The Dangers of Being a Teacher during the Pandemic

As I am writing this I am thinking about how many of my family members and friends have died to COVID-19, I am thinking about how many of my fellow teachers have gotten sick, I am thinking of how many of my students have contracted this illness, and I am thinking about how my school insists that the teachers, staff, and students who have been caught COVID-19 in our campus have not been infected at school, but mostly at family gatherings, funerals, because they failed to wear a mask properly or at all, and a plethora of other reasons.

They demand that we teachers teach from campus even if our students are mostly online. Now they want to reopen the school even though the numbers in our district continue to climb, they expect us teachers to be present because they say it's not as risky as we think.

It is hard to understand how they are measuring risk as something that doesn't come from our school but from what our students and their families, or staff and their families or teachers and their families do outside of campus, when they bring it to campus and teachers, students and staff have had to quarantine because someone in our class was infected and we had contact with them. How much is the life of a person worth? How much is the life of a family member worth? Schools insist that this is detrimental for the children, that it can cause psychological damage not to be in school and interact with other kids. They also speak about how we'll make less money if those kids leave to a different district, they speak about how if we reopen and we get more kids we'll be the school of choice for parents and therefore we will make more money, and we can probably get bonuses based on that. Profits over people is what I feel the schools is telling me as a teacher.

Students and parents have a choice whether to return their child to campus or not, and most parents are keeping their kids home, for different reasons, mainly they don't want their kids to catch COVID, and also they dont want their child to spread it to their family. Schools respect this choice, but where are the choices for teachers? When do we get a choice to be safe for ourselves and our family? I've heard comments from parents saying it's safer for teachers to be home too, and I've heard comments from parents saying teachers are being lazy. It is hard to believe that my desire to live and protect my loved ones is seen by some as laziness. I haven't stopped teaching, I haven't stopped working and creating lesson plans and listening to my students and their concerns, I haven't stopped responding to their constant worries about my well-being, because you see my students are kind, they worry about their teacher, their parents put us in their prayers as well.

Parents and students understand that as teachers we'd be taking a great risk by both being on campus and schools reopening. The reason we have gotten infected is because our students who where infected had little to to symptoms as is common with COVID-19 on children. Others in our staff got infected and because symptoms show up much later they unfortunately infected other members of our school, those with preexisting conditions got it pretty bad, so far I haven't heard of a teacher in our campus dying, but we've had teachers that quit because our school does not allow us to teach remotely from home even if every other school in our area is doing it for safety, we also had a staff member who got COVID and never came back, we do not know if that staff member died or quit as well. Schools have closed due to multiple teacher deaths in their distrcits, and it makes me wonder how many deaths do we need to accept that it really isn't safe to reopen? Reopening schools right now can be death sentence for many, it should not be a matter of money but a matter of safety and the preservation of life.

As a teacher I want to continue to teach my students, as a person I'd like to live a full life. I don't know if I will die in a car crash but I don't drive around trying to get into an accident, I don't know if I will die by a lightning strike, but I don't go out during a thunderstorm to find out if one will strike me, I don't know if COVID is going to kill me, but I do know I do not wish to put myself in a situation where the possibility of infection is high. It is dangerous to be a teacher in a classroom right now, not only because we can get infected but because we go home to our families and out them at risk as well, it is dangerous to reopen schools right now because symptoms in kids are hard to detect and even I've had students to take of their masks, who don't wear them properly, who feel symptoms and the school chooses not to send them home, because they'll be alright it's probably not COVID. It is dangerous to be a teacher during the pandemic because some schools are gambling with our lives. In the end they'll be rewarded and my family might just have to put another member six feet under.