and better. That girl who crashed the cars? She’s helping run schools now and I guarantee those schools are among the luckiest schools anywhere on this planet. She’s not afraid to try new things. She never stops learning and she never gives up.

All across this country, teachers and administrators are culling through what worked this spring, what didn’t work, and what might work with minor changes and adaptations. We will get through this. Our children will get through this. Our goal right now should be to keep as many people as safe as possible while preparing our children to learn as much as possible.

Hugs to my readers. Jocelyn

P.S. Time to put the little library out front? I love these.

Where Are the N-95s and the Wipes?

From a post last week: Where are the masks? Where are the real ones, the ones that are documented to work — not the cute, handsewn ones with American flags and butterflies? Where are the wipes for the classrooms? Those shortages were entirely understandable in March and April, but we are now closing in on August

Meanwhile, the PPE crisis is back in the news. I was struck by one sobering moment while listening to a CNN broadcast. Apparently some hospitals are “stockpiling” PPE equipment. Readers, stockpiling is a less-loaded synonym for hoarding — a nicer way of saying “we don’t know if we will be able to get supplies later, so we have stashed everything we can lay our hands on in the basement.” Only recently, I remember friends trying to find toilet paper because so many people had ‘stockpiled’ rolls. Neighborhood apps were filled with helpful sightings of Charmin, hand sanitizer, and other helpful items. 

It’s almost August now: Where are the wipes? Of more concern, where are the REAL masks? How can it be that there is still not an N-95 in sight, outside of a hospital? 

WHY ARE TEACHERS IN SOME AREAS AFRAID TO ENTER THE CLASSROOM? 

LET’S START WITH THE REAL PPE CRISIS IN A TIME WHEN THE CDC RECOMMENDS MASKS FOR STUDENTS AND TEACHERS. 

A teacher shared social media advice from a nurse friend recently. The nurse had recommended she obtain five N-95 masks for the school year and label them — M, T, W, Th, F. Then let each mask sit one week between uses to allow any attached germs to die from germ old age. That might be a fine plan — except for the part where she has to somehow find N-95 masks. 

The Washington Post’s July 8th headline: “America is running short on masks, gowns and gloves. Again.” A snippet from the article: “Nurses say they are reusing N95 masks for days and even weeks at a time. Doctors say they can’t reopen offices because they lack personal protective equipment. State officials say they have scoured U.S. and international suppliers for PPE and struggle to get orders filled.” Meanwhile, the White House says PPE supplies are “adequate in most states.” Adequate in most states? What will that mean for school needs? 

Even now, in hard hit areas, health professionals are locked in absurd battles to lay their hands on equipment they require to do their jobs properly. Governor Jay Inslee of Washington state described the situation as “akin to fighting a war in which each state is responsible for procuring its own weapons and body armor.” States are still competing with each other to find PPE supplies. In the absence of leadership and a coordinated response by the federal government, those supplies are not always available, while prices have been skyrocketing. 

What will happen to the teachers who need those supplies? Doctors and dentists are looking for those better supplies, along with prisons, nursing homes, and other group care facilities. Traditional users of masks, such as construction and other factory workers, also want real masks, the masks that keep out toxic dust. 

Yet within a month or two, millions of new users are scheduled to enter the market. According the the U.S. government, about 56.6 million students attended pre-K, elementary, middle and high school in the U.S. in 2019.  They were taught by 3.7 million teachers. I ask readers to pause to think about those numbers. Let’s say we could do it right — which we can’t — we need, oh, about 60,000,000 masks for this group TO START.

Obviously we will be starting in different versions of butterfly masks and blue doctor’s offices masks. We have no choice. Those cute butterfly or Marvel superhero masks are not useless, but they certainly are not medical protective gear. They are better-than-useless-anyway-and-hopefully-good-enough protective gear. 

