M
y mother has always told me
I’m allowed to be an English
major, but I’m not allowed to
become a teacher. As a senior studying cre-
ative writing and literature, I haven’t strayed
far from the world I grew up in — one where
education was a daily topic of discussion.
My mother is a public high school English
teacher whose biggest project is a class called
College Writing, which she created over a
ten-year span with peers and mentors. I grew
up fully immersed in her academic career. I
graded her students’ quizzes at swim meets,
sprawled on the concrete and wrapped in
the thick chlorinated air, oblivious to the ex-
citement around me. (I later found out they
were Scantrons and that I was a gullible, ea-
ger twelve-year-old). I rode in the passenger
seat while my older brother drove to an after
school test, quizzing him on research acro-
nyms and grammar intricacies. I took College
Writing my junior year of high school, finally
writing poetry and digital stories like the “big
kids” I’d watched growing up — though after
a year in my mother’s classroom for fresh-
man year English, we decided another teach-
er might be best for me.
After I finished College Writing, my moth-
er would tape notes to her students’ portfo-
lios strewn around our kitchen counter. Not
sure about this one. Thoughts? We’d typical-
ly differ half a letter grade, with an A- from
her and a B+ from me. During my first few
years of college, I brought home textbooks
littered with sticky notes, emailed her essay
drafts hours before they were due and called
at odd hours when I couldn’t remember spe-
cific words.
I grew up listening, and then participat-
ing, in discussions of curriculum, standard-
ized testing, racism and discrimination,
keeping digital projects relevant and even-
tually remote teaching frustrations, among
many others.
But I grew up into a world that replaced
those conversations with ones of worry for
everyone’s safety, from school shootings to a
pandemic, into a world that let outside prob-
lems fester and swell and force their way into
brick-walled classrooms, trapped with no
place to go. And our educators bear the brunt
of it.
O
f course, safety and education
have always been complemen-
tary. Educators are responsible
for a group of human beings, after all — a
duty that comes with inherent uncertain-
ties. American teachers, in particular, ac-
cept daunting truths that may appear foreign
to other professions, such as the reality of
school shootings and their role as protectors.
But 2020 brings new challenges: Teacher
safety is not only jeopardized by a small pos-
sibility of unpredictable danger, but instead
by the very unknowns schools are swinging
open their doors to.
Six months after COVID-19 was first re-
ported in the United States, I watch on Face-
book as my former math teacher posts photos
of the plexiglass shield her husband con-
structed for her desk. In some classrooms,
the desks are as little as 23 inches apart.
Across the country, teachers with serious
pre-existing conditions are writing wills and
calculating loss of income if they choose not
to go back. And just like that, with schools
reopening, we’ve successfully crammed an-
other problem into a classroom that didn’t
ask for it.
“I’m not asking for a zero risk. I know
there’s risk in my job,” my mother said in a
phone interview that was as formal as you
can get with a parent. “There’s risk in my job
every day with school shooters. But I’m ask-
ing to be treated respectfully and humanely.”
Respectfully and humanely by whom? By
administrations, who are tasked with open-
ing schools at the objection of their teachers.
By parents, who only want their kids back
in school. And by college students, some of
whom still spend their free time attending
bars and parties.
Kentaro Toyama, a professor in the School
of Information, feels the same as it applies to
in-person classes on college campuses. “I feel
reasonably confident as long as I take mod-
erate measures in terms of social distanc-
ing and wearing masks and the students do
too,” Toyama said. “But I’m also completely
sympathetic with many of my colleagues
who are either older or have various health
conditions for whom this is potentially life
or death — you meet with the wrong student
for just a little bit too long and it could mean
coronavirus.”
Dennis Mihalsky is a high school English,
Journalism, and Speech and Debate teacher
at the City College Academy of the Arts in
New York City, who had a different opinion
on meeting students face-to-face. “For my
own boundaries, I am pretty nervous and
hesitant,” he said. “I’m going to go in (to
school) but I will be very cautious of every-
thing that I do, follow as many of the proce-
dures as possible and get my students to as
well.”
