What is it really like?

Please tell us.

Charles Pierce (@CharlesPPierce) retweeted an interesting article from Esquire. It's written by Jack Holmes and contains interviews with selected teachers around the country talking about what's really going on in their schools. (Note: Journalists should really talk to high school teachers once in a while. Here we at least get one middle school teacher, but the form is dominated by interviews with "specialists" and elementary school teachers. I don't get it. Never have.) Anyway, it's a good read and accurately represents my own experience and that of my colleagues who are still in the business. 

The thing is, why is this a thing? If there is anybody out there who isn't aware of what it's like teaching and learning in schools right now, they are either not interested or posturing and they should just shut up. 

But of course they won't. That's why Holmes describes a "great American schools debate," which is an interesting way to frame what we're going through. I used to teach debate, and to have one you need some sort of resolution. What would that be? What is the actual proposition being debated? What is one side "for" and the other "against"?

"Schools should be open" comes to mind, but that is what we like to call a shitty proposition. Who would argue otherwise? Maybe one of my ninth graders during the before times, fantasizing about endless summer and no homework. Not today. 

"Schools should be open under all circumstances" is obviously preposterous, as most people can imagine a case where closing schools would make sense. All they have to do is look up.

"Schools should be open under these circumstances." Now we're getting somewhere. Except this is where awareness of the circumstances comes in. Honest awareness. After two years? C'mon Man.

As I say, in Holmes's article teachers accurately describe conditions inside schools. But you shouldn't take my or anyone's word for it. If you are not familiar with the actual circumstances in an actual school, if you have not talked with students (including some kids who are not your own), and a variety of teachers, you have not done your homework. In spite of what you heard on Fox or found on Facebook, or read about in the New York Times for that matter (looking at you Michelle Goldberg, and your pal Randi Weingarten), if you have not talked with counselors and administrators, if you have not made time some morning or afternoon to mask up and visit your kids' classrooms, you really don't know anything. And honestly, that is some bullshit parenting.

Now, maybe you don't give a crap about schools. It may be that you don't have kids in school and you really don't see how any of this concerns you and you have nothing to say about it. Carry on. 

However, if you have kids in school but haven't done your homework, and you still insist on demonstrating and shaking your fists and terrorizing teachers and school boards declaring "schools must be open!" and "no mask for my kid or I'll bring every single gun," then you are just political dupes serving your ideological masters, and you are using your kids to demonstrate your fealty. You dream that your performative outrage will earn you a place at the adults' table but you will settle for scraps dropped on the floor as long as you get a pat on the head once in a while. You are dangerous. And fuck you.

And if you don't have kids in school and haven't done any homework. but you make a lot of "kids need to be in school-no masks-no vaccines!" noise with all your threats and your shouting, then you're even bigger assholes and fuck you twice. 

None of you, not the quiet-no-kids, nor the kids-no-homework, nor the no-kids-no-homework people has any legitimate place on the debate stage. If you are going to contend that "Schools should be open under these circumstances," you need to understand the circumstances, not based on social media claims or commentary by those intent on ginning up outrage for their own purposes, but from your own observations. If you want to determine what should go on inside schools going forward, you must at least know what's going on now. Do some real research. Or just shut the fuck up.

Teachers would be the LAST to suggest that there are simple answers to our present "debate." Teachers keenly understand the complexity of the unique challenges presented by COVID, as well as the numerous problems which are magnified by the pandemic but that many of us have spent careers trying to solve. 

Teachers don't have all the answers, but we know the questions. We understand the "debate" at a level more profound than any of the other stakeholders except students because school is where we spend our lives. In the "great American schools debate," someone really should start listening to teachers. At least we're qualified to argue the proposition. 

It is odd to be reading this article in January, 2022. I'm not complaining, exactly. It's just that this information has been readily available for a long time. Whether it's life in schools during the pandemic or any other time, teachers and their students have been talking and writing about it for years. It just feels like, if anyone was interested in knowing what we think, they would have listened by now.