Why are most teachers too scared to return to in person teaching, but most parents want schools open

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

So just a question- why is 1 or 2 cases per 100k acceptable to you? Not arguing with your post really, and I guess that number is not all that different than what Gayles came up with, but he pointed to cdc guidance that does not really exist. Other states like NY have set different metrics. It frustrates me that there’s isn’t a credible, national effort.

I got the number by reading news reports of countries in Europe and Asia that successfully reopened schools in the spring. They would close a school if even one case was found in the school. I looked at the European CDC data on spread in those countries that seemed to be able to keep schools open, with a few having to close when there was a case, and their community spread was listed at 1 new case per 100,000 per day or less (I think they measured 10 new cases per 1 million but it's the same thing.)

So that's just the number I was thinking of, but I found that experts think the same thing. It's the level considered to be the "green" zone by experts at the Harvard Global Health Institute:

https://globalepidemics.org/key-metrics-for-covid-suppression/



It's the level the CDC has designated as "minimal community spread".

It's the level Dr Osterholm (director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota) has chosen as the level of spread at which we could safely reopen things:

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/07/opinion/coronavirus-lockdown-unemployment-death.html

We believe the choice is clear. We can continue to allow the coronavirus to spread rapidly throughout the country or we can commit to a more restrictive lockdown, state by state, for up to six weeks to crush the spread of the virus to less than one new case per 100,000 people per day.

That’s the point at which we will be able to limit the increase in new cases through aggressive public health measures, just as other countries have done. But we’re a long way from there right now.

It's too bad our country won't use this guidance at the national level. You have schools opening in the south that are way above the tipping point. And the only way to get to <1 and stay there is to keep everything else shutdown- like back to early spring. As soon as you start opening things back up at all and allowing gatherings it's going to go up. So if this is what local officials are going to use, they need to be honest with people that they chose the "everything else" over schools. I just don't see a path to having both.

A lot of countries in Europe are not really testing, so I'd be skeptical of their numbers. My friend who currently lives in Estonia said that no one is wearing masks or distancing anymore. They never had much of an outbreak to begin with but chances are if it does creep back in there, there will be widespread community transmission before they even know it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys,
My boss expects me to drive to work. I don't want to die. What should I do? I don't want to die. It is not like I can take safety precautions like driving the speed limit, not driving distracted, wearing a seatbelt.

You see the rate of traffic fatalities. He is such a jerk expecting me to do the job I get paid to do.

Not my fault your job doesn’t allow you to telework.
Teachers can.
Buckle up and drive safe.

This is such a myth. DL is pretense for teachers. DL is not effective for the majority of students. If a restaurant cooks nothing but spoiled food, can they really still say they're "serving meals"?

We have had subpar take out since March. Everyone keeps saying that we need to continue to support local restaurants and should understand that there will be a difference from our prepandemic experience.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys,
My boss expects me to drive to work. I don't want to die. What should I do? I don't want to die. It is not like I can take safety precautions like driving the speed limit, not driving distracted, wearing a seatbelt.

You see the rate of traffic fatalities. He is such a jerk expecting me to do the job I get paid to do.

Not my fault your job doesn’t allow you to telework.
Teachers can.
Buckle up and drive safe.

But it's not safe- have you been out there lately? People have been driving like maniacs. Maybe I should advocate for my employer to allow telework, even though I can only be about 50% effective at home. That's cool, right?

Nothing wrong with advocating for yourself.
Good luck.

But you'd be cool with me only performing 50% of my cybersecurity job from home, right? What could go wrong?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys,
My boss expects me to drive to work. I don't want to die. What should I do? I don't want to die. It is not like I can take safety precautions like driving the speed limit, not driving distracted, wearing a seatbelt.

You see the rate of traffic fatalities. He is such a jerk expecting me to do the job I get paid to do.

Not my fault your job doesn’t allow you to telework.
Teachers can.
Buckle up and drive safe.

This is such a myth. DL is pretense for teachers. DL is not effective for the majority of students. If a restaurant cooks nothing but spoiled food, can they really still say they're "serving meals"?

