By Debbie O’Reilly

Editor’s Note: This is the 12th installment of “Our Stories,” a WOW Dems series that tells personal stories related to the critical issues of our time, such as the COVID-19 crisis. This story is from WOW Dems President Debbie O’Reilly.

A labor of love, not profit

Teaching children is a profession of emotional labor. We don’t produce a profit for shareholders. We don’t construct a building that we can point to and say, “our work is done.” Our work is based on the intellectual and emotional enrichment of human beings in the most fragile and unstable points in their lives. Our products are educated, productive citizens who will shape their community.

Every day brings new emotional challenges. Some students ask you if you have any snacks because they’re hungry and rely on free cafeteria food as their only warm meal of the day. Many students have parents who are working multiple jobs for long hours and don’t have the time to sit down and help them with their homework. Students are often trying to claw out of their current environments toward a better future through our greatest social escalator: public education. All students are burdened with just being a teenager: the highs and lows of friendships and relationships, impulsive thoughts and behaviors, fluctuating hormones, struggles with identity.

Every day, teachers work to support these unique and tumultuous beings. It’s a lot of work, to say the least, but it’s the most fulfilling and rewarding work I know.

From lockdowns to shutdowns

When we started the 2019-2020 school year, school staff devoted hours learning new safety protocols because mass shootings are now a daily concern in the United States of America. We added a PA system, locked outside doors remotely once the bell rang, expected students to wear ID badges, and practiced regular lockdown drills in case someone walked the halls with the aim of hurting us. It was a lot to take in and a lot to add to an already stressful job.

We were all then abruptly thrown, after spring break, into online learning due to Covid-19. Will we see our students in person again? How is the student abused at home dealing with being at home with their abusers around the clock? How is the hungry student getting enough food? Are they scared about someone in their family getting sick? Are they figuring out how to manage their schedules? Teachers’ concerns for our students tear us apart.

It’s difficult enough for a teacher to start any normal school year. How will I shape my curriculum according to our students’ needs? How will I differentiate to suit ESL, Special Education, and 504 students? How will I design and organize my classroom for my students? This year, teachers now have to manage the fears and logistics of social distancing, teaching with a mask, sanitizing everything, and much more. Now, we’re asking new questions with even higher stakes: What if Covid-19 spikes even more and we go fully online again? What if my coworkers or students get sick? And all while we’re still trying to keep them safe from the shootings?

For a comprehensive perspective of the implications of the next school year, please take the time to read this article. 

What next?

We have to start school with face-to-face learning as an option. There’s no way we can expect parents to stay home when most need to work to survive. As a society, we utterly lack the supportive infrastructure necessary to handle this any other way. Teachers, once again, provide the foundation for literally everything else.

I have no doubt that teachers will rise to the occasion. We are some of the most resilient workers you will ever meet. The problem is that once again, teachers must solve the problems brought on by failed leadership and, frankly, a lack of will on the part of many to care for the most defenseless and voiceless among us: children!

Threatening instead of helping

Of the 7.4 million children in Texas, 21 percent live in poverty, according to the 2018 State of Texas Children Report. In fact, Texas leads the nation in childhood poverty. Why have we allowed this?

Now, facing a pandemic, all of the cracks in the infrastructure are deepening and widening. Through recapture, Texas took about $1.9 billion in local property tax dollars out of communities during the 2019-20 school year. In Plano ISD, 34 percent (or $208 million in aggregate) of property taxes designated for Plano ISD operations goes to the state; that equates to $3,918 per Plano ISD student. (For more information, read this from PISD’s website.)

To add to our challenges, the President and Secretary of Education threaten to defund the federal government’s contribution to schools if they don’t fully reopen five days a week. Remember: The beneficiaries of federal funding to schools are students in poverty and those with special needs.

How much more can teachers and students possibly take? If those in power won’t help, can they at least stop threatening to hurt our students?

How you can help

As we charge headfirst into educating thousands of students during a pandemic, please be kind to teachers. Please be patient with us and the administrators who are working tirelessly to adapt CDC (Center for Disease Control) and TEA (Texas Education Agency) guidelines to suit our campuses’ and our students’ specific needs. Please help us by voicing your appreciation to our school boards, which do a tremendous job on our behalf and which speak truth to power across the state and at the federal level. And when the time comes, please vote for legislators who are pro-public education.*

We all need public education to work. We need those in power to make decisions that support us. And we need you.

*USA.gov and Vote411 are other good resources to find out what candidates stand for & what’s on your ballot. For Texas-based candidates, visit Texans for Public Education, VoteTexas.gov & the TX Secretary of State site to find out who and what’s on your ballot.

Debbie O’Reilly is President of WOW Dems, a precinct chair, a longtime HS English teacher, and English Dept. Chair at a local high school.

Want to read more about how Covid-19 has impacted educators and students? Check out “Teaching from the Epicenter,” a guest post written for WOW Dems by a NYC public school teacher.

 

We want to share YOUR story as part of the “Our Stories” series! Send them to communications@wowdems.org.

 

 

P.S. Betsy DeVos, we have a few questions for you…

• If a teacher tests positive for Covid-19, are they required to quarantine for 2-3 weeks? Is their sick leave covered /paid?
• If that teacher has 5 classes a day with 30 students each, do all 150 of those students then need to stay home and quarantine for 14 days?
• Do all 150 of those students now have to get tested? Who pays for those tests? Are they happening at school? How are the parents being notified? Does everyone in each of those kids’ families need to get tested? Who pays for that?
• What if someone who lives in the same house as a teacher tests positive? Does that teacher have to take off 14 days of work to quarantine? Is that time off covered / paid?
• Where is the district going to find a substitute teacher who will work in a classroom full of exposed, possibly infected students for substitute pay?
• Substitutes teach in multiple schools. What if they are diagnosed with COVID-19? Do all the kids in each school now have to quarantine and get tested? Who is going to pay for that? Also, if a substitute becomes ill, will he/she receive free testing and treatment? Subs now get NO benefits, just daily pay.
• What if a student in your kid’s class tests positive? What if your kid tests positive? Does every other student and teacher they have been around quarantine? Do we all get notified who is infected and when? Or because of HIPAA regulations, are parents and teachers just going to get mysterious “may have been in contact” emails all year long?
• What is this stress going to do to our teachers? How does it affect their health and well-being? How does it affect their ability to teach? How does it affect the quality of education they are able to provide? What is it going to do to our kids? What are the long-term effects of consistently being stressed out?
• How will it affect students and faculty when the first teacher in their school dies from Covid-19? The first parent of a student who brought it home? The first kid?
• How many more people are going to die, that otherwise would not have, if we had stayed home longer? Thirty percent of the teachers in the U.S. are older than 50. About 16 percent of the total deaths in the U.S. are people between the ages of 45-65. We are choosing to put our teachers in danger. We’re not paying them more. We aren’t spending anywhere near the right amount to protect them. And in turn, we are putting ourselves and our kids in danger.

The above section of questions for Betsy DeVos was compiled by a WOW Dems member.