Bereavement Notice: Some Teacher Thoughts on Going Back to School

When there is a death in our school district or “extended family,” HR sends out a bereavement notice email.  “Francisco Silva*, father of Nicholas Silva, food service worker at School # 11, died Monday, December 1.  Funeral will be held at....  In lieu of flowers, please make a donation to....”  Or, “Ellen O’Leary, teacher of mathematics at Passaic High School for 30 years (retired 2010), died….”  In a normal month, we might receive a handful of these notices, no more than two a week.  This past April and May however, at the height of the pandemic here in northern New Jersey, we received sometimes two or three a day.  The flow has subsided for now.    

            The notices do not give the cause of death, but the sheer number of them, peaking when they did, juxtaposed to the COVID numbers from our city and county led us to assume that most were COVID-caused or related.  Regardless, we were hit hard.  As far as I know, we did not lose any students, and we did not lose any current faculty or staff—I did not personally know of any these deceased—but the notices were devastating nonetheless.  Each one trickled into the inbox, dramatically illustrating the situation’s severity and also the helplessness we felt: "The deaths keep rolling in, and the best thing I can do is just stay here, inside?"  The notices concerned faculty and staff and not necessarily our students directly, but Passaic is a small enough city that the deaths overlapped with the students’ own families and social networks.  One of my current students lost a grandfather.  Another, her aunt.  Seniors Maria and Julia, whom I taught last year, respectively lost their fathers.

            Passaic unfortunately was primed for COVID’s crushing because of its geography and demography: it is in North New Jersey; it is densely populated and primarily low income; it is primarily Latinx (of Mexican, Dominican, Peruvian, and other heritages); there is a significant Indian-American and African-American population (and a significant white, Orthodox Jewish population); there is a substantial number of undocumented people; and many parents had to continue working through the pandemic because the nature of their work could not be done at home and/or they were deemed “essential workers” and/or they could not afford to be income-less for several months, with less of a safety net to fall back on. 

When the schools shut down and moved to online learning, the transition and landing were not exactly smooth but I think as good as possible, given the circumstances.  As has been much written about, nationally, online teaching and learning was demoralizing, on the whole.  Granted, some kids find in-person school demoralizing: for example, the middle-schooler bullied for his perceived sexual orientation or bullied “just because”; the undiagnosed child in need of special ed supports floundering; the black student who does not see herself in the stories from her history or literature course and at the same time sees her black peers disciplined more than her white peers.  And so, I sympathize with the minority opinion on distance learning, as written here by 13-year-old Veronique Mintz.  What can we do on the individual and institutional level to make in-person schooling less horrifying for some and just more engaging for all?  These are pressing perennial questions.  However, almost all of my students by the end of April wanted to be back in school.  Based on surveys I conducted, all of them want to be back in school in September, even David, who has done as little work as possible for me the past two years.  I want to see David, too.

