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I'm a public school teacher with an underlying condition, and I frankly don't know what to do. I may not have a choice -- I can't just lose my job. I LOVE teaching. I love my classroom, and I love my kids. But I have to keep myself, my husband, and my 9-year old safe, too. It's an impossible and absolutely unfair position. Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality and an anti-science administration.
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258 comments:
1 – 200 of 258 Newer› Newest»Welcome to what the rest of us are dealing with, teachers.
It's not the anti-science administration. It's the pro-science administration. "The AAP strongly advocates that all policy considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having students physically present in school." https://services.aap.org/en/pages/2019-novel-coronavirus-covid-19-infections/clinical-guidance/covid-19-planning-considerations-return-to-in-person-education-in-schools/
As a teacher I can tell you my fellow teachers (especially the female ones) are the precise demographic targeted by the Democrats. Their tactics are fear and emotional manipulation. They do it because it works.
Find another job or die.
The teachers apparently want their full salary for delivering a thoroughly inferior educational experience. The word for these teachers isn’t “fearful” — it’s “lazy.”
It's a completely fair position. If you can't do the job, quit. If you REALLY believe your life is in danger, quit. You have no more right to your teaching job, than the average ditch digger. More than likely you are polluting kids with your liberalism and false fear, so please....quit. Move on. Rethink your life.
The two professions requiring a constant, ass kissing, round of applause like Teachers and Nurses. Get over yourself. Many of us in America have been working this entire episode to keep America's lights on. Get off you ass, put on your stupid mask, and go to work. Figure it out. You're supposed to be "the best and the brightest".
FFS, Any teach with co-morbidities, is at risk from the freaking regular flu and other nastiness that goes around yearly. But now it's a problem? Because orange man bad.
But please keep filling the grocery stores and working the checkout counter.
Maybe an unfair question, but would 69-year old Ann Althouse return to the classroom if law classes were taught in person?
I really don't know how the Socratic method would be effective on Zoom.
"It's an impossible and absolutely unfair position."
Life's not fair. It's unfortunate your parents didn't teach you this, as it would have spared you the shock of finding out what the world is really like at your age. If you feel you can't do your job while keeping your family safe, you need to quit.
I should add that Ann is in great shape with her daily runs and walks.
Millions of people go to work every day and they don't whinge about it. Accommodations should be made for high risk teachers, but the rest of them need to stop being so shitty and selfish. Or stop cashing their paychecks--nobody's making them be teachers.
My wife lost her job as an OTA at the beginning of the crisis. She's 60 and just didn't feel safe handling her patients up close. Not safe for her, not safe for the patients. Her doctor agreed. Her company did not.
But of course someone had to take care of the patients, and therapy is an important part of what they need, and younger people kept their jobs. "Unfair"? Sure it was, and we lost a lot of income that we can't afford. COVID is tough.
I think that just as it is important to take care of old patients, it is important to teach children. COVID is tough, but blaming everyone else isn't going to help.
How have teachers gotten the idea that they are uniquely vulnerable? Seems political.
Nurses, Doctors, Grocers, Delivery services, factory workers, construction workers, cooks, service technicians, police, fire, public transit workers, taxi drivers, and many more people have been working throughout this pandemic. In fact, it is much safer now for many places than it was at the peak in April (With the exception of a few southern states).
Education is an essential service. Kids can wear masks, wash their hands, keep groups separate. There are ways to mitigate the risks. And if there is some individual teacher who is in a risk-group, let an exception be made at that level.
In general, people should try to get on with their lives. The overall risk of dying from coronavirus is quite low, for someone 40-50 years old, it's about 1/10,000, which is about the same as that of dying from most other things (car accidents, lightning). People should be prudent (I wouldn't go to a bar right now) but this level of paranoia is uncalled for. I don't blame individuals, the media has stoked this panic to unhealthy levels.
It's comically informative that so many teachers don't consider themselves essential.
We've been saying that for decades, yet we can't get rid of you because of your union. Maybe there is some lemonade to be made.
