Hi. Thank You all for Your Support. �
In this petition written in July, 2020 we requested a 3 month buffer period between the moment society felt safe with regards to the coronavirus and when we went back to school. Many asked,”Why? why would you propose that. Once we see 14 days with no new cases we should return.. “. The thinking at the time was based on our desire to not be engaged in day to day discussions and worries about a return to F2F when we knew we were dealing with a pandemic of centennial proportions if not millennial ones. It was a call for patience and perspective in resolving this crises. Our call for both of the latter has gone unheeded. Now, that dreamlike objective of “14 days with no new cases”, in the framework of a disorganized response individualized by the national administration at the time for political purposes has completely disappeared. Yet, patience is skyways timely, and always a virtue. Patience is not inaction. Patience is understanding the magnitude of the moment one is living in and knowing when to act. With clarity, and calmness of spirit. This, is why we love great moments in theatre, in sport, in public life: patience is that split second difference between a successful reaction to a line by an actor, and a failed one. In sports it’s the difference between a winning buzzer beater and defeat. Patience, in love, is the right moment- to give the rose. In this pandemic, patience, has been the savior of many. Lack of patience has led to the death of 500,000 in our country. In New Zealand they’d lost only 990 as of January 2021. They were patient. Calm and patient. Oh, and they didn’t shift the goal-posts for political expedience.. as we’ve seen our government bend our laws for the same.
THE THREE MONTH BUFFER PERIOD:
We were all very right in asking for a three month buffer period after safe levels had been reached…
Because we foresaw the chaos that would ensue once the tide seemed to turn in our favour against this virus and people seemed to get overly happy because they thought they saw the end of the tunnel…When we are still mired down in the battle against it.
Most traffic accidents happen five minutes from home because people get over anxious and overzealous and start making mistakes…
That is exactly what is happening now with the vaccine roll out…
This urge to get back to class… Without looking at the timetable that the scientific facts and reality lays out for us is erroneous to say the least. It will cost us money and lives to say the worst.
We have tried… And by ‘we’ I mean our opponents in the Trump administration first and now; led by the Biden Administration now.. the Newsom Administration and many others across this country have tried to put a human timetable on this virus…
And tell the virus when it’s going to be gone…
THE HUMAN TIMETABLE:
The human efforts to tackle the virus and set our own timetable with it have, on the one hand, produced an experimental vaccine which seems very effective… and relatively safe… But which does not determine the end to this process .
What our scientific and human efforts tell us that we can do is the following…
We can vaccinate those who want to be vaccinated now in the next two or three months by July…
We can obtain a pediatric vaccine by early September…
And we can look to having everybody vaccinated by Fall…
This is a real scientific timetable…which human ego is promoting too many to jump ahead of the game.
It stands to reason… That if we get 70 million adults vaccinated in two months or three months that the numbers will go down drastically. Which means by August or September we could be looking at possibilities of planning a safe return.
THE EGO..OF “ONE HUNDRED DAYS!”
So why do they want to do it now? !?!?!
Why the insistence that it be four or five months ahead of time than in a precipitated unorderly fashion…?!?
Ego. In this case the ego of Biden‘s first 100 days.
GROCERY STORE WORKERS DIED FOR US.
Why are grocery store workers not the first ones to get this vaccine?
Along with the elderly?
Why are we reading about actors and actresses and private school people getting this vaccine before the people who have been providing us with food for the last 10 months?
After we go to the bathroom in the morning the first thing most of us do is eat…
Those are primary necessities: Sewage, cleanliness, and food.
ESSENTIAL, BUT NOT ON THE FRONT LINE..
WE ARE.. BEINGS, THAT ARE HUMAN
Educators are not on the front line, nor do we have to be. We are essential but we are not on the front line. We can stay virtual. As to the quality of virtual. It’s like everything: you have to approach it with the right attitude and teachers need societal support. What they don’t need is being forced back to work needlessly. Teachers are beings that are human. The way to humanize virtual learning is to let teachers teach and remove the artificial structures leadership has created to “prove” that virtual learning works- or doesn’t work. Teachers need support from the public to do that. In my case perhaps it’s gone better for me because I’m as intransigent about letting something stop me from teaching as I am about the idea of being forced back: I’m not going to go back in unsafe conditions for myself or my colleagues.. and I’m not going to let that stop me from being the absolute best I can be - on a daily basis..
ATTITUDE
My virtual class is going as well or better than any class I’ve had up to now…in 30 years of teaching.. Because I set a high goal for myself and I have people buying into it. Now, I do teach in a privileged area. With lots of parental support. But that wasn’t the case last year and.. it went well too. if you approach things with the attitude that something is going to be less then: You are most likely going to come out with that result.
Attitude is important and the attitude towards Virtual Learning has been a failure since the start. Another leadership failing.. Not from many teachers point of view but from too many people in general and definitely from too many in positions of power. People in power failed to recognize the emergency for what it was and is: A Bill Past due for our societal failings and an opportunity to remedy them. Virtual learning has been our present for almost a year now yet since the beginning people have treated it as a sorry substitute for real life instead of accepting that it is a fabulous possibility modern society afforded us to make a horrible pandemic more human and productive.
