Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:
Anonymous wrote:Teachers: If unmasked kids show up in your class next week and you are not comfortable with them being there, send them to the principal's office. First, the EO does not go into effect next week, but the week after. Second, the EO is not valid and there will be lawsuits filed to enjoin it from going into effect soon enough. A federal court in Tennessee found that a similar EO was unconstitutional (this applies to all Virginia school districts). Additionally, here in Virginia, state law provides that what school boards set as the policy trumps the EO (this applies to Virginia school districts where the school board will support continuance of a mask mandate).
Good information. I hope teachers read this and do exactly as you suggest.
Question: What should kids do (masked kids who don't want to be around unmasked kids), do you think? I don't want riots in classrooms but my kids are NOT comfortable being in classrooms with unmasked and unvaccinated kids.
All of this drama is making me want to resign as a teacher. Now. I won’t but I don’t know if I will continue next year. I can’t handle the extreme views and being caught in the middle anymore. I didn’t become a teacher to be the mask police of teenagers on top of addressing all of this learning loss. And let’s throw in addressing mental health and endless PD on equity. I’m done.
-teacher who doesn’t want to wear a mask any longer
I'm very pro mask and agree 100% that way more is being put on teachers than they ever expected. It isn't fair.
Thank you for your work as a teacher—I know it’s hard, and the politicization of this doesn’t help. Please know that the extreme pro-mask and anti-mask views on this board likely don’t reflect the majority of folks, at least around here in Northern Virginia. FWIW, I get why people are frustrated with masking at this point—the vast majority of folks have now had an opportunity to get vaccinated, and the reality is that omicron is not as severe as prior versions of COVID. On the other hand, lifting the mask mandate now—in the midst of a huge surge—doesn’t make any sense. The rational off ramp for masks probably would be in a few months—the numbers will likely be declining, the weather will be better, and more folks who have recently been approved for vaccination will have had an opportunity to get vaccinated. Alas, that schedule doesn’t align with the inauguration of our new governor, and so now we will have political and legal fights about the interplay of his EO with state law—with our kids stuck in the middle.