Takeaways from the Brabrand virtual town hall

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a high school teacher. IRL all of my dept colleagues, and the majority of the teachers that I know want to return to school. DL is very, very hard... for us, our students, and my own kids. I am fantasizing about moving to Montana for a year if we don't open in the fall.

Please speak up about it then! I’m worried that the loudest voices will win. I believe most teachers do want to do the right thing and return to class.

I am not a teacher but I find it fascinating that you think you are who decides what "the right thing" is. Does that mean other people also get to decide what is the right thing for you to do with your job? I don't mean authorities, just random people in the community.

I'm not the PP, but I think the reality is that the loudest voices do sometime "win."

[Anonymous]

I feel like there is a basic fact about COVID that IS known, but that gets overlooked. It is not just a matter of making sure that somehow kids and teachers stay 6 feet away and wear masks, and wipe down surfaces--although with the new guidance that has come out suggesting that infection through surfaces is not the major way COVID is spread makes that less important. The other major factor that determines transmission rates is the duration of time spent in a location, and how ventilated that location is. School classrooms are not well ventilated (many classrooms don't even have windows, and those that do are tiny, and kids and teachers will be in classrooms for 6 to 7 hours a day. And for multiple days a week.
I think that it is clear why teachers are reluctant to be in such a scenario. If adults are being told to minimize our risk to getting infected by avoiding indoor cramped locations, why do we think that teachers and our kids should be exposed to this multiple days a week? If we do say so, then let's be honest--we are telling the teachers that they just shouldn't worry if they catch COVID. And parents, don't worry if your kids are exposed and carry it home....sure, you very well will then get it... it's BS. But that is exactly what folks who think that the teachers are just scared....hell yeah, they are scared.
This article discusses some studies that show how people at a MUCH greater risk are those that have extended exposure.
https://www.vox.com/science-and-health/2020/5/22/21265180/cdc-coronavirus-surfaces-social-distancing-guidelines-covid-19-risks

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a high school teacher. IRL all of my dept colleagues, and the majority of the teachers that I know want to return to school. DL is very, very hard... for us, our students, and my own kids. I am fantasizing about moving to Montana for a year if we don't open in the fall.

I bet it's even harder next year. Right now, you had/have the benefit of the novelty factor and just surviving until summer. Next Fall, most students are going to be bitter doing DL, while teachers will have to deliver a true curriculum with grades. It's a bad mix, and it's going to be really, really hard all around. I don't think it's an easy decision for FCPS to just default to DL as many here think. Maybe the reason they really want to hear from the Governor's committee. They'll also have the benefit of seeing the region open up over the next 1.5 months (which hopefully goes well).

I agree it’s going to be even harder next year.
In addition to everything you’ve said, the teachers this year had the benefit of having known their students for several months in person, and the kids know their teachers and accept their authority/leadership.
Imagine starting to teach a group of seven year olds you’ve never met in person?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a high school teacher. IRL all of my dept colleagues, and the majority of the teachers that I know want to return to school. DL is very, very hard... for us, our students, and my own kids. I am fantasizing about moving to Montana for a year if we don't open in the fall.

Please speak up about it then! I’m worried that the loudest voices will win. I believe most teachers do want to do the right thing and return to class.

I’m a teacher. Of course I wish that life would go back to normal. I’m also a mom and know my 1st grader is missing out on a lot, and he’s suffering a lot because I am working so much while he needs me. But who are you to decide that returning to school is “the right thing” in a global pandemic?!? There were 360 new cases in Fairfax alone today. I have a healthy neighbor in his 3O’s who got a stroke from COVID, a formerly healthy former student in her 30’s who has been sick for a month and still can barely walk across a room without feeling winded, and a 95 year old uncle who died from COVID. He lived a long life but after 62 years of marriage , he didn’t deserve to die alone with no family around him and without seeing his wife for weeks. His life mattered. My husband manages a guy whose 25 year son is on a ventilator. My health matters. Yes, I might survive this if I got it but I might also be forever disabled by it.