Southeast, Red, W.O.W county Wisconsin is starting school just after Labor Day. 5 days, on-site. There are options for on-line only, for parents that have swallowed the fear cool-aid. Sussex Hamilton has no mask mandate. I read Cedarburg it requiring masks for teachers, and “recommending” them for students. Oconomowoc is opening after 72% of parents responded they wanted on-site classes to resume.
There are some Teachers bitching on FB but not a lot. One I know did a lot of golfing during the week after Evers opened the golf-courses. Full pay to golf. Must be nice. But I’d imagine most are appreciative of teaching in the sane confines of Waukesha County. Sussex-Hamilton just invested $80 million in the schools. Built a state of the art new facility and upgraded the others.
For those teachers that don’t want to teach, or appreciate our communities, they are welcome to quit, and go work for Milwaukee Public Schools.
Teachers, let's make a deal. I'm fine with you not wanting to return to the classroom so long as you're fine with giving me a voucher and let me enroll my kids in any school I want, including private or religious schools.
If your school has no students left, you have to be fine with getting laid off.
Just like EVERYONE in the private sector.
Lets see how things work out in Europe where they are opening schools.
What stands out to me about the headline of the blog, is the whiny teacher has admitted her job is “unnecessary”. I’d say that’s a big tell.
My kids' school closed for the year in March. From March through June, they got bi-weekly assignments to work on with once a week online instruction. Yet, full salary for the teachers. You can continue to offer that quality of product in the future, but why am I still paying the same level of property taxes and why are the teachers still getting the same salary.
Provide a voucher for every parent and let them make their own educational decisions. It would be the end of the public schools, the end of the teacher's unions and devastating for the Democrats. Yet, not one Republican, (I think that we need new names for the parties as these no longer apply), makes that argument.
whiskey said...It's not the anti-science administration. It's the pro-science administration.
That's another pet peeve of mine--the left and the right use science in exactly the same way. They shout about it when it supports the position they were going to hold anyway and they ignore it when it doesn't. The one difference is, when the right is ignoring science, they shut up about it. The left shouts about science just as loudly when they are ignoring it as when they are following it.
"Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality and an anti-science administration"
"taking the brunt"?
Rather, producing inequality by not reopening, to the detriment of poor kids, and being anti-scientific, since the data show that healthy adults under 65 run minimal risks.
I love my classroom, and I love my kids.
Back in the Seventies, my friend Ed's dad could have said those Exact words (about the Chicago school he'd taught in).
But I have to keep myself, my husband, and my 9-year old safe, too.
He DID say Those words, when he quit teaching. Times and things change
It Could be worse for this teacher in the article, she Could be living in Portland
". Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality and an anti-science administration."
Really? How many paychecks have you missed? Has your life's work and life's savings disappeared over the last six months? Are you expecting the people stocking grocery shelves to take a risk so you can eat? Have you looked into the "science" of reopening schools or is this just more Orange Man Bad lecturing? Why should I give a damn that you love your job as it was before the pandemic? Don't you know that things are different now for ALL of us. Do you not f'ing think LOTS of people are having to make less than perfect choices?
Pathetic.
It is a good thing none of this applies to grocery store or hospital workers. What an odd world we live in where Marijuana dispensaries are arguing that they are essential and must remain open and teachers are arguing that schools are not essential.
defund public schools
and abolish teachers unions
economic inequality and an anti-science administration
Good doggie, have a treat.
Let them teach remotely for half the pay and benefits.
"anti-science administration"
Well it is certainly against the political science conclusions and collusions of the country's Teacher's Unions.
I can't speak for Ann, but I'm 69 years old, and if I was still a classroom teacher, I'd be going to back to school. I'd do what I did every flu season. Buy a gallon of handsoap and case of tissues and put them out for the kids.
"Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality and an anti-science administration."
Evidence of a political, not educational or scientific, motive for prolonging the harm to the children. Riffing on Russ Feingold: "It's not over until Trump loses."
The correlation between teachers refusing to back to work and their TDS is too great to ignore. There is a science project right there waiting to be reported by TDS-afflicted reporters refusing to cover the news.
