Teachers Will Soon Be Frontline Workers

By mid-August, teachers will be the new frontline workers, joining nurses, medical technicians, hospital sanitation workers and doctors fighting against COVID-19.  Like any other soldiers, these dedicated classroom educators will be exposed to injury and death to teach children.  The question will haunt us:  is it necessary?

Most schools will be reopening around August 18.  Teachers will start working on their classrooms in the next week to be prepared to greet students.  With social distancing and a mask, experts are sure that we can reduce infection and death, but right now, adults are not following those guidelines.  Drive down any street in one of the many coronavirus hotspots in the U.S. and the evidence is clear:  people are not taking the guidelines seriously.  No masks, no distancing, no concern for others—it has become the American way.  So are we now to expect students of all ages to follow the masking and distancing guidelines?

In the classroom, younger children thrive on social and even physical contact with each other.  In a good year, flu and virus as well as lice and conjunctivitis flourish.  It is not about cleanliness or preventative health care; it is about students running, jumping, and physically interacting with each other in the classroom and on the playground.  Colds run through them like wildfire.  A teacher usually can predict when peak flu season arrives based on how many students are sniffling, coughing, and running a fever.

High school and college students can maintain social distancing and be required to wear a mask in the classroom, but they present difficulties because we do not know where they go outside of school.  Theirs is a mobile lifestyle—out with friends, studying in the library, meet-ups, dates, and working jobs to pay tuition and expenses.  They bring all of these contact possibilities to the classroom as well as to the home where they might infect elderly parents or grandparents, neighbors or friends.  Put up plexi-glass partitions between desks; allow no more than half occupancy in the classroom.  Doing face-to-face class still remains an inherent danger to students and teachers because there is no way to mass test them for each class meeting.

If we were to shut schools down for the fall and move to remote learning, we are also facing enormous consequences.  We know from last spring that keeping students motivated, on task, and in the virtual classroom is an overwhelming challenge.  Students can manipulate the technology.  After logging on, the student can shut off the video and microphone leaving a blank screen for the duration of the class.  Is he or she there?  Are they listening?  It is difficult enough to keep students focused in class during normal times.  In this extraordinary situation, teachers face overwhelming obstacles to keep students in learning mode.  Grades suffer, test scores drop, and we could face the consequences of this for years to come.  Right now, the ideal education modality is face-to-face in class learning.  COVID-19 upends that modality.

It is clear that doing remote learning does slow the spread of COVID-19.  That is something to pin our hopes to as we face some tough choices.  We have seen, quite clearly, that easing restrictions too soon is a recipe for disaster.  This disease is simply too deadly to risk the lives of teachers and students when an alternative, granted not a perfect one, is available.

However, there are some difficult questions to answer.  If students stay home and dial in remotely, how does that impact childcare for parents who must return to work?  How do we continue to improve the delivery of lessons and ultimately offer a solid education to students?  How do we serve students who lack a stable internet connection?  How do we provide them with food and other necessities normally available on campus?  Even if working remotely, how do we insure safety and limit exposure when students are not in class?  Students could still be out and about in contact with others and spread the disease.

In this case, we need to err on the side of caution.  When the pandemic started, we were worried about having enough personal protective equipment for health care providers.  There is no way to remove them from the dangers when treating COVID-19 patients.  But teachers and students have other possible methods; they might be difficult and only partially effective at delivering an education, but we can continue to refine and improve them.  Online and remote learning have been discussed as the educational strategy of the future for some time now.  Maybe it is time to really explore those options and embrace a new way to teach and learn.  Epidemiologists and medical professionals are telling us our lives may depend upon it.