Will education systems even try to enter the REAL market? I doubt they can afford to do so. Let me throw in another headline, this one from Newsweek: “Supplier Charging $7 Per Face Mask That Typically Costs 58 Cents, Hospital CEO Says.” Some sources are charging more than $7 apiece for those N-95 masks. For the vast majority of teachers, I would say the N-95 has to be taken off the table. School districts don’t have that kind of money for a commodity that has to be replaced regularly. I’m not sure who does. 

WHY ARE TEACHERS AFRAID TO ENTER THE CLASSROOM? 

ASIDE FROM THE LACK OF PPE EQUIPMENT, CLASSROOM DEEP CLEANING MAY ALSO LOOK OVERWHELMING TO MANY TEACHERS. 

The absence of wipes for everyday consumers has to be spooking many teachers. How did I clean my classroom? At least one common technique involves walking around the classroom and passing out Clorox, Lysol or other wipes. But if there are any wipes in the greater suburban Chicago area, I have been unable to find them.

Yes, wipes can’t be considered essential. I can go through my room with a bottle of “This-Kills-Germs-Somehow,” passing out paper towels. I can’t do this with little kids, but older students should be able to help me. Otherwise I will be using lots of bottles of “This-Kills-Germs-Somehow” on my own in a classroom that may or may not have decent ventilation. 

Because I know down in my bones that the custodial staff will not be rescuing me regularly. Yes, I am sure they will do an expanded night cleaning. But I doubt most districts can afford to expand the custodial staff beyond maybe one or two extra people at most. Those who hire out for cleaning probably don’t have funds to greatly increase their cleaning costs — and may be hit for higher costs regardless, depending on their contract. 

These custodians doing the night cleanings are the same people who have been dumping the wastebaskets nightly but changing the trashbag once a week, the same people who sweep five days and mop once a week. I don’t want this to be construed as criticism. Our custodians work hard. A single day of school can create a breathtaking mess in some classrooms, common areas and cafeterias. But teachers looking at guidelines are clear — classroom cleaning is about to begin sucking up extra hours each week, with or without the help of students in the classroom. 

Nursing homes, stores and other special needs facilities are managing to lay their hands on wipes. I am betting schools will too. But teachers looking into the empty gaps where those wipes used to sit cannot be blamed for feeling nervous. The usual snot on elementary school desks may feel like a biohazard in 2020. 

Eduhonesty: Teachers and others are being asked to take a great deal on faith: 1) Faith that essential supplies will be available, including adequate sanitizer and barriers in classrooms and bathrooms; 2) Faith that rigorous night cleanings will be possible and will happen; 3) Faith that cute butterfly masks will work since the real stuff remains unavailable and 60,000,000 NEW PEOPLE MAY POTENTIALLY ENTER THE MARKET when America’s school doors are actually thrown open. 

I suppose we could say that 3.7 million people are entering the PPE market, since the kids will probably be OK with little unicorn, Ironman or blue doctor’s office masks. But 3,700,000 or 30,000,000 or 60,000,000 — that’s a gigantic increase in demand for personal protective equipment given that we can’t meet demand now. I am leaving that 60,000,000 number out there for now, too. How much protection will teachers and students actually require to make the next school year work? No one knows. 

The administration currently telling us kids hardly get sick is the same administration that told us COVID-19 might be gone by April, operating under the same leader who finally admitted in JULY that masks just might be a good idea. That administration is hoping that not too many kids will get sick. Well, we’ve seem a lot of hope in Washington D.C. get dashed on the rocks of reality. 

I wonder if the 2020 administration has given any serious consideration to the impact on the PPE market of all those teachers, paraprofessionals, principals, assistant principals, deans, bus drivers, cafeteria workers, school nurses, school librarians, office workers and custodians? My millions above left out many people — all the nonteachers in a school who work together to help educate America’s children. I won’t belabor the well-covered issue of children losing, not using, chewing and abusing masks that then have to be replaced. 

A quote from Stephen Covey: “Stop setting goals. Goals are pure fantasy unless you have a specific plan to achieve them.” Is there a plan? A better plan than an unworkable set of CDC guidelines? Because whether those guidelines can be made to function or not — and some school districts have much more money to throw at the problem than others — any plan that depends on PPE and deep cleaning is already in deep trouble.