Does FCPS have PPE for all of us? How could this possibly work?

Do you know how many times a kid has told me that he has a fever but his mom gave him Advil that morning so he didn’t have to stay home?

Do you know how many times during a typical day that I look out to a student with a finger in his nose?

You don’t know what “the right thing is.” I care about what is best for students. It would have been absolutely horrible if I had to be stuck at home with my brother who abused me and my alcoholic father and depressed mother. I think about my kids in situations like that ALL the time. But I also do not want to be in n an enclosed windowless room with aerosolized viral load of my whole class all day.

[Anonymous]

I am not at all pushing for school to re-open as normal in the fall. I am pushing for a lot more than the sorry excuse for education our kids got during the final 3 months of this academic year.

In my job, we are trying our best to ensure our "clients/customers" are happy -- and if they are, and if the data shows my team has been able to deliver a roughly comparable service during this time, then we will fight to avoid going back into the office come fall.

I really think many more educators would do well to adopt this approach, the customers aka the families served by FCPS, are far from happy. Do what you can to change that in your role and people would be a lot more open-minded about fall options.

Most teachers seem to pride themselves as being in a helping profession, public servants, doing this for the kids -- if that's the case then you owe it to them to give much more than this school district has provided. Most Nurses and doctors aren't saying "I didnt sign up to work in a pandemic," they are showing up and doing their job as best they can in hard conditions.

Not wringing their hands about how they have kids and this is too hard to do with kids at home and everybody needs to "be patient, show some grace because we've never done this before." None of us have. We all have kids at home, and we're all working our tails off to make things work.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a high school teacher. IRL all of my dept colleagues, and the majority of the teachers that I know want to return to school. DL is very, very hard... for us, our students, and my own kids. I am fantasizing about moving to Montana for a year if we don't open in the fall.

Please speak up about it then! I’m worried that the loudest voices will win. I believe most teachers do want to do the right thing and return to class.

I've posted before that teachers on here pretend they can't wait to return to the classroom but if given the choice you'd see everyone's true colors.

No one misses dealing with poorly behaved kids. And teachers like being able to drink coffee and go to the bathroom when they want.

I'm sure there are also genuine concerns about the health risks as well.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a high school teacher. IRL all of my dept colleagues, and the majority of the teachers that I know want to return to school. DL is very, very hard... for us, our students, and my own kids. I am fantasizing about moving to Montana for a year if we don't open in the fall.

I bet it's even harder next year. Right now, you had/have the benefit of the novelty factor and just surviving until summer. Next Fall, most students are going to be bitter doing DL, while teachers will have to deliver a true curriculum with grades. It's a bad mix, and it's going to be really, really hard all around. I don't think it's an easy decision for FCPS to just default to DL as many here think. Maybe the reason they really want to hear from the Governor's committee. They'll also have the benefit of seeing the region open up over the next 1.5 months (which hopefully goes well).

I agree it’s going to be even harder next year.
In addition to everything you’ve said, the teachers this year had the benefit of having known their students for several months in person, and the kids know their teachers and accept their authority/leadership.
Imagine starting to teach a group of seven year olds you’ve never met in person?

Oh please! Online education has been a thing for some time now. It just hasn't been as widespread or popular in the K12 market as it is in college, but it's been in existence and the families and teachers have been just fine.

Frankly, knowing teachers and accepting their authority/leadership is much LESS of an issue with DL. Everyone's there to learn and do their damn work. There's little room for the "Mr. X does like me! Mrs. Y is so mean!"

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I'm a high school teacher. IRL all of my dept colleagues, and the majority of the teachers that I know want to return to school. DL is very, very hard... for us, our students, and my own kids. I am fantasizing about moving to Montana for a year if we don't open in the fall.

Please speak up about it then! I’m worried that the loudest voices will win. I believe most teachers do want to do the right thing and return to class.

