‘A lot of excitement out there’

Educator applauds new vaccine eligibility for teachers

NEW HAVEN — Marianne Maloney does not have second thoughts about working past retirement age.

Maloney, 72, is a math teacher at New Haven Academy and chief steward of the city’s teachers union. When people in Connecticut over the age of 65 became eligible for COVID-19 vaccination appointments on Feb. 11, she jumped at the opportunity and called the Fair Haven clinic on the day it opened and received the first of her two shots.

“They were busy but they were very efficient about it. It was a pleasure,” she said.

On Monday, Gov. Ned Lamont announced a change in the eligibility for vaccination appointments. On March 1, residents as young as 55 will be eligible for vaccination as well as all teachers and child care providers.

Maloney believes that the decision to include teachers is a positive one for the benefits it will have for both teachers and students.

“I have heard a lot of excitement from our field of teachers — the rank and file — about, ‘How do I do this? When will it happen and how will it work?’ There’s a lot of excitement out there,” she said.

Maloney, who sits on the state’s American Federation of Teachers PreK-12 council, was privy to the state union’s advocacy to have teachers made eligible for vaccinations without using age as a requirement.

“Our first duty is to keep those kids safe, and every teacher is exposed to every single student. We can pod the kids and put them in cohorts, but the teachers move everywhere,” she said. “We feel very strongly this is a really good strategy for keeping our kids safe, but the secondary idea is if part of our class quarantines it’s challenging for the students, but if the teacher quarantines the entire class suffers.”

Maloney said the teaching profession also is generally an older field, with many teachers deferring retirement for years. She said the virus has caused many older teachers to consider whether their love of teaching is worth risking their lives.

“We don’t want to retire, we want to be with the kids and serving. If we have to risk our lives to do that, it’s going to be a harder decision, especially because many of us have family

responsibilities as well,” she said.

Vaccinating teachers, she said, can help to assuage those fears and keep a strong teacher corps in Connecticut schools, where students can have physical interaction in school buildings. In many districts in the state where students have returned to schools, some have found their mode of instruction changing frequently — entire schools and classes have transitioned from in-person to remote instruction abruptly because of positive cases or teachers in quarantine after potential exposures.

In the city of New Haven, only students up to fifth grade have had the option to be in their schools since Jan. 19, although district leadership has identified March 4 as the date for students from sixth through eighth grades to return to their buildings. For a high school teacher like Maloney, there is not a known return date, but she believes it would be to the advantage of her students for them to return.

“An essential piece of what we do, much more so in a literature class or science or history than in math, but I need to hear what they’re thinking,” she said.

Maloney said that she has experience knowing whether students grasp the material just from looking at their eyes — something that can get lost in virtual instruction.

Contributed photo / Marianne Maloney.