TGBL wrote several weeks ago about the reopening of schools and the dangers of having more ominous X-factors than the movies have X-Men. With many districts’ scheduled SY20/21 opening approaching faster than you can say social distancing, the debate has heated up across the country like the Mojave Desert in August. The epicenter travels like a deadly cloud from New York and Michigan and Illinois to Florida, Texas and Arizona. We can only hold what breath we have left as the lives of our kids and families are in the hands of a clueless president, an obsequious Education Secretary, waffling and ignorant governors, lunatic Lt Governors, fearful faculties, nervous administrators, partisan bickering, anxious parents, and cooped up tweens and teens.
The CDC and medical experts have provided professional policy for operating schools as safely as possible, even though the Administration and others have trashed it. The protocols may also be our best hope to save lives with in-person learning by maximizing safety in schools. The CDC actually grasps the severity of a lethal pandemic and how best buildings can strive to maintain a healthy environment in the sixty-page guidelines the once venerated institution produced. A scientific consensus has formed around it, supported by mostly medical professionals, school superintendents/commissioners, sane Republicans and Democrats. The devil is in the details, not to mention a dogged, invisible foe.
The White House and its acolytes have rejected the CDC because their recommendations are too expensive, too scientifically based, too much work and, most importantly, not politically useful to the president. The GOP wants the schools to reflect a life-as-normal regimen, hoping that would reflect positively on their decisions to open. Also, the veneer of a regular school day routine may comfort people. The feel-good move, however illusory, would boost overall confidence that we’ve turned a corner, leading to increased consumer spending. For Trump, who is as allergic to governing as he is to truth, “Make America Normal Again” keys his reelection, no matter how many bodies lay in refrigerated trucks.
In late April, Gov DeSantis of Florida proclaimed, "Everyone in the media was saying Florida would be like New York or Italy and that has not happened”, CNN quoted him from late April. Still proclaiming victory in July, the Sunshine State has turned into the Febrile State, running out of beds, cases are skyrocketing, and positivity is at 24% tested—33% in Miami Dade. Texas Lt. Governor Dan Patrick, led a small but vocal chorus of Conservative Republicans urging senior citizens to sacrifice their lives to re-open the economy. This, from the same party who accused Obama and Democrats’ Affordable Care Act of creating death panels for seniors. They’ve yet to prove how such a sacrifice would be the casual agent for pre-Covid prosperity, but why stop at old people? Physically challenged, health compromised of all ages, high-burden citizens could be thrown in the mix. Put your ears to the conch pf history and you will hear the faint echoes of “Lebensunwertes Leben”, Life unworthy of life, sacrificed for the Fatherland’s making Germany great again. No one should be exempt from America’s new patriotic exhortation: “I regret that I have but one life to give for the economy and Trump’s reelection”.
Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, the Bambi of the Administration, has been eyes-in-the-headlights clear about several things. There is no plan from the Department of Education to guide, collaborate, and help public school districts open amid the pandemic. She has very eagerly threatened to withhold funding for those districts that do not open in full. When asked on CNN if she could confidently tell parents no one will get COVID from re-opening schools, her best Bambi showed up. She tells us America has a commitment to invest in our kids’ education; “schools have to open up”. We also have a commitment to safety to go along with the investment, but we are not hearing that. We are not hearing sympathy for the victims of Covid-19, nor see tears shed for frontline warriors in hospitals and clinics and everywhere care is needed. We do hear threats, we have learned the sound of callous indifference, the denial of help to get by. There is a sadistic bent to our Covid-19 non-policy from the administration. This is what you are facing when you send your kid to school in 2020.
Before the school bell rings, let’s review. A non compos mentis Education Secretary; a President who is trashing our leading expert on infectious diseases because Fauci’s truth telling mitigates against panicky campaign spin; our best scientific advice goes unheeded, unwanted, unused by Feds as virus casualties skyrocket. Governors in Florida, Texas, South Dakota, Oklahoma do their best imitation of “Jaws’” Murray Hamilton as Mayor Vaughn saying, “What shark? It’s our busy season!” Only one consistent policy exists--Trump’s favorite: extortion. His threat to withhold funding for schools that do not fully open is no different than his holding back on PPE for Michigan, or withholding weapons from Ukraine. The more lives at risk, the better the extortion, the greater the adrenalin rush.
Overcrowding will be Covid-19’s best friends. For decades, school density has been met with expedience for larger and larger class size. No matter what the class size, all kids can learn. Middle schools should be topped at 500-750 but run to 1200-1400; high schools max out at 4000--5000 plus, but should be no more than 1500-2000. In many places, such as New York City, schools share one building, adding to ghetto-like conditions of wall-to-wall people and sharing common areas, such as cafeterias and gyms. The history of cutting expenses and sardine-stuffing classes brought those numbers home to roost, as Covid-19 demands the reduction to minimalist headcounts. The health and logistical nightmares of opening en masse and in full are brewing a perfect storm for the virus to feed. Ominously, Florida has just reported 30% of its children tested positive.
