Everyone wants to know what's going to happen in the fall with regard to school. School impacts most communities in multiple ways.
I listened to a local board debate this issue for almost three hours this afternoon. The entire discussion was disconcerting.
First, as a teacher, it was sad that the health and safety of teachers was not mentioned until two hours into the discussion. Next, many facts were shared, but as one person mentioned, the facts came from a large variety of sources and it wasn't clear which facts were true and which were not, and of course, no teachers' voices were apart of the discussion.
What was discouraging was that there was little discussion about learning, and much more discussion about how to warehouse children so families can work. The statistics shared about learning, in my opinion and via my experience were skewed.
Of course, this is not an easy problem to solve, and of course many children and most families want their children to go back to school, but when they say that, they are thinking about school as they know it--school that includes playful recess, collaborative learning, field trips, and sports--it's not school where children are relegated to wearing masks, sitting several feet away from one another in rows, a masked teacher at the front of the room, little room for supplies, and lots and lots of restrictions. That school sounds tortuous to me--children simply don't learn that way, that's not natural for children.
What could we do instead?
I wish we could divide and conquer, create small groups of children w/a lead educator and place those people in a safe space during the day where they can move in less institutionalized, friendly and safe ways. Ideally I'd love to see families work together for those pods, and give those families a stipend to make it possible. Teachers could lead these pods in some kind of safe way.
To think of hundreds of kids stuffed in a school without the ability to freely and safely move sounds frightening and problematic during a pandemic. I truly think there are better ways to do this. I don't think we are thinking creatively enough.
I don't have all the answers, but it seems like we're wasting a lot of money and time trying to create a terrible situation for children and educators--it feels like warehousing, not teaching and learning. I'm not in favor of warehousing children.
