MintyChoc1
Why are teachers different?
They are not. But their conditions of work are totally different. Would you be happy to go to work in a crowd of 1000 young people with no understanding of social distancing at the moment, with no PPE?
Supermarket workers are able to socially distance, are behind a screen, single adults standing at 2 metre intervals, etc. Delivery drivers are able to socially distance. People in hospitals no, but they have (or should) full PPE. They are dealing with individual adults on the whole, whose aim in going to the supermarket or taking in a delivery is not hanging around with all your friends socially. Their jobs are not about managing large volumes of children.
It is impossible to make a school environment even basically safe at the moment. We had 7 kids in, teenagers from different year groups, and we STILL couldn’t keep them even remotely separate all the time. They don’t wash their hands properly, corridors are really narrow, cleaning is pretty inadequate I would say in schools generally, the cleaners can only use a kind of watered down pink spray, I don’t know what it is but there’s no bleach or anti bac stuff in it , kids pass each other pens, teachers collect in books, hand out resources. Millions of hands touching doors and even cutlery in the canteen. The queue for food in the canteen is about 50 metres long with them all crushed up together.
Classrooms are small. We could fit 8 students in a classroom at the correct distance. They wouldn’t be able to move. No emergency toilet breaks or getting up to open a window or empty pencil shavings into the bin. They would need to be totally static for the full lesson, then file out at 2 metre intervals and that’s ignoring the 4 other classes in the corridor. And where would the other 22 go while the chosen 8 were having a socially distanced static lesson?
Teachers should be going back to work once it’s manageable but there is no option to do this at the moment.
Let’s say they just have year 10 in. And let’s say there’s 180 in a year group. Let’s say 50 of them don’t come in because their parents don’t want them to catch or pass on a potentially fatal virus. They’ve heard “stay at home” about 58474839373874784933 times in the last month. You then have 130 students in. You tell them to sit 2 metres away from anyone on the public bus they get and not to walk 2 metres near anyone as they come into school or walk around school. Have you seen a school bus? Have you seen kids in groups? That’s not possible. You get them into school and remind them to wash their hands. 30 do. 10 wash their hands with soap. All of them touch the door handle to the toilets negating any effort as one has smeared virus all over the door. You have your depleted class of let’s say 25. You tell them 8 can come in, the other 17 are split into 2 groups in nearby rooms with cover teachers. This takes a huge length of time as they queue 2 metres down the corridor - our corridors aren’t 50 metres long. (I’ve missed out the bit when they all want to go to the locker room to get their books because the room is about 8 metres squared so I’m thinking this would take another 45 minutes to achieve). As the lead teacher you flit between 3 classrooms. Every surface and book and resource and pen and door handle and remote control and window opening and desk and book and light switch and keyboard and chair and bag could be contaminated. You could even be passing it on to someone else who then is the innocent courier and inadvertently kills their grandmother who lives with them. Is that reasonable? How else could it be managed? For some of them, their next lesson is Psychology. But the psychology teacher has acute asthma and so cannot come in. Another cover teacher? History next but the teacher is off because she’s showing symptoms. Another cover lesson. Perhaps up to 30% or 40% of teachers and support staff will be off, shielding children or elderly parents, vulnerable themselves, bereaved? Who knows. At secondary there are limited specialist teachers in different subjects. Hoping that is that they’re still alive and the school isn’t dealing with a bereavement of someone on their staff.
It’s break time. Your 130 students need to go to the 10 toilets and queue up at the servery to eat where there is space for 3 people at a time if they are 2 metres apart.
How long might that 15 minute break go on for in order for them all to have a snack and all go to the toilet (and all be reminded to wash their hands and not to touch anyone). Maybe an hour? Possibly 1.5 hours?
It’s PE time. But the changing rooms can only fit 4 in at a time with 2 metres around them. It’s ok. Each teen takes about 10 minutes to change so the half year group on at PE at a time, let’s say 60 of them, will now take 600 minutes to get everyone changed as they all wait really patiently (!!!!) in a socially distanced queue. I make that 10 hours of waiting. Or just cut PE out?
Let’s not forget that at every juncture of waiting around and not having a normal lesson the kids are wired up, pushing, annoying each other, etc.
So yes, while teachers are also workers, their environments are totally different. And that’s the problem.