As teachers push back against going live in areas like Chicago, I’d like to try to put a face to these protests. Who are these teachers?

She may be just out of school, nearing retirement or anywhere in-between. In elementary school, the odds are almost 9 out of 10 that she’s female. In middle school and high school, she’s probably also female, but she’s sharing the hallways with many more men. She’s likely to be much less worried about COVID if she’s younger and on her own, but starting teachers sometimes live with their extended family. That starting salary in many locations comes in somewhere in the mid-thirties and Montana’s average starting salary is only $30,036. (Teacher Salaries in America – Niche Blog). Since it’s an average, that means lots of people are starting below $30,000.

The kids who are coughing openly and furiously are not in the classroom this year, But kids are always sick. Let me repeat this: Kids are always sick. And some kids’ noses run like faulty faucets. They leak perpetually. Those kids may not be home.

“It’s just ‘Benjamin,'” mom will say, and the teachers know she’s right.

The rooms are small, even with reduced class sizes. The masks don’t always work well. Watch a mom with little masked kids in the grocery store if you have doubts. And Benjamin cannot deal with his nose without removing his mask. Unless he just covers his mask in snot, which some kids will do, the same kids who cover their sleeves in snot.

Now, let’s say you are Benjamin’s teacher. If you are especially unlucky, Benjamin had a fever last week. Was it caught on the first day? The second day? Maybe Benjamin’s not the talkative or complaining type. I got insanely sick a couple of years ago, and I’m, pretty sure the source was a nonverbal specIal education student I helped one morning. I didn’t catch the problem until he took my hand on the way to the bathroom before lunch. That hand was HOT.

Now let’s say you are that older teacher or young teacher living in a multigenerational home. You wake up with a slight sore throat. A very slight sore throat. You know your school is short of subs, like so many other schools. They are using paraprofessionals to cover classes — not legal, but they have to put some adult into those rooms — because they have no one else to cover classes. Unfortunately two of the school’s paraprofessionals just quit. There’s no one to cover for you. And you are probably fine.

Will you go into school? Maybe you will. Let’s say you are older and suffer from acid reflux, which causes occasional mild sore throats. You may say, “I’m sure it’s just reflux.” Because it’s really too damn scary to consider the alternative.

Except you are scared. You get to school and Benjamin’s absent. Now you are walking on psychic eggshells. He didn’t look right yesterday — maybe a little too flushed. Was he unusually quiet?

“He’s got a fever,” his mom says. But no one has tested him. The lines are crazy long still in a few places, and testing is a nuisance regardless. He is not coughing and the doctor told mom testing could wait since he does not yet seem that sick. What now? You are going to have to wait to find out what is happening. Should you go home?

That’s Wednesday. What about Thursday and Friday? And the next week? Unless, of course, Benjamin sends his family and maybe his whole class into quarantine. Speaking of scary…

Eduhonesty: Vaccinate the teachers. Those states who have not prioritized teachers have their heads so far down into the sand they have clearly buried their brains. But, in the meantime, I’d like to ask all the parents and noneducators, the people who have never worked in schools, to visualize those classrooms. Remember what those rooms were like. Remember the smells? Those rooms where the smells lingered and lingered for hour after hour? Yes, districts have been working to improve air circulation. But in older buildings, that task is monstrously huge and expensive. Do you trust those efforts? Understandably, many teachers do not. Imagine daily life in those rooms in the winter of 2021.

Kids are always sick in elementary school, and often sick for most or all of the winter in middle school. High schools are a little better; diseases don’t work through high school classrooms with the same ferocity. Still, I guarantee some of our “Felicias” and “Benjamins” are perfectly capable of ignoring a low-grade fever to go to school so they can spend the day near their latest romantic interest.

It’s not fair to ask teachers to fall on their swords — especially since we are now getting close to vaccinating the population. Frantic openings and re-openings won’t fix our COVID education gaps, but they may endanger teachers, grandmas, grandpas and others.

For what real gain? To what end? The cost-benefit scenario in this picture should be looked at as a choice between a few extra months of in-person learning in exchange for potentially thousands of painfully shortened lives.

We are just past the crest of another wave in which the U.S. is making one of the poorest showings in the world: 4% of the world’s population, 25.5% of its total cases, and 20% of total deaths. I ran the numbers again this morning. Total U.S. dead: 417,654 according to the CDC.

Sometimes you just have to let a few math facts and new vocabulary words go.