Day 40: SNO-VID Day

I feel thrilled to get back to writing again after a significant COVID-scare and pretty serious illness for the past three days. Monday, day 4 after exposure, I tested negative but felt nervous and perhaps a bit of tickle in the back of my throat. 

Day 5, Tuesday, I could not get out of bed all day, but still tested negative. Day 6, Wednesday, I rallied to go to work, concerned about my colleagues having to cover for me and my kids not having a teacher, and tested negative again while there.

After three negative tests on days 4,5 and 6 from exposure, I feel reassured that my symptoms were not COVID-related — especially as my entire family remained asymptomatic and tested negative, too. 

But whatever I had knocked me fully off my feet! Last night, I slept for nearly 12 hours and still feel exhausted.

Luckily, writing this evening means I have only missed two days and two hours in my challenge instead of three. Perhaps (very optimistically), I can even make them up tomorrow on my SNO-VID day.

About that. It appears to me my school district, which has been holding things together by a thread and trying to maintain In-Person Instruction at all costs (such as health and safety), has balked at a Winter Weather Advisory (which forecasts 1 to 3 inches of snow, last I checked). 

I think they are using the inclement weather as an excuse to avoid making difficult decisions about whether and which schools should close tomorrow. They are punting such decisions off into the future instead of taking principled, proactive steps right now. Not surprising, as they have followed this pattern with all key decisions during COVID, and before when teacher's salaries stayed frozen for 5 years, or even now as school ceilings cave in (been there) and lead and asbestos exposures threaten small, growing bodies inside (done that). The administration seeks only to cover its own ass and caters to whichever stakeholders happen to be shouting the loudest that day. 

And this is completely cynical. I imagine plenty of private-sector jobs exist where one can make $334,644 a year and sit in a fancy office (or work from home, as is preferable these days) without subjecting 200,000 kids and families to one’s terrible mismanagement and lack-of-decision making. We need someone who gives a shit, instead of some seat-warming waiting long enough to vest in the fucking pension plan. Someone who wants to LEAD.

And another thing: when the school district draws a hard line on maintaining in-person learning without even gathering input from families about their preferences (meanwhile willfully ignoring the input of hundreds of students, parents, principals, nurses and teachers requesting a virtual option or at least a temporary pause on in-person learning due to the Omicron spike and travel- and holiday-related transmissions) it punts the decision-making off to me, the teacher, too.  

I already spend my days trying to ensure 6-year-olds, many of whom are English learners, keep their masks on and stay 6 feet away from their friends — while simultaneously teaching them how to read, write, calculate and think, for goodness sake, because G-d knows the measures on which I will be evaluated do not change based how many of my 1st graders had stepped one toe inside a school building before September (Hint: not many). 

Now, I also must scan student symptoms and decide whether to call their families, send them to the nurse for a COVID test, or do nothing. Should I send X student down when they tell me their sibling has a fever or was throwing up? Or perhaps call the teacher of that sibling, who also arrived at school this morning? 

What about children who say yes when I ask if they feel sick? Sore throat? Yes. Headache? Yes. Runny nose? Yes.

And I don’t blame parents, having been in that situation more than once. How bad is your runny nose, sore throat or headache? Slight. Is it all in your head? Perhaps. Are you just attempting to stay home today for one or more reasons? More than one. Why couldn’t you have let me know this 30 minutes ago when taking the day off was, for me, still an option? Unclear. 

What about students who fall asleep in class — are they ill or did they, perhaps, stay up all night waiting for Mom to get off the night shift? Perhaps they don't have a safe, quiet place to sleep? Perhaps they sleep doubled or tripled up with siblings? (In the unthinkable Philadelphia house fire on Wednesday that killed 8 kids and 4 adults, 14 people lived in one four-bedroom apartment and 26 people lived in one rowhouse.) 

What about my children who arrive at school late without having eaten breakfast because they woke up in a hotel room, a van, a shelter, or worse? Should I feed them in my classroom and risk the spread of COVID (unmasked, indoors, with the furnace blowing in and no ventilation going out) or let them be hungry until lunchtime?

I wonder what to do about students having bathroom accidents midway through 1st grade. Or about second graders I knowingly passed on although they could not name or sound the alphabet, because what could I do? I saw them in person all of 13 times last year — literally, I counted.

And, for all the risk-mitigation I practice — strict masking, social distancing “when possible,” and avoiding touching surfaces, materials or each other — does it even make a difference in their level of risk?

I seriously doubt it. 

Omicron doesn't give a shit whether you're vaccinated — especially if, like all vaccinated 5- to 12-year-olds, you have two shots of Pfizer, reportedly 33% effective against this variant. 

And, I am sure Omicron doesn’t give a shit about my kids’ cloth masks. 

I imagine the Omicron virus can shoot all around our classroom, straight out the door and across the hall to infect the kids over there. Blasted spike-protein mutations! 

My mitigation strategies probably won't even matter in the end, as whole classes of children shut down all around me. Multiple teachers and staff out on mandatory quarantine leave after testing positive, schools operating with 25% - 30% of their staff out sick, the daily list of staff absences overflowing the 2-foot long whiteboard designed to hold it, despite names being written in teeny, tiny letters. Dozens of classmates sent home when a single student tests positive.

But, the really scary stuff — kids being hospitalized and admitted to ICUs — those stats apply almost exclusively to unvaccinated kids. That really gets me. 

Because, unlike your child (5 and over) if you’re reading this, my children remain largely unvaccinated and at risk.

So, I make them keep their distance, set a timer for 10 minutes just a few times a day when we can gather together on the rug, forgo our morning routine of a hug, handshake or high five (when I need those hugs as much as they do). 

I make them play by themselves. A separate pile of blocks or puzzle pieces per student on desks spread far apart. Playing rock, paper, scissors with a classmate from across the room. 

A first grade class where everyone has to play by themselves is a sad, eerily quiet place, indeed.

And all this happens before 9 AM. On a single day.  

So, if you’re a teacher, classroom assistant, or other frontline school staff off on a SNO-VID day, I am thinking of you and sending you love. Remember: COVID has magnified tenfold the typical stress and challenges teachers experience in trying to do their jobs well, contributed significantly to the compassion fatigue and decision fatigue we already contend with, and we have now been doing this for nearly two years.  

Less than one week after Winter Break, every teacher I know feels more exhausted than they did on December 23rd. 

You are not alone in feeling put upon when society’s lack of leadership on so many levels places the onus squarely on us to make the best moral, ethical and human choices on the ground – where no good choices exist. 

If you’re a nurse, med tech, environmental services worker or doctor, I am thinking of you and sending you love. 

Ditto the grocery store clerks, HVAC repair people, restaurant workers, sanitation workers, Fed Ex delivery drivers, Amazon Associates, and anyone else whose job was deemed essential and in-person without their having a say in it. 

And if you belong to the white-collar, punditry, or intellectual class, debating over whether we shouldn’t just get over this whole COVID thing and using school openings, closings, and everything in-between as political footballs while you work comfortably from home or alone in your office, maybe consider the gravity and sheer volume of real-time choices being made every day by people other than you. Stop talking and listen instead. 

Then, reach for some compassion.

Because, right now, my colleagues and I are in the fucking weeds.