The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Educators face tough questions
Survey: 3 of 4 teachers say pandemic will permanently change public education
When schools reopen in the fall, classroom teachers want assurances both they and their students will be safe.
They want statewide protocols set when it comes to cleaning, social distancing and class sizes.
And they want to know not if — but when — they are forced again to pivot on a dime to distance learning that districts will be better prepared than they were in March when the COVID-19 pandemic forced schools to close.
“I think pretty much everyone knows we can’t bring it back 100 percent on day one without there being some difficulties to deal with,” said Jeff Leake, president of the Connecticut Education Association, the state’s largest teachers union. “Moving forward, schools are going to look a lot different.”
His organization and others have been polling members this spring on what the fall should look like.
Opinions vary, but safety rises to the top on each survey.
“In-person classes need to be very small,” said Chris Taylor, an 11th-grade English teacher at Bridgeport Military Academy. “We all need masks, sanitizing materials to wipe down computers and desks ... bathrooms need extra cleaning during the day. I don’t know how we will manage stairways and halls.”
Faith Sweeney, a literacy coach at Coleytown Elementary School in Westport, worries about having contact tracing in place to handle outbreaks.
“How will it look?” Sweeney said. “Will there be constant testing?”
Mike Wright, a fourth grade teacher at Hawley School in Norwalk pictures teachers looking like doctors and nurses wearing personal protective equipment and keeping their distance at the front of the classroom.
“Teaching is not just the curriculum, it’s more personal,” Wright said. It’s social and emotional moments that Wright worries a PPE will obstruct.
And Rashana J. Graham, a sixth-grade social studies and science teacher at Troup School in New Haven, worries what damage technology overload has done to students returning to the classroom.
“Even I am struggling with it at this point,” Graham said. “People need people. If we are to continue distance learning, there needs to be a definite expiration date.”
A seat at the table
Both the CEA and American Federation of Teachers-CT, the state’s other major teacher union, have seats on a education subcommittee of Gov. Ned Lamont’s Reopen Connecticut Task Force.
Leake said there appears to be consensus that a reopening framework needs to be consistent across the state — even as school districts have all been directed by the commissioner of education to form their own reopening committees.
“We don’t want 169 towns doing 169 different things,” Leake said.
Both the framework and logistics of the reopen plan, he added, have to be doable.
State guidelines for holding in-person summer school involve so many rules that some districts have decided to keep learning remote.
Still, Leake said the plan is to reopen schools in the fall, knowing that distance learning could be part of the equation.
“We hope distance learning isn’t the entire solution for 2020-21,” Leake said.
Nearly three out of four respondents to an April survey conducted jointly by the CEA and AFT-CT, however, predicted the pandemic will permanently change public education in Connecticut.
That survey focused on the struggles of distance learning and health concerns.
“It will be a challenge to make sure that the most vulnerable students and most vulnerable employees can still report to school with confidence in their health, and have a meaningful experience,” said Mary Yordon, a Norwalk French teacher and president of the Norwalk Federation of Teachers.
When they do, Yordon said, the first call to order should be to re-building the educational community.
New Normal
Taylor, from Bridgeport Military Academy, said she can’t see things getting fully back to normal until there is a COVID-19 vaccine or reliable case tracing.
A new CEA survey out this week asked 3,000 teachers about the fall. Nearly two-thirds of respondents were unsure their schools could even provide the basics, such as enough hand-washing stations for students and staff to reduce the spread of the virus.
Teachers worry about the practicality of social distancing measures, smaller classes and whether school hallways will go the supermarket route by designating one-way traffic.
Daniel Laguerre, a math teacher at Bullard Havens Technical High School in Bridgeport, said he worries how social distancing will impact classroom interactions and if some students will go missing for days due to COVID-19.
“I need to find a way ... synchronous or asynchronous, to be able to make up for the time loss,” Laguerre said.
Kristen Record, a Stratford physics teacher, said there are practical concerns, like how to utilize science labs.
At their core, science experiments are designed to have students work in groups. Record wonders if the new normal will force her to offer online simulated labs even when school is back in session to avoid sharing equipment.
“I think we all need to face the reality that at some point in fall we are going to be remote teaching,” Record said.
If so, she wants the state, not school districts, to make sure students — and teachers — have the technology and connectivity available to make it happen. What was free on a temporary basis this spring, she said, probably won’t remain free forever.
On the learning side, teachers wonder how to make up for learning lost and how to begin to help students cope with the social and emotional issues they will have when they return to the classroom.
Sweeney, of Westport, worries it will take more teachers and more resources than school budgets can handle, as many districts are cutting, not increasing, budgets.
Another survey, conducted last month by Educators For Excellence, a teacherled organization with a Connecticut chapter, found that when classes reopen schools many teachers want schools to think creatively about how to get students back on track. Some support grouping students by competency levels rather than grade level or perhaps even have teachers move with students to the next grade so there would be some semblance of consistency.
The 600 teachers answering the E4E survey also want smaller class sizes and for remediation to occur during the regular school day, supplemented by tutoring and after school programs to help students catch up. Only 22 percent advocate expanding the school day or year.
Graham, a E4E member, also hopes public schools take a page from the playbook local colleges and universities intend to follow this fall.
“Have students on campus with smaller classes until Thanksgiving, when they will close until the Spring semester,” Graham said. “If we implement something like that, we will be able to prepare students for virtual learning. We will also get the chance to build foundational relationships which are super important to the success of any classroom.”
lclambeck@ctpost.com; twitter/lclambeck