Equity
Students vs Teachers: With COVID, who wins?
When deciding the best education plan during COVID-19, who do we prioritize?
Education is the passport to the future, for tomorrow belongs to those who prepare for it today.
— Malcolm X
Strong school systems provide the means for underprivileged kids to “make it out” and live a better life. A proper education provides an equal playing ground for all students, despite non-academic privileges.The American Dream is reliant on this principle. For kids in the inner cities of Chicago or Baltimore, schools act as a place to learn, an area of shelter, and a door to prosperity. Unfortunately, these ideal benefits are not always available. Kids in poor areas have to deal with countless variables that hinder their future, especially underfunding. These problems were entrenched prior to COVID-19. But as COVID-19 hit the Unites States of America, public schools were hit even harder. In precautionary acts, all schooling switched over to online. The protection and social aspects of academic settings were stripped from these kids’ lives and replaced with Zoom meetings and isolation.
For most of us, myself included, the transition was saddening, a little hard, but not too much to handle. Sure, it was boring not seeing our friends and it was hard staying motivated to be on top of our assignments, but we had stable living conditions and communicative outreach to our schools to make accommodations. Some of us even benefited from the switch, preferring the free time and lack of distractions. The success found in our situations cannot be credited to just our administration, but more importantly, our stable home environments and electronic literacy. Those who made the transition easy, did not rely on school the same way those who found it hard do.
Especially, this struggle was present for underprivileged kids in poor school districts. In Alec MacGillis’ “The Students Left Behind by Remote Learning”, we follow Shemar, a kid from Baltimore who relied off the school system, and his journey through navigating online school. Shemar is a strong student, though he struggled at times to pay attention or do his homework. With in person guidance from teachers or mentors, he excelled. Shemar, like many underprivileged kids, struggles with some at home issues. His mother is in and out of addiction, and his grandmother is blind. They all live together in a dilapidated home, often without electricity. As you can expect, Shemar did not transition smoothly to online school. Without proper supervision at home, it was rare to see him in class or to receive his homework. The school tried contacting him. A concerned teacher even checked in on him. They provided Shemar and other kids in similar situations with new computers.
All this effort did not work as hoped. Shemar was seen more often but the difficulty of navigating a new computer and new school system as an elementary student seemed too much. Shemar didn't fail online school because he didn’t have a nice enough computer. He didn’t fail online school because he didn’t have the proper materials. While these struggles were true and prevalent, Shemar failed online school because school for Shemar was more than just a place to answer math questions. School was a constant variable in his life. School gave him the interaction with his friends and mentorship with his teachers that he needed. While the education aspect of school was replaced, what was really important could not be replicated.
There are many kids like Shemar; he is just one of the stories that show the weaknesses of online school. The underprivileged kids to whom school means the most, are the kids who lose the most in the end.
Knowing the detrimental affects of online school, many states, like Texas, planned on sending everyone back to school in person. They recognized the greater impact of removing kids from academic environments.
“When we have this discussion about sending kids back to school, we have to have it in the context of the massive individual and societal costs of keeping kids at home”
— Joseph Allen, director of the Healthy Buildings program at Harvard’s school of public health
In Lauren Hilgers’ article “Teachers in Texas Are Fighting for Their Lives”, we learn about the struggles of making a school plan. Teachers who had dedicated years of their lives to the public school system spoke out. Why does the governor get to decide whose lives are put at risk? Many teachers went on strike. These strike groups were joined in thousands. Texas based groups like “Teachers Against Dying” took to the scene. Protests were hosted all over cities in Texas like Galveston and Brownsville. One teacher threw on his grim reaper Halloween costume and held a sign that read “I’m ready for schools to reopen. Are you?” Some teachers got fired for speaking out against public schools and when Greg Abbot, the governor of Texas, threatened to restrict funding to schools who chose to go in person, many teachers who were loyal to their schools felt stuck.
It doesn’t help that COVID-19 is running rampant through the United States and is a legitimate health concern for many high risk faculty. Why should teachers be mandated to put their lives at risk? They signed up to teach and provide help to kids, not to risk their health and possibly expose their families and loved ones to the virus. We can’t seriously expect elementary students to keep masks on at all times and socially distance. A weak plan to go back combined with relentless protest pushed Abbot to give schools a three-week grace period. This grace period has passed. As it passed, Abbot extended the period. Teachers still do not feel safe crammed in a stuffy room with dozens of kids.
There is a pattern of raised expectations and requirements that the role of teaching should fill. This is contrasted with underfunding and the poor treatment teachers get when speaking out. COVID-19 seems to be the last straw. When you risk someone’s health, they are compelled to say something. This is snowballing into a greater issue: how we value teachers but keep overlooking their issues. We use teachers as punching bags of sorts, expecting them to spend all their time helping children with at home issues and go overtime to tutor struggling kids. Their paychecks do not account for their sacrifices. Dan Hochman, founder of Teacher For Safe Opening, shows this unfair standard when he says, “We shouldn’t fix the virus; we should make teachers be willing to die.”
In a way, the underprivileged kids impacted by online school and the overworked teacher impacted by in person school are two sides of the same coin. They both represent groups that society and politicians seem to overlook. We keep prioritizing greater political or social agendas over these marginalized peoples. Poor kids will be left behind if they can’t go to school and high-risk teachers will be forced to chose between their job and their life if kids can go to school. The real problem roots in years of ignoring their issues. If we had prioritized funding schools, teachers would have received adequate paychecks for their work and if we had prioritized providing stable living conditions for underprivileged kids, these students would have been able to make the transition to online school. While the issue at hand seems to be one of COVID-19, it is really a greater systemic one. COVID has just revealed to us the consequences of our actions.
When assessing the future of students versus the health of teachers, we are faced with two questions: Who decides whether we go back to school? And who wins once the decision is made? To which the answers are aloof politicians and no one.
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