My mother, who now hates the word “fea-
sible”, mentions that her school has tossed
the Center for Disease Control and Preven-
tion’s guidelines in favor of what they con-
sider to be practical or possible — meaning
instead of desks six feet apart, it’s now “as far
apart as feasible.”
“I’m torn. I don’t want to get sick,” my
mother says. “I certainly don’t want to have
long term consequences. But I also feel like
we need to do our best to try to open schools.
And if it doesn’t work, then we at least tried.”
I
would like to believe that universi-
ties, and especially public universi-
ties, would be leaders in showing
what well-run, enlightened leadership would
do in a crisis situation,” Toyama said.
We call ourselves the Leaders and Best,
yet hundreds of faculty remain suspended
in conflict with the University. Toyama ex-
plained that the University left many deci-
sions regarding COVID-19 and reopening up
to individual units, meaning departments,
programs or other clusters of faculty. Some
units embraced the challenge of online learn-
ing, while others soldiered on with in-person
teaching. Toyama explained that the instruc-
tions for his department were unclear, but
that the deans went instructor to instructor,
asking what each was willing to do to make a
remote education possible. Allowing individ-
ual units to make decisions for themselves al-
lows for flexibility, but also exposes employ-
ees with less agency within the University.
“There are units on campus where, for ex-
ample, all of the tenure track faculty declined
to teach in person,” Toyama said. “So (now)
the lecturers are being required to teach in-
person classes, but they have much less oc-
cupational stability than tenure track profes-
sors, and that seems grossly unfair.”
Just one unit — be it an academic depart-
ment, class, lab, or faculty group — affects
many different populations of Ann Arbor,
pressuring people into unjust situations that
others can opt out of. “We’re a large commu-
nity,” Toyama said, speaking on U-M faculty.
“We have not seen evidence (for) the people
who are on the front lines that the leadership
has their back.”
In the past few months, Toyama watched
his colleagues, staff and peers who ensure
the University functions smoothly be pres-
sured into in-person work. He began orga-
nizing protests and encouraging faculty to
voice their concerns so the administration
could make decisions with input from its
constituents.
“In my five years in faculty governance, I
haven’t yet seen the administration give an
inch on key issues, though they are very good
at providing the impression that they care
about our opinions,” Toyama said. “I don’t
think this is governance, this is dictatorship.
And, if that seems a little bit alarmist, it’s be-
cause I really believe we are in a moment in
which we have to do something a little bit
more than make polite requests.”
U-M is not alone in turning deaf ears to
its employees. By April 28, 68 New York City
teachers and staff members had died of CO-
VID-19, which can be attributed as a direct
result of schools remaining open longer than
the faculty wanted. “We sort of lost our trust,
almost, in the school district, because they
just didn’t act fast enough,” Mihalsky said.
“But the union really went to bat for us.”
In addition to teaching, Mihalsky is a
chapter leader in the United Federation of
Teachers, where he “protects and defends”
the fifty educators in his chapter from ac-
tion taken without teachers’ input. The UFT
helped close schools in March, then found
itself in uncharted territory as it turned to
face the new school year. “The UFT was very
clear with the city’s administration and the
mayor that we need to start planning for next
year now, and not wait until the last minute.
Of course, they didn’t. They didn’t listen to
that,” Mihalsky said.
And this past week Mihalsky was prepar-
ing his chapter for a strike ahead of NYC
schools’ reopening on September 10, but
was told at the last minute that the Union
had reached a deal with the Department of
Education and the De Blasio administration.
They never voted to begin the strike, but
their uneasiness still lingers.
The plan pushes the school year back
by two weeks, meaning students will begin
September 21, buying the districts time to
acquire all the necessary PPE, place social
distancing stickers on the floors, check venti-
lations systems and plan for any other poten-
tial necessity. If any of the requirements are
not met, the school is supposed to shut down.