            Across the board, student engagement dipped way down: across all districts, all income levels, all grades, and all ability levels.  Soon into the online learning battle, I understood there were four general categories of students: 1. Students who worked hard before COVID and continued to do so 2. Students who worked hard before COVID but did not; 3. Students who did not work before COVID but surprisingly came alive through it; and 4. Students who did not work before COVID and continued to not work.  The first and third groups gave me my “energy,” and that is where I focused my efforts: students seeking more feedback on their thesis statements or asking for additional reading, for instance.  I celebrated the third group, especially, and tried to lift them up: "Better late than never.  Also next year when (if) we are in person, you know you can continue this trend, right?"  The second group, the drop-offs, worried me the most.  And, as for the fourth group, I still made calls regularly but soon realized I could not lose sleep or that much time over them.  (From formal and informal surveys, I found the causes of non-engagement to be everything from greater household and sibling responsibilities to families actually being affected by COVID to isolation and depression to “didn’t think this quarter would count” and video games.  With my students at least, it seemed like our computer crew had done a good job closing any tech and internet access gaps.)  Many days, online teaching consisted only of the drudgery that normally goes along with regular teaching—gradebook, phone calls, emails, admin data reports—without any of the joy of being in front of the kids.  Other days though, Oscar’s comparison to the 1918 flu or Guadalupe’s reflection after attending a #blacklivesmatter protest, of her own volition, made up for that drudgery.  I preferred the live “synchronous” lessons and so did the students.  However, because many of us teachers are also parents and because some students had other, new responsibilities and/or initial tech issues, my school did not require regular synchronous lessons.  I tried to sneak as many live lessons in as possible, but I am grateful that they weren’t required or every day or multiple a day.  I would not have been able to balance that and taking care of then-10-month old Caroline, as Whitney, a public defender, was (is) also working from home.  (We are fortunate enough to both have our jobs still and to have four grandparents two hours away on standby babysitting duty, but we didn't want to potentially expose them to microbes floating in North Jersey.)  I did most of my “teaching” during Caroline’s naps and after she went down at night: recording lectures for content and teacher-model videos for skills, picking apart evidence and analysis in essays, and planning the next days’ lessons.  All in all, I had it relatively easy though.  Yes, I work in a school affected by all the issues that go along with poverty, but I teach an AP class at an “academy” (i.e. a magnet school) and in history.  I can’t imagine teaching science at a time like this—how do you do labs, which are crucial?—or being a special ed teacher, or working as a counselor, as COVID certainly increased stress for our already hormoned and psychologically taxed teenagers.  Or, thank god I am not an elementary school teacher.  How do you do that, regularly, on Zoom or Google Meet/Classroom?  

            Tangentially, as Caroline is now 13 months, we did not have to also monitor her own online learning or tell her that she can’t see her friends or that she can't have a normal graduation.  For better or worse, she doesn’t know the difference between COVID and before.  As Whitney is in virtual court or virtual jail visits with her clients, Caroline and I are playing in the next room off-camera, and she is usually cute and loud.  On screen, Whitney's client meanwhile is stuck between so many rocks and hard places: addiction, the rigors and yet slightly lessened rigor (because of no in-person meetings) of treatment; jail and COVID; prison and COVID; homelessness or a family member willing to take them in but who is immuno-compromised; unemployment and the pressure to find employment but so little employment out there, even in a non-pandemic, and employment only in COVID-risky jobs.  Some people have had it really hard.  

            As I wrapped up the school year, I presumed and hoped that we would be back in person in September.  Yes, I presumed that we would have to follow some CDC guidelines but that we would be in the building.  The news was sort of improving.  We had “flattened the curve.”  People were outside and sort of living.  Masks seemed like something practical we could do—should do—so that we could have some normalcy.  But for the past several weeks, the news hasn’t been very good nationally and even in New Jersey, where like much of the Northeast, we had shut everything down to get a handle on it.  Every teacher I know wants to be back, with their kids, in their physical classrooms.  I haven’t actually been in the classroom since December because I was fortunate enough to take a three-month paternity leave, and I am craving to be back.  I miss my kids, and after six years of teaching, I finally know what I am doing.  It is work, but I have a lot of fun doing it. 