I’m a teacher. Of course I wish that life would go back to normal. I’m also a mom and know my 1st grader is missing out on a lot, and he’s suffering a lot because I am working so much while he needs me. But who are you to decide that returning to school is “the right thing” in a global pandemic?!? There were 360 new cases in Fairfax alone today. I have a healthy neighbor in his 3O’s who got a stroke from COVID, a formerly healthy former student in her 30’s who has been sick for a month and still can barely walk across a room without feeling winded, and a 95 year old uncle who died from COVID. He lived a long life but after 62 years of marriage , he didn’t deserve to die alone with no family around him and without seeing his wife for weeks. His life mattered. My husband manages a guy whose 25 year son is on a ventilator. My health matters. Yes, I might survive this if I got it but I might also be forever disabled by it.

Does FCPS have PPE for all of us? How could this possibly work?

Do you know how many times a kid has told me that he has a fever but his mom gave him Advil that morning so he didn’t have to stay home?

Do you know how many times during a typical day that I look out to a student with a finger in his nose?

You don’t know what “the right thing is.” I care about what is best for students. It would have been absolutely horrible if I had to be stuck at home with my brother who abused me and my alcoholic father and depressed mother. I think about my kids in situations like that ALL the time. But I also do not want to be in n an enclosed windowless room with aerosolized viral load of my whole class all day.

*Starts the slow clap* This is so true. Parents pushing for everyone to go back to school is doing so for selfish reasons. They don't give a damn about anyone's health. All they know is that they don't have Covid, their family's fine, they want to be able to go back to work without worrying about childcare, and they're tired of dealing with the kids they gave birth to.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I am not at all pushing for school to re-open as normal in the fall. I am pushing for a lot more than the sorry excuse for education our kids got during the final 3 months of this academic year.

In my job, we are trying our best to ensure our "clients/customers" are happy -- and if they are, and if the data shows my team has been able to deliver a roughly comparable service during this time, then we will fight to avoid going back into the office come fall.

I really think many more educators would do well to adopt this approach, the customers aka the families served by FCPS, are far from happy. Do what you can to change that in your role and people would be a lot more open-minded about fall options.

Most teachers seem to pride themselves as being in a helping profession, public servants, doing this for the kids -- if that's the case then you owe it to them to give much more than this school district has provided. Most Nurses and doctors aren't saying "I didnt sign up to work in a pandemic," they are showing up and doing their job as best they can in hard conditions.

Not wringing their hands about how they have kids and this is too hard to do with kids at home and everybody needs to "be patient, show some grace because we've never done this before." None of us have. We all have kids at home, and we're all working our tails off to make things work.

Wahhh wahhh wahhh MAKE ME HAPPY! I PAY TAXES! I KNOW TEACHERS DO AS WELL BUT MY TAXES ARE SPECIAL!

Boo freakin' hoo.

No one's worried about your happiness and satisfaction during a damn pandemic that's KILLING people.

[Anonymous]

Pp here. I didnt mention taxes at all. You are hearing it loud and clear: parents are appalled at the slipshod job done by FCPS. You own that. Step up like everyone around you is and try to help our country pull through this by doing the best in your profession.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pp here. I didnt mention taxes at all. You are hearing it loud and clear: parents are appalled at the slipshod job done by FCPS. You own that. Step up like everyone around you is and try to help our country pull through this by doing the best in your profession.

"Clients/Customers" pay. What do you pay teachers to be considered such? My decoding skills are quite good, thank you.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The first 30-45 minutes had mostly to do with the Covid response, then they started talking more about equity issues in the schools in general. I had to log off around 7, but I think they went about another hour judging by the length of the Facebook Live video. Not sure if more Covid info was discussed toward the end of the meeting. But here were my takeaways:


They want to make a final decision on next school year by July. They will have more information on the three options by June 15. It sounded like there is another town hall/virtual meeting scheduled for around June 15 where the options will be discussed in greater detail.

The three options are all distance learning; some kind of hybrid model where there are things like half-days, 3 days a week in school, some kids in school and some not, classes on Saturdays, etc. and the remainder will be distance learning some of the time; and all kids back in school with the option for any student to continue distance learning

Braband stated that August would be too late to make a final decision because they can’t turn things around within 2 weeks no matter what the decision is. So decision for 2020-2021 school year will likely come in July.