Mihalsky called the deal unrealistic.
“Teachers are intimidated by administra-
tion,” he said. “They don’t want to say any-
thing.”
Beyond that, he finds it problematic that
schools could be open and functional one day,
then completely shut down the next. “What
are the parents supposed to do? They didn’t
plan for their kid to be at home the next day.
It’s messy.”
He was hoping for a fully remote year, but
like many others, spent his summer prepar-
ing for any possible contingency. What the
general institution overlooks, individuals like
Toyama and Mihalsky must provide for their
students, their parents and the educational
system at large.
M
ihalsky is in his fourth year of
teaching, my mother in her
25th. They’re typically fixated
on college prep, students’ mental and emo-
tional health, school shooter drills, standard-
ized testing or any number of things. Their
newest responsibility will be to police how
their students wear masks and if they social
distance in the classroom.
“I never know where to put my focus.
Am I there mostly to help my kids be stable,
happy human beings and if I can teach them
to read and write as well, that’s great?” my
mother said. “Or am I mostly there to make
sure we have well informed citizens who can
read critically, think clearly, write and com-
municate clearly, understand what is fake
news versus real news?”
With the pandemic, these concerns in-
crease tenfold. The beginning of September
brings an increasingly confusing and compli-
cated world. We’re asking our educators to
assume roles as unscathed physical protec-
tors — a role they never asked for.
“We don’t need to be called heroes. We
don’t need to be called any of that,” Mihal-
sky said. What they do need is for society to
recognize their humanity and adequately ad-
dress their needs through systemic and soci-
etal support, funding and respect.
“Give us the resources and the opportuni-
ty to do our jobs, and (we’ll) do our jobs well,”
Mihalsky said. “Teachers are sort of patted
on the back and told, ‘You’re a hero, look at
you, you can do this and not get paid a lot. But
that’s just not enough to get things to work.”
When we label someone a hero and put
them on that pedestal, we effectively take
away any responsibility we feel for their
safety. We don’t have to think critically about
them as people and their needs because
they’re categorized as superhuman. And if
they die, or they’re hurt, it’s viewed as less
tragic — it was for a noble cause. This pseu-
do-martyrism makes it easier for us to accept
their fate rather than show enough gratitude
to implement a system that actually protects
them.
The COVID-19 pandemic has put the
world on hold, or at least stalled its momen-
tum. We inch along, one day at a time, do-
ing our best to carry on as normal. We bake
bread and watch Tiger King, play Animal
Crossing, turn to the streets to protest for
Black lives and turn inward when the virus
rages on. But at some point, we’ll be thrust
back into motion again, and the students in
today’s classrooms will be moving forward
into the next part of their lives.
So how will they have spent this historic
year? It’s impractical to think everything
we expect educators to impart and students
to absorb can fit into one classroom or year,
even without a pandemic. And it becomes
virtually impossible to do these things with-
out the support of education’s institutions.
“It can be challenging to feel like you’re
doing a good job,” my mother told me over
the phone. We began the interview while she
drove home from an errand, and I could tell
she’d made it home and curled up in the driv-
er’s seat, too deep in thought about her life’s
work to walk into the house.
I haven’t been in her classroom for a few
years now, but at one point it was the back-
drop of my life. The east wall is lined with
pennants from universities her students have
gone on to, some as a direct result of her help.
Her passion for education is so strong it’s
spilled over into my life, too. I’ve watched her
change the way my friends and peers write,
and subsequently think about the world, how
they process information and define them-
selves on paper. By some people’s standards,
she’d be considered a hero. She’s one of mine.
But this distinction does not absolve us of
the responsibilities we carry for the educa-
tors we’ve been privileged to have in our life-
times.
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
14 — Wednesday, September 9, 2020
statement
Back to School:
How we’re
failing those
who support us
BY ANNE KLUSENDORF, STATEMENT CORRESPONDENT
ILLUSTRATION BY EILEEN KELLY