I took my yellow legal pad to the woods & wrote a bunch of words about why we should not return to any version of in-person school in the fall, but when I got back, I saw this piece by Harley Litzelman & he already did so much of the work! Read! This! https://medium.com/@harley.litzelman/teachers-refuse-to-return-to-campus-b9afa039ef2e

Harley's piece makes a powerful *political* argument, one with which I agree entirely, about how Ts, particularly those of us with strong-ish unions, should be using our power right now, in the midst of a global pandemic. A couple of other thoughts in a slightly different vein...

1. It is irresponsible of districts to be investing so much time & money into reopening committees/planning when all those resources should be directed toward a thorough post-mortem on our experiences with emergency remote education in the spring.

1.2: Enormous efforts at this moment should be put into evaluating our distance models. For whom did they work? For whom did they not? Who showed up? Who disappeared? What do we know about those kids/families who did not participate? What obstacles did they face?

1.3: With an appropriately robust analysis of what happened, matched by urgent planning & action, we might actually be able to have something more than the haphazard, ad hoc education I & other teachers provided in the spring. We might actually be able to, well, teach.

2. There is a strong *pedagogical* argument, in addition to the irrefutably powerful health & safety argument, to be made that remote education is preferable to masked, strictly socially distanced in-person education.

2.1: In the classroom, so much of learning is physically close. It's 2 kids pouring over a poem sharing their favorite lines; small groups peering into a beaker looking for the chemical reaction; a T kneeling down to whisper encouragement & support into the ear of a sad student.

2.2: These examples are all super pedestrian, meaning they are the mundane daily rituals of our classrooms. But any teacher will tell you they are also absolutely critical to a classroom's pedagogical health—another kind of health that should matter at this moment.

2.3: Two kids pouring over a poem together, a small group lab, a whispered one-on-one conversation cannot happen in a socially distanced classroom.

But some variation of them can happen remotely.

2.4: Districts are offering a false choice between our classrooms v. remote education. But that is not the choice. Our choice is between classrooms transformed by safety protocols (which won't keep us safe) v. remote education which, paradoxically, can bring us closer to our Ss.

3. During this moment of rebellion against white supremacy, now is not the time (it will never be the time) for (mostly white) educators to return to schools deputized to police (in the name of “safety”) the behavior of their students, especially their Black & Brown students.

3.1: As others have said a lot to anyone who would listen over the last 100+ years, schools have been tools of genocide & oppression, where Ts police students’ bodies, behavior, & language, demand compliance, teach lies, & reproduce white supremacy.

3.2: To recognize that history is to understand that the "safety protocols" required to reopen will not be borne equitably by all members of the school community. Black & Brown Ss will be disciplined more regularly & more severely & their health will be risked more readily.

3.3: It is no accident that those most vulnerable to infection right now—Black, Native, Latinx people (& here in OR Pacific Islanders)—are also those for whom, historically, school has been the most oppressive. These will also be the groups most hurt by a shitty reopening.

3.4: That’s how structural inequality & oppression works. Once the injustice is baked into the pie, no matter how you slice it, you eat huge, choking mouthfuls of injustice. So a reopening plan that does not address institutional racism is no reopening plan at all.

4. Let's just stipulate that schools are critical institutions.

What was the first question every state & county & district had to urgently address when schools shut down? How will we feed the children? HOW. WILL. WE. FEED. THE. CHILDREN?!

4.1: Followed in short order by, "How will parents work?!"

4.2: Among my teacher-circle, our concerns about the loss of school fell heavily on our students with disabilities (who receive all kinds of support in school) & some of our LGBTQIA+ Ss who rely on school for a kind of recognition they struggle to find at home.

4.3: This is a novel virus & a novel time. The indisputable importance of school does not justify a return to the classroom. Indeed the very families we seek to feed, support, educate, & care for in our schools, will be the most endangered by a hasty, unsafe return & reopen.

4.4: And as Litzelman rightly argues, while we should not go to school, we should pour everything into advocating for massive relief for families that rely on school for their basic needs.

Final thoughts (I have been at this thread for over an hour—yikes):
1. We are all connected.
2. Any plan must be judged by its impact upon the most vulnerable members of our community.
3. We move forward together, or not at all.

P.S. Dana Goldstein disagrees. Just saw her thread on the absolute necessity of reopening. Using the powerful fable of the self-sacrificing teacher that Litzelman brilliantly opens his piece with.