As the start of the school year looms, the annual anxious anticipation of new faces & opportunities has been replaced with a nail-biting, pulse-quickening fog with no clear picture of what school - let alone learning - will even look like.

A return to classroom learning seems unimaginable, yet I'm afraid the relationship of school/work in our community is going to drive a wedge between the safety of teachers & students and the perception by parents of school-as-daycare.

The process is very slow and I worry the window is closing not only for re-imagining how the return *could* look different & training teachers accordingly, but also for making difficult decisions, and marshalling the necessary buy-in and community support to make changes.

How did we get to a point where the safest option, remote learning, has become the least palatable for other stakeholders? If school is as essential as we want it do be, what exactly did ALL OF US do with the last 5 months to make sure Aug 24th could work?

I say all of this as a parent of a little girl eager to meet her "new friends" at kindergarten () and as an adult who has made lifestyle changes to keep me and my family safe.

If it's not safe to return to school, we shouldn't. Period.

But the failure to return is not on schools, and least of all on teachers. The failure belongs to our lack of coherent collective response that almost every other nation rallied early and urgently.

The failure belongs to the tightrope walked by working-class families overburdened by housing & daycare costs & student loans, by the necessity of healthcare tied to employment: "The coronavirus didn’t break America. It revealed what was already broken." https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2020/06/underlying-conditions/610261/?fbclid=IwAR0eCg3mJqpysuhp7t32b0PMh7OstbfpntXdgAOGjDQc30IXQkBzp7vECQE

And maybe it's my tendency to catastrophize (a word I learned from my wife), but it's difficult not to see the pandemic swirling uniquely over American heads in isolation from almost every other unique socioeconomic malady we face.

How would our return to school look different if Americans had...

Robust unemployment insurance?
Universal health care?
Living wages & equitable wealth distribution?
Strong equitable public schooling?

If it's necessary to throw school staff and a community of children into a burning building so parents can "get back to work", the question shouldn't be, "Why aren't schools open?" but "Why do we have to get back to work in a pandemic?"

So when we inevitably re-open school, we'll have gloves, masks, and hand sanitizer. We'll turn schools into sanity medical facilities to make sure parents have daycare for their children.

But then the first staff case pops up, then what?
The first student case?

When we also inevitably retreat back to remote crisis learning, how did re-opening school solve the problem of overburdened households? Of wage stagnation? Of unaffordable & inaccessible healthcare tied to employment? Of unemployment benefits expiring?

This is why my nails are stubs and my Headspace app is tracking my breathing: this not a crisis of school - though it is one schools will bear - it is a crisis of our broader failure to reflect & act on why Americans are bearing this virus disproportionately.

We want to "go back to work" and "back to school" without fixing the underlying problems that push us back to work and back to school at the peak of a pandemic, and I'm starting to doubt that these problems are solvable.

I don't know if this thread makes any sense, but it sure made me feel better, and hopefully clarifies for anyone reading it what the anxieties teachers are feeling about this "return to learn".

//“I’m supposed to be concerned about protecting and worrying about my students,” he said. “But I can’t get past worrying about myself. In a month, I will be exposed and vulnerable. I’m aware of where I could be next.”//

https://iowastartingline.com/2020/07/14/threats-wont-end-iowans-anxiety-about-the-virus/

Like the teacher quoted in the article, I'm paralyzed by the notion of what a return to the classroom after months of risk-management could mean for my health and the well-being of my students, colleagues, and their families.

And I'm afraid we aren't doing any of this for the right reasons, rather we're compelled by the worst aspects of our economy to "just do something" and it's going to cost someone you know their health, their livelihood, or even their life.

"Between conversing, bathroom breaks, hallway monitoring, late arriving students, students leaving early, regular sickness, and all the other movements that will occur, it’s nauseating to even think of how rapidly COVID-19 will spread in the hallways." https://medium.com/human-restoration-project/death-and-teaching-covid-19-and-the-return-to-school-6f71e048d7ed

I...need to take a walk...