Sickness unto death at school

We haven't protected teachers before. Why should they trust us now?

There are some things in my life that have been very hard to take. Knowing that my wife would be beaten, and that I could do nothing about it, was one of them.

She was a Chicago Public Schools speech pathologist in the Lakeview neighborhood when we first met. She worked in a classroom with a variety of special ed students with largely unrelated challenges, including some who were violent. The class had many more students than were legal in such classrooms at that time.

There was one boy who seemed to have no boundaries at all. He is so big, she told me. He wants to hurt me, and a couple of times, he has come for me, but I have run away, or one of the other teachers stopped him. I’ve told my boss, but things haven’t changed.

It’s only a matter of time, we agreed. Let’s tell the state of Illinois there are too many kids in this class, I suggested. We’ll call your steward. I brought up other solutions, like asking that the big boy be removed from her little corner of the system, since he had, unaccountably, an animus toward this gentle woman.

She said No, and begged me not to act on my own. She didn’t want to take a risk of losing her job, being transferred somewhere even worse. She also, unbelievably, didn’t want to endanger the ability of any child to get some kind of education. 

The situation was very real to me. I had known a teacher in Edgewater who had sent a note home with a child whose clothes and body hadn’t touched water in months. The child’s skin was crusty.

The mother had responded by confronting the teacher after school. The big, also little-washed woman didn’t like being told that she had to care for her child better, and threatened the teacher.

The teacher told her principal. He didn’t take the threat seriously.

A student should not be allowed to stink, he said. The child is being abused. He decided to respond by sending notes home warning of suspension and a report to the state Department of Children and Family Services, and have them signed by the teacher.

The mother responded by coming back to the school, picking up the teacher and hurling her down the stairs.

The woman was arrested. But it was too late for the teacher, who never climbed a school’s steps again. She had too many broken bones.

The charges were dropped. The victim was too banged up to go to court.

So I didn’t have a great deal of confidence that things would be better for my wife just because we were assured they would be. I didn’t believe the police officer assigned to the school would be able to protect her. He couldn’t be in the room all the time, and the boy wasn’t afraid of him.

This is what I do, my wife told me. I provide services to every student who needs them, no matter what.

I am a teacher, she said. I don’t get to choose whom I teach.

And so, of course, it happened. The boy beat her to the floor before he could be tackled.

It was painful and terrifying for her, and hard to swallow for me. 

She took some sick time, and the boy was finally sent elsewhere. And then, of course, she was transferred.

This is often the lot of public school teachers, in cities and towns and suburbs. They put up with almost everything the world dishes out.

Many of this nation’s violent offenders are youths. During the day, they are often the responsibility of somebody with a bachelor’s degree in liberal arts.  

Teachers are challenged far beyond what they signed up for. Often, the support we give them is less than adequate. 

 So we will now see a lot of teachers take early retirement. They will jump ship because they are being asked to trust politicians who have often not had their interests at heart when the decisions were comparatively easy.

They’re not easy now. 

Our leaders are planning to send our kids back to school, in the most dangerous environment imaginable. As of this moment, conservatives in Congress are unwilling to turn loose any of the money that would seem to be necessary to actually make it reasonably safe for the kids, as well as the teachers, the bus drivers and the maintenance crews who will serve them.

It’s not like most schools were palaces to start with. I’ve toured schools that have no grassed recreational facilities, and only small gyms inside. I’ve been to some where the students eat lunch in hallways. I’ve seen windows tumble out because paint to preserve the frames wasn’t in the budget. 

But in a few weeks, the kids will be on their way, ready or not. Because, hey, few kids seem to be significantly sickened by the virus that is ravaging the planet.

But we will lose kids. All of them aren’t immune.

And not just the kids. They may be fine — mostly — but they’ll be carriers. They’ll infect the teachers, who have no such youthful immunity.

There are very few school systems that have space to keep the students far enough from each other and from personnel so that they can safely distance. 

Some suburban schools will opt to teach some kids in the classrooms, and others remotely, at the option of parents. Some systems, like CPS, will have kids come two or three days per week, and learn remotely the rest of the week, in a staggered fashion, so the classrooms won’t be too full. 

It will not be an exact science. There will be gaps in safety almost as a matter of course. After all, the kids have to go to the washrooms. And eat.

Children are messy. And careless. They’re not little adults.

But there is probably no choice about bringing most children back to on-site education this fall. It’s going to have to happen.

Teachers will be waiting when they arrive.

There is probably no profession that’s as much at risk as teaching public school will be. Even medical personnel are better off. They’re around other medicos, at least. Most schools don’t even have a staff nurse anymore.

It will be tough for us to send our kids to the patchwork schools that will exist this fall. We’re probably going to be a long way from getting our money’s worth.

But please don’t blame it on their teachers.

They are preparing to die for your children.