Meredith Essalat 5/19/20 Meredith Essalat 5/19/20

An Open Letter to COVID-19 From an Overly Honest Teacher

As a teacher and school principal, COVID-19 has completely changed the landscape of education as I know it. It has forced us, as teachers, to contradict ourselves by prioritizing screen time over collaboration or human connection. I wasn’t looking for another challenge. Working to shape the next generation into kids of kindness and empathy was a big enough challenge on its own.

Dear COVID, I’m Angry.

I’m certainly not the only one, as I know you are the recipient of hate mail from the masses. Countless emails, texts, and Tweets, all espousing complete and utter disdain for you and all that you stand for.

As a teacher and school principal, you have completely changed the landscape of education as I know it. You have forced myself and my fellow teachers to do what we have challenged our students to strive against—working from a distance, from behind the filter of a screen. Communicating with one another outside of the physical space we find so essential to emotional, tactile, interconnected development.

You have robbed us of the chance to watch friendships bloom, witness moments of spontaneous kindness unfold, delight in the jokes, antics, and banter between ourselves and our students, each moment so essential to our craft. We teach our children that humans are not meant to live in isolation, but instead, to thrive in community with one another. COVID—you are really getting in the way of that.

Sure, you’ve challenged us to get creative—to roll up our sleeves and dig deep to find ways to keep our students engaged. We’ve had to rely on apps to collect assignments, YouTube videos to instruct students about Art projects, Zoom workouts to prevent them from developing habits of the sedentary. Sure, an iPad and a stylus can help a child form letters, and digitally, we can witness the results of that, but it’s not the same as us inhabiting the same classroom, the same air, the same shared elation when that letter formation evolves into the crafting of a sentence, a paragraph, an essay. Emailed certificates are standing in for the ceremonial celebration and validation that comes from a job well done, and virtual stickers and “thumbs up” on a conference call just don’t have the same oomph.

I speak for myself when I say—I wasn’t looking for another challenge, COVID. Working to shape the next generation into humans of kindness, compassion, empathy, and determination was a big enough challenge on its own.

But now, you’re asking me to do that from afar, all while trying to find ways to get my kids to show up to daily Zoom meetings, hoping that they are being honest and forthright when they tell me that, “Of course I am taking notes!” and “Yep! I am following along with the book we are reading together.” You and I both know, COVID, that you’ve lifted the veil of accountability that was and remains so essential in my classroom. I can only do so much from behind a screen in terms of making sure that the eyes I see glued to the camera as we are speaking are not really gazing just beyond to their cell phone while Instagram stories run continuously in the background and capture their attention far more than my Vocabulary lesson from a distance ever could.

I’m mad at you, COVID, because you have placed an incredible burden on my students’ parents.

The hardworking moms, dads, and guardians who now have multiple jobs to balance. While I have always relied upon teamwork with my families, now more than ever, we are calling upon them to step-in in our absence. To not only continue doing that which commands their attention from 9-5 each day, but now, to also play teacher, counselor, referee, coach, mentor, mediator, nurse, and playmate. You’ve robbed many of my parents and guardians of their incomes, their jobs ripped out from under them with no way to prepare. And, what you’ve stripped away in terms of professional fulfillment, you’ve instead replaced with the worry, and fear, and anguish, and heartache that comes with wondering how they are going to keep their families afloat until you go away.

Go away, COVID. Can’t you take a hint? You’re not welcome here, or anywhere, and it’s time for you to leave. Don’t worry, you will long be remembered, though you’ll likely find yourself mounted on the wall of infamy with the likes of those who came before you and sought to destroy the human spirit. The human connection. The collective human voice that bands together and rises out of the ashes of your failed attempt to destroy us.

So, COVID, I’m writing to tell you that we will not be deterred. Sure, it will remain difficult and unideal to educate from afar. It will not cease to break my heart each time I have to send an email to a student instead of chatting with them in the school hallway, or stare blankly at a virtual facade of them in lieu of their actual face on a conference call. It will continue to boil my blood at each opportunity lost, news of each family that struggles, each report of another who has succumbed to your wrath.

But, we will keep teaching. We will keep creating. We will keep striving to expand the hearts and minds of our students everywhere. We will keep going because, as teachers, that’s what we do. We don’t give up when it’s hard; we don’t throw in the towel when a hurdle is tossed in our lane.

We rise, we jump, we pivot, we persist, and we teach our students to persist, too. And, no amount of social distancing is ever going to change that.