We as a nation, however, have done almost everything wrong to contain this disease, and we stubbornly continue to do almost everything wrong.  To be sure, there are fair criticisms of the Chinese government, and there are even fair criticisms of the WHO, and many other countries have made major missteps.  But, a country with our wealth and capacity should not lead the world in COVID cases and deaths.  From downplaying the disease in the beginning to even now still not doing enough testing and contact tracing to, most frustratingly, people at the highest levels of government giving mixed messages at best and peddling conspiracy theories at worst, we truly are exceptional.  Let alone the lack of basic PPE and ventilators in our lean just-in-time, for-profit health care system, insurance for which is tied to employment, and thus the millions who have lost their insurance.  Let alone the scant economic support, more generally: meager unemployment benefits, whereas some countries in Europe, for instance, are paying businesses 80% of its staff salaries so that people can live and because even when the disease ends the economic recession will continue; housing foreclosures and evictions; huge corporate giveaways in lieu of supporting small businesses; all the while, massive Pentagon and police budgets approved, with bipartisan support.  Let alone Jeff Bezos and other oligarchs whose wealth grows exponentially each day of COVID and whose fortunes are built on the back of public investment and underpaid labor and yet who are not taxed nearly enough. 
            Meanwhile, the Trump administration saw who was dying and grossly, inaccurately declared COVID defeated, and Jared Kushner, czar of the pandemic (and of Middle East peace), had his W. Bush-fighter-jet-landing-aircraft-carrier “Mission Accomplished” interview on Fox.  This malfeasance from the top—combined with everyday people (of all ages and political stripes) feeling invincible or apathetic or “I’m so over this” and mixed with that stubborn, perverse, selective, fetishized version of “freedom” that refuses to simply wear a mask even though that would help other people—is killing us.  We are rogue nation, if we are not a failed state.  This all has set up both false choices and real, bitter choices.  Between the “economy” and “the cure,” as if the “economy” is just the stock market or some neutral operating system out there that does not include actual people.  As if the economy doesn’t include the elderly.  This has pitted small businesses against governors.  It has pitted some parents against teachers.  And, as people of color disproportionately die from COVID, it has pitted some black people between "die from COVID" or "die at the hands of police" and their deputized vigilantes. 

Now, with this rush to get back to normal (without having done any of the work to really be in that position), we have the false and bitter choice between safety for schools/teachers/students and the “economy.”  As if schools, teachers, and students are not part of the economy.  Because facts on the ground have been trending so badly, as we get closer to September, many teachers are having second thoughts about going back.  I am conflicted myself.  I think we should follow the CDC guidelines at a bare minimum, but I have a hard time imagining what that would look like in school.  Windows?  Ventilation?  Bathrooms?  Cafeteria?  Mask enforcement?  Social distancing?  Once again, thank god I’m not an elementary school teacher.  Nothing we do will be entirely risk-free, of COVID or other dangers, but the CDC guidelines seem like a good (science-based) place to start.  I am willing to enforce them in my classroom, in the hallway, and elsewhere.  I am willing to innovate, modify, accommodate, teach outdoors, and reimagine, or jump onboard with leaders and peers who are more creative and better at problem solving than I.  I understand everyone’s desire to get back to some degree of normal.  I understand parents’ wanting their kids to get the most of out of their education and that that necessitates being in the classroom.  I understand parents’ maybe needing just a little space from their older kids for the first time since March.  I especially empathize with working class parents who cannot afford to stay home and provide child care.  But if we cannot--or chose not to-- follow the CDC guidelines and if cases continue to climb, we shouldn’t go back to school.  If I didn’t have a one-year old myself, I might have a different opinion or a different take, at least, on my own personal risk.  I hope conditions on the ground improve very soon so that I can happily be proved wrong or alarmist and so that I can change my mind back to where I was just last month.  I hope a sudden influx of money, energy, and political will arises to build alternative, hybrid, and safe learning spaces.  I really do want to go to back. 

In recent weeks, this aliterate president and his Amway-billionaire no-previous-experience-in-teaching Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos, have been insisting that all schools will open in person in September—that everything will be fine.  They are threatening to cut off funding to school districts that do not start back up in person.  Some governors and school districts will go along in lock-step.  Ron DeSantis of Florida says we can do it right with the schools because we did it with Home Depot and Walmart.  Some better governors and school districts will go along too but with great reservations.  Some even better ones, I hope, will not go along.  That is, until there are new facts on the ground and guarantees.  And in localities that have suppressed the virus—“live in a community that doesn’t have a big disease outbreak.  That’s how you open up schools safely”-- and are able to follow CDC guidelines, some will rightfully (gradually, I hope!) open up.  With rich irony, Trump and his sycophants note that other countries have opened up schools and therefore so should we.  They leave out the part where those other countries have actually taken this pandemic and accompanying economic fallout seriously.  As John Oliver put it, interpreting DeSantis and others, "We were really dumb then.  The only fair thing is also to be really dumb now."  What will we teachers do, then, if it is still unsafe and we are ordered back into the classroom? 