They need further guidance from the state and from the education/return to school committee formed by the Governor

I was struck by how many teachers in the comments on the FB live did not want to return to classroom teaching - lots of whining, lots of “our kids health is MORE important right now.” Many teachers did want to return but a larger (or more vocal?) amount absolutely did not. I was surprised about this because of how many teachers are also parents. Can't do your own classroom's distance learning and home tech troubleshooting at the same time you're trying to help your kids with distance learning, though perhaps they are all parents of older MS kids and up who can be more self-sufficient?

Preschool special ed classrooms weren't discussed, this was disappointing as this is a section of students who really can't distance learn

There was no real plan about, if there is distance learning, how to get ELL families more involved, “family training,” etc. A speaker brought up the fact that many parents have no idea how to help their students in distance learning. These students are falling very far behind compared to kids that have always been involved in things like Kumon, tutoring, Outschool etc.

They are distributing more devices to elementary and middle kids.

Equity issues are at play with Covid and in general, including not just race/ethnicity but also students with special needs, LGBT, and where you actually live in the county/what school you attend

Also I believe later in the meeting there was information discussed about AAP - did anyone catch that? It sounded like it was in the realm of expanding access to AAP for diverse students.

Preschool special ed should be the last piece of the puzzle


In no way should preschool be a priority above high school, middle school, kindergartners and elementary kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Pp here. I didnt mention taxes at all. You are hearing it loud and clear: parents are appalled at the slipshod job done by FCPS. You own that. Step up like everyone around you is and try to help our country pull through this by doing the best in your profession.

"Clients/Customers" pay. What do you pay teachers to be considered such? My decoding skills are quite good, thank you.

Are you not being paid during this time? Not sure where teachers get off thinking they are the only people in this pandemic who have both jobs and kids so they deserve a pass on doing the work they were hired to do

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I am not at all pushing for school to re-open as normal in the fall. I am pushing for a lot more than the sorry excuse for education our kids got during the final 3 months of this academic year.

In my job, we are trying our best to ensure our "clients/customers" are happy -- and if they are, and if the data shows my team has been able to deliver a roughly comparable service during this time, then we will fight to avoid going back into the office come fall.

I really think many more educators would do well to adopt this approach, the customers aka the families served by FCPS, are far from happy. Do what you can to change that in your role and people would be a lot more open-minded about fall options.

Most teachers seem to pride themselves as being in a helping profession, public servants, doing this for the kids -- if that's the case then you owe it to them to give much more than this school district has provided. Most Nurses and doctors aren't saying "I didnt sign up to work in a pandemic," they are showing up and doing their job as best they can in hard conditions.

Not wringing their hands about how they have kids and this is too hard to do with kids at home and everybody needs to "be patient, show some grace because we've never done this before." None of us have. We all have kids at home, and we're all working our tails off to make things work.

Wahhh wahhh wahhh MAKE ME HAPPY! I PAY TAXES! I KNOW TEACHERS DO AS WELL BUT MY TAXES ARE SPECIAL!

Boo freakin' hoo.

No one's worried about your happiness and satisfaction during a damn pandemic that's KILLING people.

Not my series of posts, but this is a really immature, poor answer. Whatever direction things go, you're not part of the solution.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
*Starts the slow clap* This is so true. Parents pushing for everyone to go back to school is doing so for selfish reasons. They don't give a damn about anyone's health. All they know is that they don't have Covid, their family's fine, they want to be able to go back to work without worrying about childcare, and they're tired of dealing with the kids they gave birth to.

The "tired of dealing with kids they give birth to" argument it a tired argument and disingenuous deflection. If you don't want to be a teacher anymore, then quit. We may start with DL, but we will eventually move back to live instruction long before we ever get back to a "zero COVID risk" world. It'll likely never go away, vaccines may be years out from being mass administered (if ever), and the best one can hope for are antiviral cocktails to shorten the illness. The reality is that teaching just may not work for you any more in the long-term.