Dispatches from the present
As I walk into my small six-by-six-foot office tucked behind my kitchen, I look out the window and breathe a long sigh. Of relief? Relief that after a tumultuous two months, a deal has been ratified between the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and Chicago Public Schools (CPS); schools will reopen for in-person learning once more. Of dread? Dread that it will be unsafe, that the burden of trying to teach both those in front of me and those at home will eliminate all the gains I have accumulated inch by inch this year.
On January 4th, the first wave of teachers (pre-K educators and those in special-education cluster programs) were to report in person; the rest would follow by the end of the month. In that first wave many came, but almost half didn’t. Some teachers taught outside in frigid temperatures, others from home until they were locked out of their Google accounts. Our first school-based union meeting in January was tense. Most of us had not yet been required to make the choice: report to an unsafe environment or lose access to your students and your pay. This might seem dramatic, but at the end of that first full week in January, our school’s zip code (60632) reported a 16 percent positivity rate and 364 new COVID cases. The citywide positivity rate was almost half that, at 8.5 percent. The struggle between opposing feelings was strong in this first meeting: “I am young, I am healthy, I want to go in” was announced just as emphatically as “I am terrified. If my husband gets this, it could kill him.”
I was torn. I did not feel entirely unsafe returning to work as many of my colleagues did, but I felt no urgency from the parents and families in our school community. To CPS, it became a point of equity. “Remote learning works for some families; but it isn’t working for … Black & Latinx children,” CPS CEO Janice Jackson said. I couldn’t help cock my head in confusion. I reached out to coworkers, asking, “How many students do you have coming back?” In my class of 26 students, all but one identify as Black or Latinx, and by late January, only two had opted to return. Our school enrolls just shy of 750 students, and around fifty will be returning. But was a lack of urgency a reason to refuse to work in person? To fight CPS on their reopening plan?
If remote learning wasn’t working for my Black and Latinx students, I wasn’t sure how being in-person with two students while simultaneously teaching 24 at home would improve matters. As I fielded questions from parents those weeks, many were surprised: “My kid is just going to be on their Chromebook at school? I’ll just keep them home.” Students who come expecting the school days of memory are in for a shock. There will be few other students, no talking at lunch, little movement beyond the scope of their carefully marked spaces. Instruction will look exactly the same; there are no extra hours in the day for me to squeeze in more personal learning, especially not when I am still playing part-teacher, part-truancy officer on my own screen. I can’t deny there are benefits, however. In our eerily quiet classroom, I will not compete with the television, with the phone or tablet they think is tucked discreetly out of sight. Their siblings will not come bounding in, pulling them from their reading.
We held union meetings on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. We cried, we plotted, we hypothesized, we disagreed. On January 24th it became official: we would refuse to report in person unless a deal was made. There were concerns, of course: What about support staff who did not have the same protections we did? Were we putting them at risk so that we could work safely from home? The answer was yes. But I justified it. This would not be a long-term action, I said. And I wasn’t wrong. The union fought for positive changes for everyone’s safety: expanded testing for all staff, more air filters for classrooms, accommodations for employees with health concerns and, of course, vaccines. But as our return date drew nearer, I couldn’t help but feel dread. Would my students be disappointed I wasn’t there? Would the staff members covering for me be safe? When CPS called for all parents to keep their children home since no deal had been made, I sighed in relief.
Somehow, a deal was reached without a strike. People ask me how I feel. Relief. Every day that first week of February, one of my returning students sent me a chat: “What do I need to bring?” “Will there be lunch for me?” “Can I show you my backpack? I made it myself.” Behind his words was a longing to return. I reminded him, “Please check the news, we might not be back yet.” Dread. Will I be able to manage my newly split attention? Will my remote students be drowned out by the needs of those in front of me? Will I lose more of them? Selfishly, I refresh website after website looking for vaccine appointments that have been promised but have yet to materialize. Colleagues who have received their first dose tell tales of setting alarms for the middle of the night to check for appointments. I register at Walgreens, no updates. I register at Jewel, no updates. I register with the county, no updates. As our new return date looms closer and closer, the dread grows.
This is the story of how my feelings have sat so uncomfortably in opposition to each other these past few months. Except that’s not entirely truthful. You see, I skipped an important part of my teaching day earlier. Every day, I wake up at 6:30 a.m. I get myself ready for the day, grab my son from his crib, help him get dressed and brush his teeth. We make silly faces over breakfast, and I help him begin the long ritual of putting on his boots, then his coat, and finally his backpack. I give him a kiss goodbye, then I walk into my small six-by-six-foot office tucked neatly behind my kitchen to start my day, while my husband drives my son to daycare. I justify sending my child to school because it would be near-impossible to do my job with him home. I justify sending him because my husband and I both have the privilege of working remotely, so surely he is low-risk for spreading the disease to others. As I look out the window, I sigh. Relief? I am able to work and to give my very best to the students in front of me each day only because my child is at school. Guilt? Because I know that my students’ parents have lived since September without the same opportunity.
Image credit: George Mycyk, NBC Chicago