PROTEST PARENTS PLEASE: FOR MORE RESOURCES!
Every parent, every person who is protesting to get schools reopened should be protesting for more money for families, for more safety in contact tracing and testing. Also there should be more enforcement of people who violate safety protocols. Why did it take 9 months to make wearing a mask mandatory on airplanes? Because of Trump. Imagine a doctor decided he or she didn’t want to wear a mask when performing open heart surgery on your parent? Or spouse? Or child? How would people feel about that? How many people have died because of this lackadaisical attitude? How many more will?
PROTEST FOR YOU LOCAL GROCERY STORE CLERK!
People they should be protesting for vaccinations for their grocery store worker acquaintances, family and friends. They should realize that after any storm has passed through town… people need to assess… And move safely to pick up the pieces… Not rush to make everything look like this never happened….
All of this happened…and it needs to be examined and remedied:
We had a horrible response to this pandemic…
Our president at the time… President Trump… Was self-serving and egotistical and tried to overthrow our nation…
He didn’t care about the 500,000 Americans he basically left dead…
Our country needs fixing in deeper ways than a simple vaccine will cure… Or a simple return to school…
‘PROTEST FOR YOUR NEIGHBORS RIGHTS. FOR FUNDING.
“AS IF FROM NOWHERE’ - the unspoken positives.
There are positives: We’ve seen more funding for schools than ever: Why now? Why not before? Money appeared to support businesses as well- as if from nowhere? Or simply as if Dick Cheney had another contract he needed filled for Halliburton? This pandemic has shown we have money. The top 1% doesn’t want us to know it but, the curtain has been pulled back in OZ. There is money for a living wage, healthcare, support for families who are suffering during regular times.
SO PROTEST: FOR SUPPORT FOR YOUNG GIRLS who need money for menstrual products for example... In writing this update I saw a petition with a drawing of an preadolescente girl with a blood stained mid-section- asking for support for funding for feminine hygiene products for girls. It shakes me to my core: This is the state of need in our country. This is the type of poverty we teachers have been seeing daily for decades… since before the pandemic. Why aren’t people protesting to fix that?!? Where were they in 92? 98? 07? 12? 16?
WHY HAVEN’T. WE BEEN PROTESTING FOR DECADES?!?!
Because our kids have been in school?!? And we’ve been worried about our upwardly mobile pursuits?!? Our kids have been in school so you’ve been able to worry about fantasy football instead of intercity poverty. Our kids have been in school so we’ve been able to spend time drinking lattes instead of writing our senators about the poison water in Flint, Michigan. Kids have been in school which gives adults a sense of accomplishment that justifies our normal self-centered pursuits.
Here’s some news; This isn’t about you or me. It’s about something bigger than just the two of us.
As a teacher, the first thing a young teacher needs to learn is that it’s about the students. Even when a student insults them, or students get into a fight with each other.. it’s about the students learning and growth necessities. It’s not about the teachers personal feelings.
Likewise when a teacher meets with parents it’s about that parents child. School, is about students. But, it’s also about something even more important than the students, and kids as individuals: It’s about kids and students as part of a whole.
ITS ABOUT US. ALL OF US.
it’s about having a society where rules are under stable, fair, followed and enforced with compassion. It’s about building a world where putting in a mask to save a strangers life is not something people call into question as something that challenges their own individuality. It’s about building a civil society where the President of the United States doesn’t discount an entire race by saying,”Some of them I guess. are good people.” Or every woman who disagrees with him is deemed “a Nasty Bitch”. It’s about having a country where a President who telephones a governor to “find more votes” in his favor to remain in power and then incites a siege on the Capital, is impeached- and condemned.. by all. That president's actions should not be supported by anyone….
NOT IN …
Texas: where people are dying because of his failed response to this pandemic...
Not in Mississippi.. where people are dying for the same thing.
Not in Georgia, California, Orgean!, Idaho! OHIO! Arizona, New York.., not in Chicago, St. Louis, Oklahoma City.. .. not from sea to shining sea.
It is greater than you and I yet we are the solution, with our insistence on fairness.
Education for teachers, parents and administrators us about the students. It’s not about them. It’s greater than that.
For the students and the public at large it’s about the society we all live in. That’s why it’s public. It’s not just about them. It’s about us. It greater than one person, place or thing.
At the same time we spent more money on public things in the last year then we had in the previous 20… I’m teaching with two additional teachers plus 2 aides in my room virtually.
We have a ratio of 1 to 9 teachers to students in my classroom now… That comes from emergency funding…
That could be the way it is in American life throughout this country all the time… This is what parents should be calling for… for the future and outraged about the fact that it hasn’t happened before…
“NORMAL” wasn’t functioning before.
Parents and others, should not by pushing people back to die… Because they want to return to a normal that wasn’t functioning before… A nation of people half of which did not want to put on a simple mask has real problems. That’s the real cause of this and that’s what we have to deal with… but not in haste, death and waste.
We need to deal with it, from a position of calm, humility and safety… Not the same egotistical rush that caused this country to come to this point. Of misguided, self serving inaction and misdeed.
Here’s where we stand in relation to other countries.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/which-countries-have-responded-best-to-covid-19-11609516800