We have had subpar take out since March. Everyone keeps saying that we need to continue to support local restaurants and should understand that there will be a difference from our prepandemic experience.

Find new restaurants- I've had many good meals.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys,
My boss expects me to drive to work. I don't want to die. What should I do? I don't want to die. It is not like I can take safety precautions like driving the speed limit, not driving distracted, wearing a seatbelt.

You see the rate of traffic fatalities. He is such a jerk expecting me to do the job I get paid to do.

Not my fault your job doesn’t allow you to telework.
Teachers can.
Buckle up and drive safe.

But it's not safe- have you been out there lately? People have been driving like maniacs. Maybe I should advocate for my employer to allow telework, even though I can only be about 50% effective at home. That's cool, right?

Nothing wrong with advocating for yourself.
Good luck.

But you'd be cool with me only performing 50% of my cybersecurity job from home, right? What could go wrong?

You probably only do 1/3rd of your job now - like it’d make a difference

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:You guys,
My boss expects me to drive to work. I don't want to die. What should I do? I don't want to die. It is not like I can take safety precautions like driving the speed limit, not driving distracted, wearing a seatbelt.

You see the rate of traffic fatalities. He is such a jerk expecting me to do the job I get paid to do.

Not my fault your job doesn’t allow you to telework.
Teachers can.
Buckle up and drive safe.

This is such a myth. DL is pretense for teachers. DL is not effective for the majority of students. If a restaurant cooks nothing but spoiled food, can they really still say they're "serving meals"?

We have had subpar take out since March. Everyone keeps saying that we need to continue to support local restaurants and should understand that there will be a difference from our prepandemic experience.

Find new restaurants- I've had many good meals.

Yeah, but the problem is that the old restaurant that gave us food poisoning still has our credit card and keeps charging us for meals that they don't even deliver any more! They just keep sending us hastily scribbled recipes and say it's our responsibility to cook for ourselves now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Because the teachers don't want to die while the parents just want childcare.

C'mon, man, read any of the 29034723 threads on this topic that exist already.

Plus a million. You’re an idiot, op.

No she isn’t. Her point is that parents with kids going to school are just as likely to die as teachers (not very).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:
Yeah, but the problem is that the old restaurant that gave us food poisoning still has our credit card and keeps charging us for meals that they don't even deliver any more! They just keep sending us hastily scribbled recipes and say it's our responsibility to cook for ourselves now.

I like this analogy,

I honestly think the teachers on here taking hard line stances are trolls or otherwise not serious. Any teacher, particularly of young elementary, who says with a straight face that they have a telework job is being obtuse.

Despite how much chaos it has caused for me, I do support schools being closed. Just don't gaslight me to tell me that this is an acceptable situation, rather than the best of all of the terrible options that exist right now.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:
Yeah, but the problem is that the old restaurant that gave us food poisoning still has our credit card and keeps charging us for meals that they don't even deliver any more! They just keep sending us hastily scribbled recipes and say it's our responsibility to cook for ourselves now.

I like this analogy,

I honestly think the teachers on here taking hard line stances are trolls or otherwise not serious. Any teacher, particularly of young elementary, who says with a straight face that they have a telework job is being obtuse.

Despite how much chaos it has caused for me, I do support schools being closed. Just don't gaslight me to tell me that this is an acceptable situation, rather than the best of all of the terrible options that exist right now.

+1. Also the loudest voices tend to be the ones heard. There is one teacher on my local moms listserv who is constantly flooding it with anti-open posts but I get the sense that literally nothing will make her happy. She has a hysterical answer to anyone who dares to bring up a counter point. I think she’s posted on here to as I recognize some of the same arguments. Most of the teachers I know IRL have a more nuanced view of it and would go back if asked.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:^^Umm... that WaPo poll had the plurality of parents supporting hybrid! So you are further proving, not refuting, OP’s point...

