Teaching During a Global Pandemic

Over the past year, teachers have been jerked around all across this country. When considering Cincinnati specifically, teaching here has been like riding the now demolished Son of Beast roller coaster at Kings Island: I think I have whiplash. Literally one year to the day since the pandemic began in our country, the CPS school board has voted 4-3 to return to in-person learning 5 days a week. I’ve said it from the start of this pandemic, I’ll do whatever is reasonably asked of me when it comes to my job. Personally, I’m young, healthy and now I am fully vaccinated. I entered this profession to make a difference on young people’s lives, while also having the expectations of a livable wage and being treated like a professional. But being a passionate advocate of worker’s rights, I’d like to expand upon the disrespect that has occurred towards teachers and our profession recently.

At the beginning of the pandemic when schools were shut down entirely, the masses heaped praise upon praise on teachers for how vital our K-12 education system is for parents and our society as a whole. It was a pleasant surprise seeing many people give kudos to teachers and acknowledge how challenging molding young minds can be. Fast forward to February and March of 2021 and we are back to bashing teachers, the unions that represent them and the profession as a whole. On March 10th, I tuned into 700 WLW to listen to Scott Sloan interview my friend and union president, Julie Sellers. As I’m sure you can imagine, the time I spend on 700 WLW is few and far between. The only time I ever listen to that god forsaken radio station is when I am listening to UC or Bengals games. But since Julie is someone who I highly respect and consider a friend, I tuned in with an open mind. Sloan railed against teacher unions and implied there is some sort of hidden agenda as to why CPS was not holding 5 day in-person instruction. But the only “hidden agenda” teacher unions have had during this global pandemic is ensuring their dues paying members are safe and healthy.

Another point that seems to be lost on Sloan and the conservative masses is that teacher unions aren’t the ones who made these decisions. The elected school board members are the ones who ultimately implemented remote learning, then hybrid learning and now 5 day in-person learning for the 4th quarter. The union has simply been advocating for their member’s health and safety against a giant bureaucracy; but the decisions about how often in-person learning occurs has always been decided by school board members. Personally, I believe teacher unions have done exactly what they were designed to do: advocate for their members during a time of chaos and uncertainty. It’s easy to play armchair quarterback and speculate what teachers should and shouldn’t be doing during an unprecedented pandemic. But just know being crammed in a room with 30 kids during a pandemic gives a lot of people pause, especially if they have pre-existing health conditions. Parents, teachers and stakeholders alike should be mad at people like Melanie “I am being bullied by my constituents” Bates for her entirely poor leadership abilities and lack of vision. I could rail on all sorts of people who contributed to this mess we are in, but just know teachers aren’t the ones making these half-baked plans. We have been teaching (translation: working) the entire school year and the students and teachers have been at the whim of an incredibly indecisive and dysfunctional school board. I don’t feel like I’ve been treated as a professional, but that’s par for the course in a profession that struggles to recruit and retain people to stay in the teaching field.

And I think that’s the point of contention for most teachers I know. Teaching is a profession that thrives on consistency, routines and relationships. Those three things have been thrown out the window here in Cincinnati and that’s why people have been so angry. The legendary Dan Hilvert, my favorite teacher I had in high school, always said “don’t straddle the fence, you’re bound to castrate yourself.” Nobody likes people who are wishy-washy and can’t make a decision. Flip flopping back and forth is not leadership and leadership seems to be seriously lacking on the school board, excluding one person who has had a clear vision since day one. In times of crisis, the cream rises to the top and we see who has the bonafides to lead and who doesn’t. It’s also funny that some of these school board members want to use the school board as a stepping stone to higher political office (ie city council). But based on the dumpster fire we’ve witnessed this past year, it seems pretty clear that it’s time to usher a few people’s political careers into the dust heap of history because they’ve proven to be completely unfit to lead.