I know a lot of people who are similarly freaked out to these teachers. Some people have taken to heart the noise emanating from the hysteria-generating apparatus that's been running hot since March. It would be an interesting irony: assuming that a lot of this consciously inflamed hysteria has been to damage Trump and lay the groundwork for mail-in voting, if Trump and co. stand firm on disallowing it, they may have scared the more neurotic part of the Dem electorate, a significant bloc, away from the polls in November. May they be thus hoist by their own petard.
Teachers -- from Kindergarten through college -- have gotten very used to "working" from home on full salary. Let's be honest -- that is the problem. If nurses and healthcare workers can go back to work so too can teachers. I still admire the dedicated ones.
Perfectly reasonable. She should not be forced to attend. Nor should taxpayers be forced to pay her. An obvious solution presents itself.
Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality...
So switch to private schools and negotiate your own salary and working conditions. Kiss the union goodbye. They're not that into you, apart from your dues, anyway.
See? Women ARE too fragile for the workplace.
If the GOP had creative leaders, they would looking to use this to break the teacher's union stranglehold on public schools.
If ever there were a situation to highlight the ways in which the public school teacher's unions represent teachers at the expense of children and their families, this is it.
Big Mike & Gusty Winds nail it.
Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality and an anti-science administration.
Sure, sure they are. Schools at all levels (with the exception of a large number of charter schools - which is why the teacher's unions fight them tooth and claw) consistently get more and more money that is a waste. Schools have bloated administrations and many teachers (thanks again to teacher's unions) are over credentialed and under educated. I am tired of hearing how hard they have it, how much pressure they are under, and how hard they work. Hey teacher, you CHOOSE that line of work. Some did for love of teaching and children, others due to not good enough to actually "do" and so they teach. If most teachers (like most government employees) had to actually WORK for a living and earn their job every single day, they would be starving and homeless.
Big Mike said...
The teachers apparently want their full salary for delivering a thoroughly inferior educational experience. The word for these teachers isn’t “fearful” — it’s “lazy.”
7/20/20, 8:32 AM
There are few other professions where the one metric (standardized test scores) used to gauge the quality of your work is actively ignored by the profession for hire/fire but is held up as an excuse when asking why they need bigger budgets.
"Yes scores are down but if we had more money they would be better". We spend more per student than any other country and the best we can do (out side of charter and Catholic schools) is hold the line on inferior test scores.
We graduate students that can't read, can't write, can't think. They learn to think of themselves as victims of the system, racism, oppression, and of a country that is the most evil in existence.
You know how hard it is to fire a bad teacher? There was a room in the NYC Dept. of Ed where a handful of teachers report to every work day. They are too screwed up and/or bad to teach but they can't be fired so they report to an room to sit all day, every day and they get paid, again teacher's unions. So, cry me a river. If it is THAT hard/bad, get a real job where you have to perform [like the majority of the country], then we can talk.
So let’s leave classes online. So for each school district you only need one online teacher per grade, with maybe an extra two teachers to act as readers for the upper grades. The rest of the teachers can then be furloughed.
If we really want it to resemble what’s taking place the teachers that remain working can also take a 30% reduction in pay in an effort to keep the business functioning.
Learn to Code.
I've noticed that when the education folks are asking for/demanding more money, they are overly fond of mentioning that they're teaching "our children".
So the interesting bit in the NYT article for me was the headline's possessive pronoun. When the chips are down, they become "your" children. Just like that.
Maybe they should learn how to write code.
One way to look at life is that it's all a massive science project: if you're not considered as necessary, well, that's your problem, or maybe a problem with the way you're looking at the experiment.
This is how you guarantee that there is an achievement gap among current students that will never be repaired.
Yah. Teachers live comfortable, sheltered lives and this one apparently never learned much science other than what the Democrats told them is science.
You don't have to believe we're living in a simulation created by beings of superior intelligence to believe we're all part of a great experiment in the unknown.
Does this teacher buy food from the grocery store? People working!!!
Provided by farmers who are working and truckers who are working.
What if doctors and nurses thought this way????
