I'm a teacher and I'm scared.

[NebularNerd]

I don't feel safe going back to work in September. When I became a teacher I did not anticipate doing so during a pandemic. I, like many others in secondary schools, will be facing up to 150 students a day, indoors, with no protection.
I am over 40 but not otherwise in a high risk category, although my husband is and we have elderly parents who will be exposed if I'm infected, as well as young children who will also be in school and potentially exposed.
I'm not disputing the need for children to return to school at all. I'm just starting to fear returning.
Anyone else feel this way?

@Sunrise234

Dentists / orthodontist? Patient (my child) has to wear a mask until actually in the chair, and have their temperature checked before being allowed in.

My dentist is still not opening. I have tried several others who aren’t open yet either and I’ve not heard when they will be. It must be different around the country.

Because the dentist will be literally in their face breathing in their breath. They probably want to make that as safe as possible. Im fairly sure that kind of contact between a teacher and student would lead to an enquiry!

@HerNameWasEliza How do you think that list was compiled? We haven't had all kids back at school in this country, and very few places in the world have had kids back at school under our conditions. Do you think the figures on a situation that has not yet occurred are likely to be accurate? Or reassuring?

I really do appreciate you trying to make us feel better. And honestly, I don't think that a year from now, that many of us will know lots of dead teachers. That isn't my fear. My fear is that opening schools without decent distancing measures may add an additional 80,000 deaths to our overall toll. They won't be teachers, mostly. They will mostly be over 70, to be honest.

But my parents are over 70, and I have hopes they will live another 20 years, or maybe 30 years between the two of them.

I agree with you op. If I was a teacher, I’d consider resigning and setting up my own business as an online tutor. I have 2 secondary age kids and I’d be happy for them to learn online. I think that a small number of teachers and parents will end up dead. Social distancing cannot take place at my kids’ school. Too many kids, not enough space.

@Hearhoovesthinkzebras "On Covid wards yes. I've been to three outpatients appointments during lockdown. For each one I had to complete a pre appointment questionnaire, answer questions face to face at entrance, have my temperature checked, put on a mask, was then escorted to an empty waiting room and then taken into the appointment where the staff were in full PPE and 2 metre social distancing was in place.

They weren't treating Covid patients shedding the virus yet still had that level of protection."

Took my daughter to the hospital last week for blood tests and a spinal xray. We wore masks (as I believe that is law) no-one in the blood dpt had them on, we had no temp checks or any thing else. Although maybe this is because it is a childrens hospital so the risk to staff would be reduced the same as in a school?

@HerNameWasEliza according to your data primary school teachers have it a lot worse.

The point being that the infographic is out of date and doesn't reflect what we now know about viral spread.

I'm.not worried about ending up dead. I'm worried about me or my kids bringing the virus home to my terminally ill FIL or shielding mother. And I'm worried about us ending up with long term lung scarring or other organ damage. I have auto immune issues as well and my husband has another condition.

[quote Barbie222]@HerNameWasEliza according to your data primary school teachers have it a lot worse.[/quote]
That guide isn’t very accurate tbh. It doesn’t consider new research showing that younger children transmit the virus less effectively than older ones.

Dying isn't my worry. It's bringing it home to my mum, who lives with me. Or it leaving me, as an autoimmune asthmatic, with a condition that means I can't continue to teach, as the sole breadeinner.

Yet the risk to support assistants and teaching assistants is 60/359.

Primary and nursery education teachers 32/359

That data was based on US figures, before the recent upsurge. It's nonsense.

If I want to find data that schools are safe, I'll be able to go and find something.

If I want to find data that schools are the riskiest work places of all, I'll be able to go out and find something.

The overall movement of consensus, from my opinion, appears to be that all children can catch Covid, most are likely to be asymptomatic, and that the older they get, the better they are at passing it on.

Anyone who says "this is definitely the case" is definitely either ignorant or has a massive agenda to push.

I'm worried about me or my kids bringing the virus home to my terminally ill FIL or shielding mother.

This is what a lot of my colleagues are worried about and I think this has been overlooked.
Will people who live with someone shielding still need to go into work everyday?
If they’re shielding themselves is it safe to go back?
If they’re not going back is there going to be enough staff in to teach the classes?

I believe the government stance is if you’re shielding only go back if it’s safe to do so but try and WFH if you can.

Also, the data currently concerns children under and over 10. Which ignores year 6 teachers in primary or middle school teachers.

