Well. Its Been A Week Back At School Teaching In Person, And I Figured Id Share Some Thoughts On The

well. it’s been a week back at school teaching in person, and i figured i’d share some thoughts on the subject. i’d like to start with a few things i’ve learned this past week.

1. your face can get sweaty in ways you never knew it could when you’re teaching with a mask on for 3 hours straight.

2. you don’t need to find time for a pee break during the day if you’re so dehydrated your head starts to hurt.

3. there is an exhaustion deeper than “first-week-back-at-school-teacher-tired,” and it’s “first-week-back-at-school-during-a-global-pandemic-teacher-tired.”

seriously, i’m more exhausted than i ever was while i was when i was interning during grad school. i come home and immediately want to collapse into bed. my eyes are bloodshot. i went to bed at 8:30 once this week, and i was still tired when i got up.

and i’m not the only one. it’s the same story with all of my fellow teachers. our conversations are consumed with nothing but covid talk- from our fears to the bone-deep exhaustion we’re all feeling. we aren’t taking care of ourselves enough. my group chat is full of pictures of what my teacher friends are drinking when they get home. the question of “i don’t know how long i can do this” is rapidly turning into the answer of “i CAN’T do this anymore” for a lot of my fellow teachers.

it’s been a week.

as if the physical aspect weren’t bad enough, it’s taking a huge toll on everyone’s mental health, too. more than one teacher i’ve talked to after going back has shared a story of sudden, intense chest pain, of the fear of a heart attack that turned out to be anxiety. i’ve noticed it in myself, too. my heart races more easily than it did before. i have trouble sleeping. i’ve scratched scabs into my scalp out of sheer nervous energy. but i’m in school, and i’m teaching, and i’m going to keep teaching. i love my job. i love my students.

but god, am i tired. it’s been a week, and i’m tired.

the worst part is reading some of the awful shit people are saying about teachers who don’t want to go back. that we should be grateful that we still have jobs, that we’re selfish for not wanting to take students back when their parents need to go to work, that someone will replace us in a heartbeat if we quit.

i’d like to pose two questions to these kinds of people. the first is, who do you want teaching your kids- me, who loved teaching enough to spend a year struggling through an unpaid internship while paying for night classes at grad school, who worked 9 and 10 and 11 hour days to figure out the best way to teach your child over zoom, or someone scooped up in a desperation to fill positions, whose idea of teaching is reading to your kids from a textbook?

the second is, what else do you want us to sacrifice? is it not enough that some of us spend our own money providing for students in need? is it not enough that some of us teach in buildings full of mold with textbooks that have been out of date for years? is it not enough that some of us have said that, if put in an active shooter situation, we would die to protect your children?

of course, i already know the answer to that second set of questions. it’s always been no. we learned that after sandy hook and parkland, when students’ and teachers’ demands for a safe learning environment were met with hostility and threats. we learned that after continuous budget cuts to public education have left teachers and students in school buildings that should be condemned. we learned that when parents took their children on trips to beaches and brought a deadly virus back with them, only to send them to school immediately after.

and so i am back at school, and i am tired.

and it’s not as if i don’t want my kids back in school with me. remote teaching felt like it was draining the soul out of my classes. but i want my students to be safe. and i want myself to be safe. and yet people are telling teachers that that is too much to ask. we are told to suck it up and get back into our classrooms. some of us do. but i wonder how long it’s going to be before we stop coming.

in some ways i really shouldn’t be surprised. it’s just another form of the same question we get asked every time something terrible happens in a school: would you die for our children?

my answer to that isn’t going to change. yes, i would die for your children. yes, i would put myself between your children and an intruder. yes, i will keep teaching your children through this pandemic, which half of you don’t even seem to be taking seriously. yes, i will keep coming in to school, even as the number of cases and deaths rises every day.

yes, i would die for your children. but i wish you would stop fucking asking me to.