Teachers Didn’t Sign Up for This

It’s 11:49 pm on Tuesday night at my house. The kitchen is clean. The house is locked up. The kids are asleep, my dog is asleep, and for once, I can sit down and hear the sounds of nothing in my house. Yet, as I finally sit down in my recliner to try and grade some papers in peace, something keeps tugging at me, not letting me put one mark on these 140 literary analysis papers that have to be graded by Friday.

I sit at my desk thinking that if I were sitting up, I’d be more productive.

That didn’t help.

I walked into the kitchen to grab a glass of water and clear my mind.

That didn’t help.

I even put on some meditation music to give me some inspiration to mark the papers.

That didn’t help.

Frustrated, I decided to go to bed and hopefully wake up early and knock out some grading.

That didn’t help.

Instead, I laid wide awake at 2 am when it finally hit me what was bothering me.

Teachers didn’t sign up for this.

Here in Georgia, we’re almost thirty days into the first days of school, and the one thing I know is that teachers didn’t sign up for this shell of a school year.

• We didn’t sign up for waking up in the morning with fear in the pit of our stomach worried that I’ll slip up one time and be exposed to COVID-19.
• We didn’t sign up for pulling up into our campuses and daily seeing protests of parents shouting at us about how masks are hindering their freedoms.
• We didn’t sign up for the countless nasty emails from parents and community members threatening to pull their kids from our classes if we teach anything about social justice or the invisible “Boogeyman” Critical Race Theory.
• We didn’t sign up for our School Superintendent refusing to order masks in the county where mobile morgues are now at our local hospitals.
• We didn’t sign up for kids flaunting the fact that someone in their house tested positive for COVID and as long as they wear a face-covering they can still report to class.
• We didn’t sign up for the kids being so excited to being back in the building that staff has to not only teach them how to do “school” again, but work through their social emotional issues from being home for the last 18 months.
• We didn’t sign up for a Governor who won’t mandate masks in all schools in Georgia but does vow to stop teachers from teaching critical race theory.
• We didn’t sign up for our school district to take our COVID-19 leave away and make us use or own sick leave if we get sick with COVID-19.

We did sign up for a year where COVID-19 is a distant memory because the community was responsible and got vaccinated, wore masks, and appropriately socially distanced all summer so our school year could be “normal.”

Instead, we witnessed a summer full of fun- barbecues, festivals, picnics, and more and no regard to the Delta Variant. This overindulgence was evident on the first day of pre-planning when almost half of our staff was out due to COVID-like symptoms. We were hopeful that the slight “bump” in numbers would be temporary. Still, as soon as our students were back in the building, three things became evident- there was no such thing as social distancing in a school, and there were many students and staff not vaccinating and not wearing masks.

To add insult to injury, parents have decided that all responsibility of a pandemic was solely on the backs of our school staff. Instead of principals leading the schools, they spend the day holed up in their office with our school nurse calling irate parents to tell them their child had been exposed. Instead of Assistant Principals helping operate the school, they now spend hours contact tracing because of outside events in the community. Instead of support staff helping teachers, they’re now helping in the cafeteria as we try to social distance teens or, worse, helping manage the quarantine rooms in the building. Instead of teachers, teaching we now cower in our rooms, scared to get too close to kids out of fear of a COVID exposure.

This ladies and gentlemen, is the 2021-2022 school year. The year that teachers have to pay the ultimate cost- sacrificing our profession/lives to go to school as normal.