The two professions requiring a constant, ass kissing, round of applause like Teachers and Nurses. Get over yourself. Many of us in America have been working this entire episode to keep America's lights on. Get off you ass, put on your stupid mask, and go to work. Figure it out. You're supposed to be "the best and the brightest".
I feel this in my bones. Teachers think they're more important than their instacart person. You didn't pick a job that could be done over the computer. Sorry. What about those of us who were planning to send our kids for school? I guess we just want our children to die, right? Or am I smart and to weigh the risks? Are teachers smart enough to stay away from each other, since that's how they'll most likely be infected? Our district didn't even wait to see how many people chose an in person option before saying everything is going online. I'm homeschooling my kids now. The last thing the district needs is parents like me realizing how much better of a teacher I am than they are. Our school's volunteer of the year from a few years ago already pulled her kids out. Nice going ladies. Teaching as a profession won't be eliminated, but cushy jobs in suburban school districts might...
The teachers at reddit are being a tad hysterical, in total catastrophizing mode now if their districts still plan to open up.
I think they may like the convenience of being able to exercise more and go to the bathroom as needed. But they were indeed working, running Zoom classes, fielding emails 7x24, trying to get students to log in or pick up their packets and turn in homework.
But the fact that so many students didn't do any goddamn thing since March is showing *urban* public education for the farce it is. Online or classroom.
Can't have that!
My wife teaches HS art.
Her main concern is that the district administration is asking the impossible of teachers in dealing with teenagers and COVID. While she is a big proponent of public education, she does admit that many teachers are neither bright nor motivated. However, her greatest scorn is for the incompetent administration.
Teach or quit.
lots of us make those same decisions.
your job is a job, not an entitlement.
sorry, but that's how it is.
I'm sure the teachers will protest in front of Walmart, et. al. on behalf of all those who work in the food industry as those companies force workers to confront the public so they can get their groceries and other sundries.
How about day care workers that take care of the kids of those grocery store workers?
"Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality and an anti-science administration."
The science is settled, schools are only 3.8% of the transmission cause. Where a face shield and get back to work. Or, maybe you don't believe in masks. Teach from 6' away. Teachers have the same choice as hair stylists and other workers. Don't go back to work. Don't get paid.
No better way to weed out the bad teachers. By bad, I mean the ones that never liked it and don't like children.
The bad teachers are going to keep the good teachers from teaching. Per usual.
In Detroit they blocked school buses from leaving the yard to pick up all volunteer students and all volunteer teachers for summer school. For 4 days straight.
'The teachers apparently want their full salary for delivering a thoroughly inferior educational experience. The word for these teachers isn’t “fearful” — it’s “lazy.”'
Wait until they find out how much more work actual remote teaching is. M wife teaches high school, and in the spring they finished up the year by sporadic online assignments. Perhaps understandable, given the circumstances. My spring semester classes HAD to be completed, as fully as possible (presumably the difference is that our students pay thousands of dollars each semester and expect something for that money; imagine that). The most feasible way for me was asynchronous online lectures. All of us who went that route had to instantaneously become multimedia producers. It wasn't at all unfair, at least we still had jobs. Knowing what was coming for the fall, the standards are higher. E.g., all lecture videos must be closed captioned. We have to do that ourselves. I'm not complaining, at least I still have a job. But I suspect that most K-12 teachers have no idea what is entailed in a truly online system of education.
Not to worry, teach.
We are all going to be asked to be part of a massive science experiment pretty soon. Not just asked, forced.
Phase 2 testing of the Covid vaccine is already in trials. They are already producing hundreds of millions of doses so they will be ready to administer as soon as the trials are approved.
Guess who approves the vaccine for general release? Ms Dr Fauci (A/K/A Christine Grady) She's head of the Department of Bioethics at the National Institutes of Health Clinical Center. Also serves as Head of the Department’s Section on Human Subjects Research.
Yeah, no potential conflict of interest there.
Fauci says that if the trials do not turn out, the hundreds of millions of doses will be destroyed. Let's say $50/dose times 200mm doses, that's $10 billion dollars. If the vaccine proves obviously dangerous, they would probably flush it.
