Schools unsupplied

My teaching career ended June 2016; I retired when my elderly mother-in-law moved in with us. Two more years would have significantly boosted my pension, but we’re okay. My wife worked part-time another year before retiring.

In the time of coronavirus, it is the best of times and worst of times. Our pensions get deposited in the bank, we are safe in our rural home, but close enough to two towns to run errands and fetch supplies, where as a man over 60, I am in the prime cohort for death from covid-19 and must dodge the caravan of fools who believe it is a hoax.

Best of all, I do not get to go back to school. In 2016, in addition to endless demands on teachers, I was frustrated by the ubiquitous ooze of social media via back-pocket computers and concerned about lockdown drills in case psychos defending their precious Second Amendment rights might attack our campus.

But now we have the global pandemic, not merely in our own backyard, but from kindergarten to graduate school, a political hot potato instead of a medical emergency. And no one knows how schools will respond.

A school is a city, a living, breathing entity: a new batch of people entering and leaving every year, births and deaths. Every year I had at least one new parent in my classrooms — an eighth grader bearing her second child; two girls in a senior English class pregnant by the same boy; girls marching to graduation with a big belly under the cap and gown; a girl whose mother, who bore her at age 15, accused her daughter’s conceiving to get back at the mom; a boy who said “I couldn’t help it! She wanted a baby!” Angel, repeating 8th grade, said she would now attend class regularly: she showed me the newspaper clipping which said the judge threw the book at her grandfather, who been systematically raping her since she was nine.

And death: suicides, terminal diseases, car wrecks; a boy who fell asleep at the wheel and his drunken parents died; two brothers whose dad was shot dead in the desert; a gentle young man whose father, the medicine man, was killed because he would not hand over money.

The rumor is that teachers get a three-month reprieve in the summer — it’s usually a second job, or mandatory “professional development.” We had to watch videos on suicide prevention, prove we could use a fire extinguisher on live flames, endure sessions on child abuse, sexual harassment, changes in education laws and policies, test security (more important than the despised test itself), new software to document everything that happens, and sometimes get new ideas for teaching.

Now teachers must be prepared to work in their classrooms and develop digital activities and paper substitutes for students who can’t work online. Amongst the comings and goings in this city will be mailmen, delivery personnel, repairmen, the guys who fix the copy machine and haul away shredded documents, disgruntled parents, child psychologists, student teachers, auditors…

Who will disinfect classes, computer labs, locker rooms, entryways, offices, outdoor classrooms? The overworked underpaid custodians already sweep, mop, wax, empty the trash, and clean restrooms — how often will restrooms be recleaned in this brave new world?

Cafeterias are told to serve fewer children in more frequent shifts — how will personnel keep the food ready and disinfect the dining area for all-day service? Where do students wait while spaces get disinfected? How does the choir rehearse if singers maintain a 12-foot distance? Are team sports cancelled this year? How do school buses enforce social distancing?

Most of all — how to “correct” malcontents who choose not to cooperate. Teenagers are famous for overt or secret defiance, and if Mom and Dad scoff at the safety protocols as overreaction to a hoax, what is the consequence for junior?

Were I not retired, I would do so now. Were my children not grown, we’d switch to home schooling. This is probably a Republican goal, to underfund and deny help to public education to quicken its demise.

Thoughts and prayers are not a solution.