I wrote that a majority don’t think it’s safe - question 6. 56%

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I do think you are onto something, OP. My husband normally works full time out of the house and he is loving working from home. When we talk about his office reopening at some point, we kind of dread it. And we've already agreed that if they try to reopen the office anytime soon, he will say he doesn't feel comfortable in an office with Covid still so prevalent and ask to continue at home. It is partly that fear (he would have to commute via public transportation and his office has an ancient and notoriously terrible HVAC system), but it's also a good excuse to just keep working at home, get to spend more time with our kid, and skip his awful commute.

Surely there are teachers in the same position. Like you, I don't fault them -- there is so much more flexibility to working from home, especially if you have kids or normally have a tough commute. I've worked from home for years and have always loved it.

Meanwhile, I think parents want schools open because they are struggling to handle childcare and work. Which is also understandable! I don't think parents want to put teachers (or themselves) at risk of Covid. I just think they are in a tough situation and engaging in some optimistic thinking about how in-person schooling would go.

I don't understand all the vitriol towards teachers who want to stay home or parents who want their kids in school. These seem like understandable positions to me. I mostly blame all the public officials who have botched the whole decision making process and also have done so little to control the virus, making everything harder than it should be. Everyone else is just trying their best.

The teachers' position that they don't want to return to their dreadful commutes or have childcare issues is not understandable at all.

[Anonymous]

Because parents don't have to see what the conditions are like in the schools. They don't have to deal with how filthy or understocked schools are. Parents don't have to contend with the incredibly unrealistic expectations that children will sit still for seven hours a day in a mask. They won't be the ones trying to control a classroom full of kids who are frustrated and bored and restless from a day with no gym, no recess, no games, and none of the things that keep kids motivated to do academic work. They don't have to watch twenty kids without a break while simultaneously educating them, assessing them, and keeping them safe from a deadly virus.

My district is going back. If it is a nightmare, then I will leave. I don't have the emotional bandwidth to teach my special education students in this dystopian nightmare. None of my colleagues do. I know that none of this will work for my students, but we are supposed to smile and pretend that it will. I can't plan because they have given us absolutely no information about who, what, or how we will be teaching. The summer has been so full of anxiety and dread. On top of that, I see parents pitching fits about how they want teachers to be fired and an enormous amount of vitriol being expressed towards us. It's discouraging and it is starting to impact my mental health, on top of all the stress and uncertainty we are ALL experiencing.

[Anonymous]

OP's question has a false premise and is trying to set up and us v. them; when really people have mixed feelings on all sides.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Most parents do NOT want schools to open. They are well aware of the risks! Many parents are voicing sadness and frustration that their children's lives are still upended for the upcoming school year, but it doesn't mean they WANT schools to reopen with the pandemic uncontrolled as it is.

The best survey I saw showed that only 13 percent of parents wanted schools to reopen full time. The rest wanted them closed or wanted them open on a hybrid model with lots of protections. But the logistics of that hybrid model and those protections are very complicated. I want schools to reopen, but only if they can do so safely for kids and staff. And that means that community spread needs to be stamped out, which it could be if bars, indoor dining, and other indoor activities with high risk of transmission were closed. But we can't eat our cake and have it, too, so here we are.

[Anonymous]

Mixed feelings yes, but there are not just 2 solutions. In person or DL.
There are a million things in between and how disappointing it is as a parent that schools are only providing these 2 options as if there are not other options.
You can have highschool DL while have grade schools in person. You can restructure classes to make them smaller and utilize support staff in new ways who may not be needed (librarians for example). You can offer new school hours or new locations (like high schools not being used). You can offer outdoor classes as weather permits.

All we parents here are excuses and that DL is amazing yet what we have been shown in Spring was far from amazing and was quite frankly, phoned in at best (were there a rare few good ones? Don't know, every parent i know only had 1 zoom meeting a week to play games or do show and tell).

Why not try DL for a month and if certain benchmarks aren't met then it is not working. Or better yet, try in person with some modifications that aren't thrown together like we are back in March. They have had months to figure this out.

For teachers to say Parents need to parent. I agree. But my job as a parent is not to be the sole educator of my children. If you think it is then we need to reevaluate where our tax dollars are going because schools will never be needed again.