Cold regards,

Meredith

Jessica Greenlee 2/27/20 Jessica Greenlee 2/27/20

Musical Chairs

When we shut the doors on academic institutions—both long-standing and new on the scene-- we are risking dimming the lights on our students’ horizons. And, if history has taught us anything, it’s that when we limit people’s capacity for education, we limit their propensity to acquire knowledge.

What is at risk when schools start closing? The futures of our children.

A local high school is closing at the end of the year. One of the remaining few single gender schools left in the Bay Area, as an elementary school administrator who works with Eighth Grade students trying to find the perfect homes for their high school careers, I am concerned. Concerned about the dwindling number of single-gender schools that provide both an academic and social haven to so many students. Concerned about how we, as an evolved society, can allow schools to fledge while corporate earnings are at an all-time high. Concerned about the message it sends to our kids when we rip the proverbial carpet out from under their feet as we parcel them off to another school like luggage misdirected during a layover.

Where are our priorities?

It’s a lot like the childhood favorite—musical chairs. You remember—everyone walking around a circle precariously adorned with folding chairs as some current pop song blasts from a plastic boombox positioned precariously on a table adorned with bowls of Doritos and Cheetos. Each time the song is played, another chair is removed, and another unlucky seat loses, well, its seat. And, all’s well and good until it’s you out in the cold. You can giggle and smirk at the poor losers who get out of the circle first, but when it comes time for you to be booted from the game—it’s not so fun.

When we allow schools to close their doors, we are letting far more than a few party goers lose their chairs. We are abandoning our children. We are allowing fate to be the judge and jury with regards to where these kids go next and how they deal with such unrest. We adults, we’ve grown accustomed to change. Our kids? During their formative elementary and even high school lives—forcing them to relocate schools due to a closure can rock their academic worlds.

In the article, “Five things we’ve learned from a decade of research on school closures”, Chalkbeat describes the outcome of school closures like this:

In a few cases, students whose schools closed benefitted in at least some way. That was true in four studies Chalkbeat reviewed: in Ohio, for instance, students saw major jumps in test scores post-closure; in New Orleans, closures boosted high school graduation rates by about 20 percentage points.

But these results were more exception than rule. In several other places, displaced students were harmed in measurable ways.

In Milwaukee, for instance, high school closures caused steep declines in high school graduation and college enrollment rates. A recent Chicago study — focusing on the highly controversial round of nearly 50 school closures in 2013 — showed that affected students had lower math scores even four years after the closure.

Consistency and routine are two pillars upon which our children rely.

They provide comfort, a sense of security. And, once those are established, working with them on being flexible, adaptable, and open to change can occur. But, for our high school teens who only have a few short years to get settled in, find their place, and form crucial relationships, closing the doors on their school and shipping them off to somewhere else can be truly detrimental.

Let me explain.

First, no matter how eager an adolescent is to leave middle school behind and head off to high school, it is a transition. They go from being on the top to right back at the bottom, so navigating the perils of a whole new social hierarchy come into play. Secondly, the anticipated grade drop that occurs for most high school freshman is inevitable as they are adapting to a new set of academic expectations and instructional methodologies. The same thing occurs when they head off to college. Compound that with the expectation that the relationships students form with the staff at their respective high schools are a necessity when they begin scouting colleges and filling out applications. If the teachers and staff of a school are unfamiliar with a student’s strengths and talents come application season, our kids could be sunk when contending with the ever increasing competition pool that defines the college admission process.

Take into account, too, proximity to the home environment. For the aforementioned example, if students want to continue pursuing the single-gender pathway, only two options remain within San Francisco’s city limits and any others require a southbound commute. If a student lacks access to reliable transportation, they are already limited in terms of where they can go. And, this can be said for any school that closes—whether it be single gender, co-ed, charter, or otherwise.

Add onto that the fact that these particular students were officially notified of the closure past when high school application deadlines were due, and now they’re left absolutely scrambling. High schools are already flooded with a larger number of applicants than ever before. And, showing up to the party late is never a good look on anyone. So, these kids are left holding the proverbial bag and giving fate far too much credit.

So, what’s my point?

We need to make education our priority.

And, I fully recognize that I am not saying anything new with that statement. But, what I am bringing to light is the desire for us, as a collective community, to stand up and take notice. Recognize that all children and adolescents deserve a seat at the table—the right seat for them. As individuals. As scholars. As humans with the capacity for a myriad of talents—art, drama, Mathematics, coding, language acquisition, and athletics. The pendulum has shifted away from a one-size-fits-all mentality to one that is, instead, aligned with the idea that unique learning styles deserve differentiation and every student has the right to options when selecting the best school for them.