Three Arizona teachers shared a classroom for remote lessons contracted Covid-19; one died. Protocols apparently were followed and still the potency of this disease manifested itself. Teachers share classrooms more than ever, often traveling to multiple rooms in a day. Children walk through narrow corridors, up and down staircases, loiter in lobby areas. All these areas are minefields of adolescent expectoration, touchy feely kissy moments, depositories for expired chewing gum, target practice for spitballs and water balloons, fistfights and impromptu slalom runs around the ones who prefer a mere walk to class, often resulting in collisions with the unwitting human poles to varying degrees of damage and confrontation. Every face a target for a bully’s saliva, or a new enemy made by a wayward glance. In urban schools, eyes briefly locking have caused race or gang-based riots. Masks may be worn, but a more seductive target for a takedown has not existed since baggy shorts. An expansive list for creative acts of teen age rebellion and chest-beating displays of victorious invulnerability stands ready for revelation. Just ring the school bell.
Anyone believing school kids will not make a mockery of rules or break them at such frequency as to stretch staff’s ability to count needs a remedial lesson in the real world. In the Age of Covid-19, any annoying or obnoxious act now has the immediacy of a medical emergency.
We know healthy children can deal better with Covid-19 than adults, but what we do not know is the extent to which the virus will infect, and to what degree, a school’s student population and the impact on adults in the building. Children over ten are more susceptible, and the effects of the virus can differ from child to child. We know children can suffer multi system inflammatory syndrome. We know some have died or suffered permanent damage to heart, lungs, and brain from having suffered through it. Students also have pre-existing health conditions, such as asthma, heart, and weight issues.
It is bad enough no one knows what will happen when schools open, whether to 100% capacity or even 50%, given the current severity of the pandemic. Without implementing strict CDC guidelines and in the absence of a hands-on federal government, our national leadership has gone AWOL. Inadequate resources, political decisions over safety, ignoring the warnings and rejecting the protocols that minimize contraction will leave the rest of us with chewed finger nails, and knuckles whiter than a polar bear for what each day may bring.
At some point, America will bring itself to account for what may develop this fall. TGBL knows full well the need for parents to return to work. The unwritten number one job of modern school is babysitting ever since two-income, career-driven households became the norm. Kids do have to return to school. We agree with the American Pediatric Association in principle. Lost learning and socialization has already taken a toll on our youngest Americans. The basic necessities of life – the ground floor of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs—food, shelter, clothing ---cannot be sustained when the hunter-gatherers do not leave the cave. Proceed with caution: Any opening must be measured and circumspect, meeting steppingstones of safety and CDC guidelines with utmost diligence. Someone described the awakening of states and their localities being on a dimmer rather than a switch. We’ll stick with that metaphor, and put to the country that our hand must turn it brighter only after the previous click sheds more light on the situation. Open when ready, stay shut if not, incremental steps as warranted.
For schools that open with social distancing and much smaller classes, an interesting pedagogical experiment will be taking place. For some 30 years, schools have been operating on the premise that collaborative or group work is the only way effective learning happens. This model is perfect for neutralizing absurdly large classes by trading the teacher-centric model to a student centric one, with a few kids gathered around a project or task and working together. It has kept college professors very busy with studies, papers, and advice to K-12 educators on grouping techniques, characteristics, etc. It has also been used as a ruse to weaken the practice and art of teaching, and a way to diminish the role of the adult in the room. For years, a growing movement says teachers are less important, less needed than in bygone times, especially with the advent of technology. Grouping is not only about pedagogy; it’s also politics and a cottage industry dipping into the cookie jar.
Given social distancing, minimal sharing of objects, and small classes, actual learning should be quite poor since medical safety steps will militate against current, decades-long practice of groupwork methodology. What if students’ learning under Covid-19 rules equals success in the collaborative classroom, or exceeds previous learning measures? Could it be group learning and collaborative work are exaggerated, even rendered meaningless? TGBL believes learning by committee is a valid tool, but the coming year’s circumstances may show it has been overused, overdone, overplayed.
The lesson drawn would be the group work models are less important, even less effective, than class size and instructor-centered instruction. And no one wants to cede that turf back to teachers. Group work has its place, but it may prove not to be at the head of the class. Of course, nothing will be normal under the circumstances amid this crisis, but in those places where protocols are in place and education is working, the way we teach kids could undergo a sea change long after the virus has been put in its place.
Along with scientists, pediatricians, parents, educators, and government officials anxiously awaiting to see what transpires, college professors, educational consultants, and all who make their living by instructing schools on collaborative group learning, will be joining the nail-biting, white-knuckle club with the rest of us.
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