Education professor Peter Smagorinsky wonders whether young people will consider teaching careers after seeing how teachers have been demonized for expressing concerns about returning to classrooms as the COVID-19 virus surges.
A Distinguished Research Professor emeritus of English Education at the University of Georgia. Smagorinsky says the pandemic has laid bare the challenges of being a teacher.
By Peter Smagorinsky
The AJC reported this weekend that “Nearly 200 people rallied in the cold Saturday at the district offices of Atlanta Public Schools urging officials to delay school reopening while cases of the coronavirus are spiking.” Teachers are concerned their health is at risk in crowded buildings filled with people who may be bringing COVID-19 in with them from their many and varied homes and communities, not to mention buses, social gatherings, and other close quarters that have proven to spread the lethal virus.
With 4,000 deaths a day and roughly 400,000 confirmed cases of the virus in the US—100,000 new cases in the last five weeks alone—they ought to be concerned. It’s deadly out there, according to doctors publishing in the peer-reviewed Journal of the American Medical Association: “The failure of the public and its leaders to take adequate steps to prevent viral transmission has made the nation more vulnerable, allowing COVID-19 to become the leading cause of death in the United States, particularly among those aged 35 years or older.
Much of this escalation was preventable, as is true for many deaths to come.” Given that the average age of a U.S. teacher is 42, they are squarely within the sensitive population range.
What sort of steps are authorities taking to keep schools safe? They are punishing teachers who decide their lives matter to them and hoping to teach remotely. Teachers’ lives matter to themselves much more than they do to those who make decisions from the safety of their offices. In South Carolina, teachers who refuse to follow orders to go to superspreader school buildings are facing punishment: “The State Board of Education is threatening to take away their teaching license for a year. . . . a letter sent to a former Fort Mill School District Teacher [told] her the board will ‘meet to make a determination regarding the possible suspension of your South Carolina educator certificate’ due to her breach of a contract.”
The breach? Fearing for her life and hoping to teach virtually until the deadly virus is under control.
In Chicago, teachers whose students have opted for remote learning are being ordered back to schools to teach in person. Those who protect their lives and health by resisting this command face disciplinary procedures, being considered “absent without leave.” Their pay has been withheld and their access to the school’s systems has been locked, making it impossible for them to teach remotely.
Lakewood, N.J., elementary teacher Susan Mazzaroni, after complaining publicly about how her district responded to a positive COVID-19 test from one of her students, was reassigned to a different school. The school, she reported, gave no reason for ordering the change: “It is punitive, that’s for sure. I called them out on it, and they were not treating us right. I was transferred to a different school, no reason given.”
Perhaps New Jersey could help by providing teachers with vaccines so that they can teach in person without fearing for their lives. But first, “The Crossroads of the Revolution” needs to vaccinate 2 million smokers, because COVID puts their health at risk. New Jersey has put smokers in line ahead of teachers and other essential workers, whose exposure to hundreds of potentially infectious people daily isn’t as great a threat to school personnel as the dangers to smokers of inhaling yet more toxic vapors. At least to the people making policy.
Get Schooled recently ran an essay on whether teacher education program enrollments would suffer because of how schools and politicians are responding to the COVID environment. Would you go into a profession in which authorities who themselves remain safely sequestered in offices decide that you should risk your life so that they can claim they are can-do leaders?
Would you stay in that profession if you entered it in good faith because of your love of teaching kids, only to find that your life doesn’t really matter to the decision-makers? Would you dedicate yourself to a profession in which leaders can and will terminate or punish you if you resist their disregard for your health, safety, and well-being?
At various times during my 14 years of classroom teaching and 30 years of university teacher education, I have been amazed students continue to want to become teachers. The pay is low, the structures are top-down, the media coverage is negative, the public perception is focused on the problems more than the success, school leaders consider free-thinking teachers to have bad attitudes needing discipline, politicians with no teaching experience impose absurd testing demands and other ignorant policies designed to promote their own images at the expense of educational quality.
And yet, my classes at UGA have typically been well-populated, because young people continue to love teaching and are dedicated to helping kids reach their human potential. A love for teaching can conquer all obstacles, and it has inspired many young people to set aside their concerns, follow their ideals, and take on the life of the teacher. I did it myself in the 1970s.
Will young people continue to follow their hearts and tune out the facts, and decide to teach? Will they be willing to risk their lives to do what they think is right, as decision-makers make their health an afterthought, if even a thought at all? I have never been much of a futurist, and so can’t say.
We are about to find out, though, whether one of the world’s most fulfilling professions will find itself short of aspiring members because leaders don’t care if they live or die, and are ready and willing to punish them through whatever means are necessary if they have the audacity to believe their lives matter.
