No Teachable Momentum

Teachers are vital. No matter what age, no matter what subject and whether they are public, private, magnet, charter, kindergarten, grade, middle, high, special needs, advanced, college prep, and multiple other categories we can put them in; they are vital. Just go ask the parents who simultaneously are in the role of parent, teacher, counselor, IT tech, spouse, and employee/job seeker. So it has been remarkably strange listening to the different perspectives on reopening schools, virtually, in person, forcing teachers back to work; throwing out the hundreds of thousands of international students (who pay full freight to universities across the country BTW). Teachers who are generally overworked, undercompensated, underappreciated and undervalued are now being told to go back to work or else  the ones who are higher risk (nearly a third) are being basically coerced into going back to teach in person in a few weeks. Threatening their keeping their jobs in a market where schools throughout the U.S. were short of over 110,000 teachers well before COVID-19 got involved.  

The result I am expecting from the barely veiled threat levied by POTUS threatens to withhold funding to schools if they don't reopen will likely see tens of thousands of the teachers currently in their late 50s to near 80s still working to serve the need will simply retire and tell him to pound sand as they wave goodbye.

That’s the bad news. But there are some good possibilities as well. First, a slightly brighter result may be that despite the effort to destroy yet another aspect of American life, choices will need to be made in the Post-Trump era to change the compensation, education requirements, fund trainings and ensure that teachers are able to do their jobs without having to work 1-2 other jobs for the privilege. Second, the educators can potentially get out of this sadomasochistic relationship with government and institutions that they have been in for well over a century. In the end they should not be told that they are required to serve the country and that their health nor the students’ matters. The country may even learn to value teachers--if they value their children, their own education, the country or the economy. 

Bottom line? Teaching is not in any way a career where anyone should be required to take unacceptable risk. Hopefully the potential risk of being put on a ventilator and (if they are fortunate enough to survive), incurring debt for whatever insurance doesn’t cover while being quickly thrown out like a bag of garbage by both their employer and their government, That will be the inevitable result when the country deems them no longer beneficial and, hopefully, that will be deemed an unacceptable risk.

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