Unless of course you're a teacher or a student, then unless you can convince a doctor, you are in school because shielding is somehow protected in the school bubble. Or so this is what I have gathered from other posters,

In response to SummerPeonys post The ONS publishes statistics in May that 65 people working in Educational provision had died. TAs Nursery, Primary, Secondary, Admin and 1 crossing patrol.. no doubt they will argue that they caught it at the corner shop !!

No OP yANBU .. I wouldn't do it.. and I wouldn't let my kids add to the spread.. but the last one left this year..if this had happened last year she would be doing final year online.

Not for her, not for me, but for teachers and everyone on the bus she came into contact with who might be more susceptible.

It's a shit show of 'let's wait and see' .. I want no part of being responsible for this shambolic governments bad choices.

@phlebasconsidered completely agree - I don’t live with my parents, so I know I won’t really be seeing them much once I start back. This is really hard for me because I’m very close to them and my mum is a recently retired teacher so I was really relying on her support for my NQT year, plus I work 5 minutes from them so it was going to be perfect

@mumsneedwine I know, maybe I am a bury my head in the sand type. I think I just feel so helpless and overwhelmed by the situation that I have adopted a blinkers-on and keep going approach. I don't know what the answer is. I just know that kids can't be off any longer so come September I will make the best of it. Not saying that's right.

I'm mostly worried that in my school, majority of staff are over 50 and BAME. My TA is a 56 year old Pakistani woman who is overweight. She is one-one for a boy who spits, licks faces, picks his nose and wipes it on you etc etc. I'm worried about her more than me, although I also get all the 'stuff' he does.

The data could have come from the UK. Primaries were open for longer in their little bubbles of 15 part time. They were open to more students and more years from the beginning of June(?) until the holidays, well they closed but you know what I mean. They were in proper bubbles.

Secondary that had year 10 in I believe.

60 risk when half your school isn't in, is lot.
116 when only one year is open is a lot.

What puts Vet nurses at 15/359 and in terms of closeness to other people 9/359?

Whereas nurses closeness to others is 23/359, well excluding dental nurses!

@Sostenueto

My dd lived in fear ( and still does) working on Frontline as a carer with inadequate PPE and a DD at home being shielded because she has an auto immune blood disorder and is on immune suppresent meds. But she still had to go in. And she still goes in. She's on minimum wage zero contract no sick pay single parent. So yes, I understand your fear, but I also understand others like my DD have been in danger every day and still are.

Why should any of us expect to have to live in fear? There are swathes of the working population protected at home while people like your daughter (and my dad who has lung disease but who is on zero hours) are put at unreasonable risk daily. But why should we accept that? I'll repeat: it's not a race to the bottom.

Sunrise - yes if a teacher lives with someone shielding they will have to go to work in a school as normal as teaching staff who are on the shielding list themselves have to go and teach.

And don't forget the infographic doesn't take account of the lack of PPE for teachers.

The way I see it is the government are preparing the public for teachers/school staff to be the next victims of covid in this country. At the beginning of all this a lot of health care professionals were dying - their pictures were filling the newspapers - and while it was all very sad and there was some concern about them not having proper ppe, it was quickly normalised and the public eased their consciences by the weekly clap and sticking rainbows in their windows.

The language about schools now coming out of Downing Street is all about our "moral duty" to children, to give them an education and return them to the classroom for the sake of their mental health. Now I'm not saying this shouldn't be our major consideration as a society, but I expect that if/when teachers start to die, it'll be like the health care professionals all over again - very sad and all but basically unavoidable. (If children start dying then that would be another thing altogether of course, but fingers-crossed they aren't vulnerable.)

This may be the correct decision but I'd feel a bit better about it if any effort had actually been made to make classrooms as safe as they can possibly be in the circumstances. However, the government isn't even prepared to give schools the money for extra cleaning so...

As an individual,sorry, but I'm selfish. I care a lot about the kids I teach but I'm not actually prepared to die for them. Now chances are I wouldn't but I'm fat and fifty and not in the best of health. I love my job and don't want to give it up even though I could probably afford to but, you know what, I'm seriously considering it.

There are swathes of the working population protected at home while people like your daughter (and my dad who has lung disease but who is on zero hours) are put at unreasonable risk daily. But why should we accept that?

Those who have been at home were / are there because they were unable to do their job. Not because the government has decided they are more worthy of saving.