Making Up Facts Won’t Help Us

So this appears to be the current status: If you open schools and go live, then you get federal money. If you decide in favor of online schooling, then you don’t get federal money. The areas with little or no COVID will get help. The areas under microbial attack, who could unquestionably use funds to get ready for opening later and for supporting distance learning — which heavily favors wealthy districts already — get no help.

What part of this makes sense? Does it make any sense?

I understand what is happening here. Money is being used to pressure school districts into doing what the Federal government* wants. That money has not stopped many areas from backing away from on-site instruction. San Diego and LA plan to start online. Texas has postponed in-person attendance until at least November now that the state has clocked over 300,000 coronavirus cases. The Florida Education Association has filed a lawsuit against Governor Ron DeSantis and Department of Education to stop schools from reopening at the end of August. Other districts across the nation are backing away from reopening their hallways next month.

Members of the federal government keep telling us that children don’t get sick or they don’t get as sick. None of these officials discusses the fact that children leave school every day and go home to their families. Can adults get COVID from kids? Of course they can. They can also get it from teachers, administrators, paraprofessionals, office staff, custodians, bus drivers, nurses, librarians and cafeteria workers. And high school kids are not exactly little children. Their COVID experiences tend to be demonstrably rougher than those of elementary age children. One critical concern: A July 21, 2020 article in WebMD says that “children and teens between ages 10-19 are more likely to spread the coronavirus among family members than adults and children under 10, according to a new study in South Korea.”

But I don’t want to bog down in the facts, especially since the current administration seems hell bent on ignoring those facts — at least when they prove inconvenient. I want to keep this post short: In short, those who most need help will get little or no help, at least not from the current administration.

Eduhonesty: I am actually rather fascinated by the fact that the administration seems surprised that a highly infectious, mostly respiratory illness is somehow spreading in direct response to open bars, beaches, campaign rallies, and large holiday gatherings. How could such a thing happen? At the moment, we are losing. Our caseload is approaching 4,000,000.

On the plus side, the U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Jerome Adams just a few hours ago said the country needs to lower the COVID-19 transmission rate before reopening schools. Perhaps the President will now back down on his demands. After all these months, he has at last finally put on a mask.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong, a city of 7.4 million people which is currently considered a special administrative region of China, the COVID death toll today stands at 14 people. In this area which masked up immediately in response to the COVID threat, they are having a little trouble. Cases are up there as cases are up in much of the world. But that death toll serves to remind us that there is a way to do this right.

Science is real. Social distancing and masks help slow the spread of infectious diseases. Not throwing a bunch of kids into close proximity when a disease is exploding… that just might be a MUCH better plan than sending everyone to school willy-nilly, regardless of where they live — especially since the masks that are documented to work effectively remain in short supply. Wipes are impossible to find where I live. The PPE crisis has only partially abated.

I am not sure that the title for my post is accurate. Are we making up facts or simply ignoring facts? Let start with the obvious: Children go home at night. Those children spend the school day constantly coming in contact with adults. This disease can be spread by people who do not have a fever — yet or ever –and current data suggests that on average, every person who gets sick will infect 1.7 new people.

We are a long ways from out of the woods yet.

*i.e. the Trump Administration and Betsy DeVos

P.S. If you live in a safe enough area and can go back to school soon, have a great year! I know these news reports must seem absolutely freakish to some people in small, rural mountain towns or distant prairie farming areas..

