Why are most teachers too scared to return to in person teaching, but most parents want schools open
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Anonymous
You sound like a “very stable genius” yourself. |
Anonymous
Trust me, you and your kids will not be missed. |
Anonymous
Parents want schools to open because they need childcare. Kids are low risk for serious complications. Teachers are reluctant to open schools because they are at higher risk than the students. My kid's 56 year old 5th grade teacher with Type 2 diabetes is at risk. Kids are germ factories. One kid in a classroom will bring it to school and alll of them and the teacher will have it. |
Anonymous
I'm an emergency room nurse. I don't agree with this at all. My co-workers and I are exposed all the time. People I know are getting very sick from this virus. One of my co-workers is 33 years old. She has a history of childhood asthma. She caught Covid19 and was on a vent for 3 weeks. She spent another 2 weeks in rehab. She still can't come back to work because she can't walk 10 yards without shortness of breath. One of my coworkers is (was) a healthy 41 year old. Vegetarian, into tennis and hiking, very healthy. She was out for 3 weeks with a "mild" case of Covid19. She still can't walk across a parking lot without shortness of breath. She is seeing a cardiologist next week and has a stress test at the end of the month. They think she has heart damage from Covid 19. One of our ER doctors is 46. He is (was) very healthy. He ran a marathon in January. He got Covid19 and now has cardiomegaly. His ejection fraction is 39%. He's in heart failure. He will need medication for the rest of his life. He will eventually need a heart transplant. Some people do get lucky, though. I got lucky. I had a mild case in July. I recovered after 3 weeks in bed. It was miserable. No long term complications so far. |
Anonymous
Being a teacher does not equal being an emergency room nurse. C'mon. |
Anonymous
Thank you for all you are doing, and thank you for your post. |
Anonymous
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My understanding is that the primary dangers for teachers are proximity and duration. I can certainly understand their concerns.
Teachers are stuck in rooms the size of sardine cans with germy asymptomatic super-spreaders whose parents send them in to school regardless of whether they are well or sick. Teachers have inadequate ventilation in their sardine can rooms and they are stuck there for 7 hours a day with the germy asymptomatic super-spreaders. Then teachers are told that the kids will eat in the classrooms with masks off??? I wouldn't want to be in that situation, either. Until parents start understanding the other side of this coin and responding appropriately we are going to be stuck with this situation. Wise up, parents. Frankly I don't want my kids in a room with your kids anyway just because your posts here and on other social media show that you are only concerned about yourselves and not others. When I start to see more responsible behavior from my fellow parents then I'll jump on the back-to-school train. Until then, I'm with the teachers in saying NO to going back to school face-to-face. |
Anonymous
Obviously I don’t know what irresponsible parents you’ve been hanging around throughout the pandemic, but the families at our daycare have been taking this seriously. No one wants to be responsible for causing an outbreak. We’d all been making do with the kids at home for months, keeping them home for a couple days when sick is just not a big deal in the grand scheme of things. Temperature checks obviously don’t catch everything but it does prevent anyone coming with an active fever. I’m also kind of amazed about how people underestimate kids on here. My 4yo understands the need to wear a mask and wash his hands regularly, I’m sure older students could adapt too. |
Anonymous
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Because the risk/benefit analysis is different for teachers and parents/students. For teachers, the risks of going back outweigh the benefits. Sure, most don't really like distance learning, but it eliminates all virus risks to them and there aren't really any long-term consequences. Students in their class that fall behind this year will either repeat or get pushed along to the next grade and become someone else's problem next year. And being teachers themselves, they're more equipped than the average parent to teach their own kids at home (if they have them).
From what we know so far, kids are less likely to get seriously sick than adults and the younger kids may not even transmit it as much. The consequences of an individual kid not learning much in DL and falling behind are real. So the risk/benefit analysis for families who don't have pre-existing conditions may oftentimes be different, particularly if a parent is working outside the home already. Yes many parents are struggling to cover a childcare gap but I know of many with older kids (and don't need childcare) who are equally stressed out because their experience with DL in the spring was an utter mess. I'm in a pretty middle class burb where it just isn't possible for everyone to hire tutors to cover all subjects. My neighbor has been spending summer evenings trying to relearn calculus, for instance. |
Anonymous
You sound responsible. My confidence level in most parents posting here is in the negatives. Those are the people who worry me and that's why I'm totally with teachers on this. |
Anonymous
+1 |
Anonymous
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Here's the problem. While children themselves are at low risk, they are more likely to be carrying and spreading the disease. Parents are only expose to their own children, but teachers are exposed to all of the children. It's bad enough if you are an ES teacher who is only exposed to 10-30 children, routinely, but there are MS and HS teachers that are exposed to dozens to over 100 students daily. Imagine teaching six periods of class to 25-30 students per class and being exposed to all of those children. Teachers risk is hundreds of times higher than parents when sending children to school. The risk to parents and families is significantly lower than the risk to teachers. This is why parents want schools open and teachers don't.
This article just came out describing how once they started to test asymptomatic children they discovered a very high rate of infection; children are more likely to have an be asymptomatic than adults, which can turn them into "super spreaders" of the disease. https://www.wcvb.com/article/boston-researchers-find-children-are-silent-spreaders-of-coronavirus/33657423 And pretty much all of the studies show that while you can limit the chance of infection with social distancing, masks and limiting indoor exposure, all of them say that the longer you have expose to infected people in an indoor setting, the greater your odds of contracting the virus. You may be safe passing by infected people with masks in the supermarket or in a typical office environment, but when you have to sit with people for 45-60 minutes at a time, the chance that someone infected can transmit to the people sharing the same air space goes up exponentially. Add in that there are very few schools that are actually following the recommendations. The recommendation is to keep 6 feet apart. In classrooms that are actually observing the rule, they can typically get about 6-9 desks into the space and those rooms are being assigned 15-25 students, so teachers are really ending up with 2-3 feet distance between the desks, and sometimes even between the children and the teacher. Again, significantly increasing the chance of exposure and transmission. I have a friend who is a teacher in the New York public school district. Back in March when things were closing down, the NYC public school system did not shut down soon enough. Many teachers were infected and several teachers died. Teachers who were young and healthy. At least 3 dozen teachers, many who were in their 20's and 30's died and many more were sick. My friend is a young guy, 29 and healthy (he runs about 5 miles a day) and he contracted Covid and says he was sicker than he had ever been. And one teacher in his school district who was a friend, a young healthy woman, aged 33, who he had known fairly closely, died. He knows many teachers who were very, very sick and are still worried since there is a chance that immunity will fade after 2-3 months. So even those who were sick in the Springtime may be vulnerable to the disease again. My friend is one of the teachers in this interview: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/coronavirus-school-reopenings-teachers/
And this is why teachers don't want to go back. Until schools plan for low attendance (like 20-25% capacity per room) to ensure appropriate social distancing. Until, school districts can put in large scale plastic shielding between students and between teachers and students, provide appropriate PPE for teachers and students, and provide approved cleaning products that are known to work on Covid, we can't put students back in school. Right now, people are so desperate for child-care that they are accepting half-measures, or worth, 1/4 or less of the necessary effort to open school safely. Until schools can find solutions that actually incorporate the actual health recommendations, school needs to be remote. |
Anonymous
it really isn't that hard to become a teacher |
Anonymous
The funniest part is where he believes public school teachers would have the ability to become computer programers 
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Anonymous
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No, the funniest part is that at my school we still have close to 10-15% of content teacher positions unfilled. Secondary. Yeah, we're laughing all the way to the bank. And so will you when your kid is being taught by a long-term sub with only 2 years of college and it isn't in the subject matter being taught.
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