Enter the big bad teachers’ unions.  Growing up, I heard on the news and in casual conversation, "Oh Pennridge teachers are on strike again.  What do they want?  Another month in the summer off?"  There are the familiar refrains: "unions protect bad teachers...they protect teachers' cushy hours."  Republican and Democratic school reformers alike and their documentaries and nonprofits remind us, "Teachers' unions are an adult interest group, serving teachers not students....  They get in the way of needed reforms....Tenure means lazy teachers whom you can't fire."

Like any institution, a teacher’s union is only as good as its members and its leaders.  Some critiques might be true here and there (just some “bad apples”?), and where there is valid criticism, we must listen and do better.  But, I reject this general vilification.  I am a proud member of a teachers’ union: the Education Association of Passaic (EAP), affiliated with the NJEA and the NEA.  I worked for a year at a charter school in Newark that had no union.  The hours, tangential responsibilities, and data reporting requirements nearly broke me (I am not always efficient, but I am no slouch).  We had to be at school for a minimum of ten hours a day, and then of course at home, I worked another three hours each night.  Most of the weekend was tied up with work as well.  I noticed that, at 35, I was the third oldest teacher in the building.  Most of my colleagues were in their mid-20s and minded less working all the time and sleeping little.  (I already did that lifestyle in my 20s—it was called the navy.)  Six teachers quit between August and December and did so not because they couldn’t handle the “inner-city kids” but because the expectations of teachers were not sustainable.  If one or two quit, you think it might be those individuals.  Six, and it's probably your labor practices.  I almost quit myself in January.  I don’t harbor ill will or regrets.  I loved my students, I became a stronger teacher due to the training I received, I made some good friends, and even though I am “pro-traditional public school,” I am not ideologically anti-charter school.  Unlike some other fly-by-night charters, this one has been around for a while, and I wish it continued success.   But after a year, I was done. 

Historically, teachers’ unions have protected academic freedom, have been a force for women’s equality, and have provided other benefits and protections.  Most practically, my teacher’s union protects my hours.  I was able to have a kid, and I am able to see her.  I was able to take paternity leave.  Most teachers I work with still put in the hours after class at school because we love the work.  It’s just that we don’t have to, and that is a nice "perk" because teaching six 45-minute blocks to freshmen is exhausting (insert my line here about thankfully not being an elementary teacher).  Yes, I have July and August off, but I work almost every evening and most Sundays.  Any teacher who does not want to get owned by a roomful of teenagers the next day has to do much regular work outside of school hours, but I can catch my breath and see my wife and daughter in between, which is a nice perk.  This is not meant to be another “teachers don’t get enough respect; here’s what we actually do” gripe essay.  There are plenty of those out there already, and I think we mostly get the right amount respect (and in another breath I don’t care what some people think).  Especially in COVID, other occupations have it much harder: ER nurses and doctors; hospital cafeteria workers and janitors; police, EMTs, and other first responders; farmworkers; grocery store clerks and food service workers; postal workers, delivery drivers, and all other newly and cruelly deemed “essential” workers.  Finally, from daily high fives in the hallway to graduation hugs, we get a lot of regular positive feedback—much more than those other occupations.  This is all to say that despite warranted criticisms of unions in specific situations, I am grateful I am in one.  Who else would be looking out for me at a time like this?  And ultimately—because I believe a well-rested, well-trained, and compensated-enough teacher is an effective teacher—looking out for the students?