(https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/education/2020/07/13/covid-schools-reopening-lausd-san-diego-online-classes/5429995002/, https://www.businessinsider.com/texas-schools-may-be-online-only-november-hybrid-model-2020-7, https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-florida-teachers-sue-governor-desantis-school-reopening-plans/, https://www.webmd.com/lung/news/20200720/teens-tweens-more-likely-to-spread-covid-19?ecd=wnl_spr_072120&ctr=wnl-spr-072120_nsl-Bodymodule_Position4&mb=UT0EfRiJlerLe8Nl%2f6BrJGdEpmNqbUHLZTN%2fwNIxCow%3d, https://www.britannica.com/place/Hong-Kong ,https://www.channelnewsasia.com/news/asia/covid-19-hong-kong-new-cases-deaths-locally-transmitted-12950280 , https://www.msn.com/en-us/video/tunedin/us-surgeon-general-jerome-adams-on-reopening-schools-funding-for-coronavirus-testing/vi-BB170kRg

Our Government Is Running Out of Excuses

Regarding the sometimes still problematic lack of PPE across this country: Where are the masks? Where are the real ones, the ones that are documented to work — not the cute, handsewn ones with American flags and butterflies? Where are the wipes for the classrooms? Those shortages were entirely understandable in March and April, but we are now closing in on August. Those empty store shelves are getting harder and harder to believe and to understand.

Prediction: Subs Will Become an Endangered Species

Stick with me through these personal details. They lead directly to your classroom next year.

My husband broke his neck in a diving accident when he was seventeen. He’s charming, witty, has a couple of masters degrees, including an MBA from the University of Chicago, and he has managed the slow decline of age with determination. He is a living embodiment of the word grit. He talks too much about politics, but nobody’s perfect.

We’re at retirement age now. He requires help with his daily routines. We’ve been paying over $400 each month for a morning shot that we hope is helping his bone density. On Monday, I will take a wheelchair tire out to be fixed. The wheel’s no big problem. We have a few back-up wheelchairs. They accumulate over time. It can be harder to give away an old wheelchair than readers might expect, and each keeper has a function. One fits in the bathroom easily. Another relieves pressure on a certain area of his back. The new one makes trying to come to a stand easiest.

But this morning, as I was talking to my husband and putting on his support stockings, I realized I had neglected to write a vital post. We are so preoccupied right now with details and dangers of COVID-19 that issues of wages and salary have fallen off the table. I intend to put them back on the table right now.

I will not be subbing next year. I have subbed since I retired and I am a good sub. I follow the lesson plan. I teach the topic and often I can add fun details to the material I am given. I am certified to teach Spanish, French, general science for middle school, English for high school, business, social science, bilingual and ESL classes, not to mention my original teaching choice, high school mathematics. I did love school. I still do.

But here’s a fact that should be out front and center right now: In some districts, I make less as a substitute teacher than I would as a home health care worker. In others, it’s a wash. Between my spouse and my parents, I know a few home health care workers well. They are making about $14 – $17 per hour. If I sub for a half day, I make $50 to $62.50. Let’s say my commitment is from 8 AM to 12 PM which is pretty typical. That breaks down to $12.50 – $15.63 per hour. Subs typically do not receive benefits.

I would have to be out of my mind to work in a school next year.

Financially, subbing never made much sense. I could work a full day which would about pay for three hours of a home health care worker hired out of an agency. Local agencies get a little over $30 per hour, of which the health care aide typically is lucky to receive half. So I was working to pay for a likable, sturdy woman to help my husband into the shower and onto his exercise machine, among other tasks. The dishes got done. I had an enjoyable day with kids.

But the risk/reward profile of substitute teaching has changed dramatically.

I am older and in a couple of risk groups. Many subs are older. A substantial portion of the nation’s substitute teacher pool consists of men and women who are retired and take pleasure in interacting with kids in the classroom. It’s not about the pay. Teaching can be fun, and subs don’t have to spend the evening putting in grades. Subs also benefit from scheduling flexibility. They can work a half day or a full day, and can pick the classrooms they wish to occupy.

Only now subbing will be a high-risk job with subterranean pay and no benefits. I have always known that Starbucks would be at least as lucrative as subbing, and might include health and other benefits if I put in enough work hours, not to mention the perk of free coffee. Add in those benefits and suddenly Starbucks pays considerably better than substitute teaching. I simply did not want to be tied to a schedule prepared by someone else.

