We desperately need to come up with a less incendiary set of responses to a perfectly natural fact: Schools provide childcare. Schools have been providing childcare forever. In the early 1960s, my mom worked as a surgical nurse with the Veteran’s Administration while I was in school. My aunt covered for brief periods before and after I made the three-block walk to Jennie Reed Elementary School.
Parents and employers work around their local school schedule. “Jenna” works nights as a hospital nurse. “Dan” gets the kids up and starts breakfast while Jenna drives home. He goes to work and she finishes getting the kids ready for school, staying up until the bus arrives. Then the kids go to school and Jenna goes to bed. My friend Jenna was chronically sleep deprived for a few years, until her youngest boy could manage on his own for a few hours in the afternoon.
I read a tweet that said we were endangering teachers so rich people did not have to pay for childcare. I’m sure that’s true in some cases. But it leaves out a much larger group of people – the working poor and the working just-getting-by. I worked part-time when my first child was a toddler – 30 hours, “Director of Corporate Communications” and a chance to write and regularly share time with geeky programmers and other fun adults. But I quit when my second child was born. I ran the childcare cost numbers, realized I would be working for fast-food wages at best, and decided to stay home. I remained the classic soccer mom until my youngest was in middle school, when I entered teaching.
Childcare – never cheap and sometimes nerve-wracking, especially right now.
Schools historically have provided a safe haven for children so that people can work. Parents rely on schools for this purpose, especially since few families can now survive comfortably on one income. Employers recognize this fact and often schedule around that window of working opportunity.
SO PLEASE LET’S STOP POINTING FINGERS AT EACH OTHER.
TEACHERS, THOSE PARENTS MAY RISK LOSING THEIR HOME AND LIVELIHOOD WITHOUT CHILDCARE. MAYBE THEY GENUINELY CANNOT AFFORD TO PAY FOR CARE– ESPECIALLY IF THEIR HOURS HAVE BEEN CUT BACK OR THOSE HOURS ARE ERRATIC.
PARENTS, PLEASE, PLEASE STOP BLAMING TEACHERS FOR YOUR PREDICAMENT. THEY DON’T WANT TO GO INTO THE 2020 SCHOOL BUILDING? GO ONLINE AND LOOK AT THE PICTURES OF THOSE ROWS IN THE ROOMS WHERE ALL THE FUN, FUZZY PLACES HAVE BEEN ELIMINATED DUE TO CDC GUIDELINES. THE SCHOOL YOU WANT IS NOT THE SCHOOL YOUR CHILDREN WILL GET — NOT THIS YEAR ANYWAY. YOUR CHILDREN WILL NOT BE CLUSTERING ON THE LITTLE RUG IN FRONT OF THE ROOM OR HUGGING IN THE HALLWAYS. PARENTS OF OLDER CHILDREN, GO BACK IN YOUR MEMORIES AND VISUALIZE THOSE HALLWAYS AND BATHROOMS — EIGHT PASSING PERIODS FILLED WITH A CRUSH OF BODIES EVERY SINGLE DAY. DO YOU REMEMBER BATHROOMS? DID YOU ALWAYS WAIT FOR THE SOAP DISPENSER? DID IT ALWAYS HAVE SOAP?
Please, let’s be kind to each other. Let’s understand that parents and teachers both have their backs up against the wall. Nothing good comes of pointing fingers at each other. In fact, this finger-pointing does genuine harm. The parent-teacher relationship ends up damaged, a relationship often pivotal to academic success. Teachers feel unsupported, while parents feel that teachers don’t understand the problems closed school buildings create – and the two groups waste their energies.
We should point our fingers at the government and other leaders who led us to this place, who underfunded schools for so long that those schools are difficult or impossible to ventilate and clean correctly. We should point our fingers at the decision makers who brought us to the point where we have over one-quarter of the world’s COVID-19 cases yet only 4% of the world’s population. All this scientific and technological know-how and the better part of a year to prepare and…. What did we get? A spectacular mess.
America’s teachers are not responsible for the mess. Parents obviously are not responsible either. To my readers who want to write an angry tweet, letter, blog post or meme: Who do you believe made the decisions that brought us here? If you are not sure, you might do your neighbors a favor by finding out and posting your findings on a local, neighborhood app. Point your angry tweets at the responsible parties.
Teachers and parents — we are the workers, cobbling together our children’s educations. As the school year begins to unfold, I hope we can take it easy on each other. The outside world seems to be doing a good enough job of making us miserable without any extra help.
Another use for neighborhood apps: Making childcare arrangements that work during uncertain times. Can you trade time? What can you trade in return for time? If the infrastructure is not holding up to demands, what can we build to replace it?