Should there be a confrontation, nationally or locally, between administration(s) and teachers, I am not sure what we should do.  Would it come to a strike?  Admittedly, despite my aspiring radicalism, I have always been less comfortable with teachers’ and public sector strikes.  The opponent is less clear—there is no Boss Carnegie, Rockefeller, Ford, or Bezos.  If we were to go on strike, would we be striking against the Passaic Board of Education, i.e. the semi-hands-tied board of an already cash-strapped city and thus against its lower-income property tax base?  Would it be against the principal?  Superintendent?  Governor and NJ Department of Education?  All of the above?  And, would that pit us against our parents, many of whom have had to work throughout this time and many of whom are searching for work?  Have we done our “homework” to build coalitions there so that the narrative in the local news—never much one for nuance—doesn’t portray us like those Pennridge teachers, when I was growing up?  Especially since many of us don’t live in Passaic.  Could it potentially pit us against our students, who do want to go back?  I honestly don’t know the right answer, but I hope the answers are based on science, public health, and—yes, I agree with the pediatricians who say that in-person schooling is needed especially for the youngest ones—the growth and development of our students.  I hope these decisions are not made based on efficiency or the “economy” alone.  A month ago, when the teachers’ unions initially started pushing back, my first thought was, “I want to go back.  Are we [the unions] being obstructionist here?”  But the more I read about COVID updates, the CDC guidelines, what other countries have done, and what we most definitely have not done, I think “obstruction” is good here.  Could not a strike or other confrontation be against the larger system that has left us with these bad choices in the first place? 

Should there be strikes or other disruption, stand by for the usual union blasting.  See the Chris Christie (NJ) or Scott Walker (WI) playbook.  The powers-that-be, including many a liberal commentator and lawmaker, will attempt to pit parents against teachers, private and charter schools against public schools, and private sector workers against public sector workers: “Look at these lazy teachers with their pensions and summers; now they’re insisting we follow these CDC rules or they’re not going to teach your kids!”  Don’t be fooled, though.  They want you angry at us (or postal workers, but not police officers—those particular public workers have been exempt from this long economic and culture war) instead of being angry at the hoarding rich.  In addition to my day-to-day hours’ being protected, I am glad there is an organized, powerful voice on the left, even though not all of our unions are that left or organized or powerful or have always been on the side of justice.  I am grateful that we are an obstructionist wrench in the wheels of neoliberalism’s forty-year march.   

The Chicago, Los Angeles, and West Virginia teachers have changed the narrative in the past several years.  They have organized, mobilized, and struck when necessary not just for member benefits but for the common good.  They have reminded us of these truths: not everything need be for profit; public goods are worth saving; and efficiency is not the only value.  This fight is about teachers, yes, but by extension, it is about our students.  It is about adequate housing and health care for their families and about desegregation.  It is about challenging systemic racism in education (there are not just some “bad apples”—we have a lot of antiracism work to do ourselves).  It is about environmental justice and fair taxation.  It is about stopping the "economic draft" of disproportionately low income kids of color into the military.  It is about moving some of those endless dollars earmarked for policing, incarceration, and the military toward social, human needs.  A. Philip Randolph’s auto workers were not just concerned about the auto plants.  Eugene Debs’ railway workers were not just concerned about the rail lines.  We teachers are concerned about life inside and outside the classroom, as they necessarily feed each other.

“Why make it political?  I was (sort of) just interested in your stories from the classroom?”  But, if the political and economic—and biological and public health—conditions do not support education, then there are no stories from the classroom, at least no happy ones. 

Paideia: the ancient Greeks sought deep education that formed whole persons.  At-large philosopher and social critic Cornel West regularly channels the Greeks and also Saint Paul in his speeches, encouraging teachers and students to “die daily.”  That is, die figuratively, spiritually to our fears, to our prejudices, our pride, our old theories and methods, our old habits and mistakes and sins, our own psychological bondage.  “I tell students when they come to my classroom, they come to learn how to die,” West regales.  That process doesn’t happen very often if we’re being honest and certainly not with every student, even on our best days.  But, it happens enough to make teaching worth it, and I believe it happens best in person in the actual classroom.  However, if actual, physical, premature death lurks too closely—because of a virus, yes, but also because of our nation’s refusal to undergo its own paideia and spiritual “dying”—it is not worth the risk.  We are not as helpless as we thought, when those bereavement notices were piling up.  We can still do things right.   

*all names changed