Starbucks would be SAFER now, though. I don’t plan to become a barista. I don’t need to work. If I did, I suspect I would fill out that Starbucks application. Or another application elsewhere. Because almost any job that does not involve standing on a line inspecting potatoes or cleaning meat would be safer than on-site teaching in parts of Texas or Florida right now. Driving for Amazon would allow me to make as much money and would probably be safer. Even making pizza and/or doing contactless delivery for Dominos Pizza might pay as much and would be safer. With tips, that pizza delivery might well pay better.

The problem of redeployment is about to change substitutes’ working conditions for the worse, too. That fact alone will shrink the sub pool.

Shortages of substitute teachers have become common is some areas. When that happens, school administrators take the subs they have and jury rig the day’s schedule to get subs to cover as many classes as possible, rescuing regular teachers who will otherwise lose their planning periods to take over for absent colleagues. I may become a missing kindergarten teacher as well as the reading resource teacher who had put me on her preferred substitute list. Under the original schedule, I had a break during that reading teacher’s planning period. Now all breaks have disappeared, as I take over for unknown teachers without subs. I may run into a problem many teachers know too well — oops, my bathroom break is gone! I may also have to work those classes that no sub wants, the ones we warn each other about. Redeployment has always been a risk of subbing, but as the pool shrinks and more teachers decide to stay out when even slightly sick, that risk will likely skyrocket. Regular teacher vacancies will go up, too. A regular teacher who would have gone to school with a low fever — I did more than once — will stay home now. As part of a better-safe-than-sorry strategy, teachers may even opt to stay home with mild new cases of the sniffles, just in case. As redeployment goes up, some of a district’s remaining subs are likely to drop out of the sub pool. The pizza parlor at least has a bathroom.

Eduhonesty: I am done. I am done until the vaccine arrives. I am about to become a retired retiree.

I knew that before this morning, but this morning the thought hit me that led to this post: I would be better off going to work for a home health care agency right now, at least if I stayed out of nursing homes and convalescent centers. I would be better off performing the job of my parents’ home health care aide. The range of jobs in home health care varies considerably, but giving my mom a shower and then doing her hair, helping her dress and making Costco salmon burger sandwiches for my dad does not sound unpleasant. I don’t mind light cleaning and vacuuming. The pay is about the same and I am only exposed to two elderly people who hardly ever leave home. Many part-time options exist.

Is there something wrong with the fact that these wonderful women who sometimes don’t’ even have a high school education are making the same amount of money as a woman with three degrees and useful classroom experience? I’m sure there’s a huge problem there. But it’s not my problem anymore. (Although I reserve the right to blog further about this absurdity.) My problem is what I want to do next year.

Currently, I plan to finish multiple jigsaw puzzles while listening to books or watching TV in the basement. I will also try to market two books on education I finished recently. I will blog and crochet. Maybe I will make a Tik Tok video soon just for fun.

But I won’t be risking those coughs and sneezes in the classroom. I won’t be wiping any little noses or sending older children to the nurse. I am grateful to the administrators who called me to thank me for my past help. I am grateful to the district that has been sending me cake, journals and other little presents. If I can help those districts from my home, I will do so. I would consider virtual subbing.

But I won’t be walking into any schools. Not this year. Not until there’s a vaccine. I am certain I am not alone. My schools are in an area that’s been in the red zone for weeks.

This post is a warning: Are you trying to decide whether to quit or retire? I’d factor this into my decision making process. Teachers in districts that already had sub shortages should prepare to cover for colleagues. Classes may also be broken up and their students dispersed throughout the school. Those extra students in your room will add to your risk, not to mention to the general confusion — and with all the new protocols, confusion will be high.

I believe the demand for substitute teachers is about to go up dramatically at a time when the supply collapses. This may help address the poor wages for substitutes, but those future pay raises won’t help regular teachers during the 2020-2021 school year.

Hugs to all my readers. Jocelyn

P.S. For any nonteacher readers who feel willing and able to enter those rooms of congested kids — and some kids seem to be congested all year long — I expect subbing jobs will be plentiful and administrations will be grateful to meet you. In some areas, the risk will be light. The rewards are many, even if they are not monetary in nature.