But suppose it turns out to have only mild side effects, serious side effects in a few people, or is only partially effective.
Do you really think they will flush it? Or will Ms Fauci approve it for general use?
Of course, getting the vaccine will be "voluntary". But employers will require it to come to work, stores will require a certificate to enter, airlines to fly, visit the beach or parks, play sports, go to church and so on.
You won't have to get the vaccine. Not if you don't care about working, shopping or otherwise living a normal life. It will be strictly voluntary.
Let's see how anxious these teachers are to sign up for the vaccine if the govt assures them them is is safe and effective.
John Henry
I guess Teachers really don’t believe the mandatory mask bullshit either.
Yes let’s focus on the very rare exception to the rule, an unhealthy teacher who is truly at risk. Stay home! Go on disability. Children are 80 times more likely to die from seasonal flu than COVID. fucking science denying crybabies. Federal funding follows the student not the school so they may want to rethink their chicken little approach here. Trump could pull a PATCO and replace them with willing teachers.
Dear entitle jerk "teachers":
So long as you go to the grocery store, and expect people to be working there, you don't get to complain about being forced to do your job if you want to get paid.
So, kindly STFU and get back to work. Or else quit and go on unemployment.
You utterly failed to teach effectively "virtually" at the end of last school year. You don't want to do your jobs? That's fine.
But then we don't owe you one penny more than anyone else who is unemployed and not doign their former job.
Tim Maguire is 100% correct. Why are these lazy women more important than everyone else? Answer: they aren't.
Elizabeth Halsey: You know Lynn, when I first started teaching I thought that I was doing it for all the right reasons. Shorter hours. Summers off. No accountability.
Lynn Davies: Oh, I love my summers. Fresh corn, mmm.
Elizabeth Halsey: From now on, my full time job is finding a guy who’s going to take care of me.
Lynn Davies: God, I pray for that.
#DefundTheTeachers
I would suggest, that if she really loves teaching, she can probably find online teaching work. The thing is, the schools have carefully engineered things so that they provide a day-care service along with any teaching they may do. They did this because they realized people don't really need their kids mis-educated, but working couples need that day-care. But now they want to withdraw the day-care, and charge the same price.
Around here they are letting teachers over 50 take early retirement. You can’t say “protect the vulnerable and let everybody else live their life” if you are unwilling to do it.
"but the rest of them need to stop being so shitty and selfish.”
This message brought to you by Trump Supporters United and has been registered as an in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign.
As I've suggested on other blogs . . . .
Seems to me that with medical concurrence, some teachers can/should not teach in an open classrom (until an effective vaccine and/or therapies are available) and therefore could be considered "disabled" and thereby eligable for Social Security Disability benefits.
I understand that in some states, teachers aren't covered by Social Security but their own state's teacher retirement system. Can't say for certain but, surely, such plans include some sort of income protection for teachers disabled by accident or disease.
Anyway, that's what I think.
The vast majority of working-age Americans were employed before the Wuhan virus was unleashed on us. And let's be clear- that is what happened. That said, most of these Americans has been laid off, or let go completely from their jobs. They do not continue to get paid. Many others (like myself) work in industries that have been completely leveled and virtually shut down from either our governments and/or the disease. And for those of us who are independent operators (as I have been for years), I do not continue to get paid unless I continue to produce.
The teachers continue to get paid while doing video presentations, although very few of them do an adequate online job of it. But that's not surprising as very few do an adequate job in person anyway. As for the kids, we have numbers already showing that the participation level among the kids is strikingly low, and especially so in the minority communities (for a number of reasons, not the least of which is access to a computer at home.)
I understand the teachers fear. But how do they do this in other countries? Others are doing it. How is that? Also- why is it not surprising that the private schools are more ready for this than the public schools? Why is that the least surprising thing of all?
It sounds cold to say, work or quit, but I have to tell you, our gift from the City of Wuhan has changed the lives of people in every industry. In my industry alone there are thousands of people no longer working, re-evaluating their careers, moving into new paths. Life happens to us all. Because you are a member of the teachers unions does not mean you are immune to life. Some of you may have to move on. Others will stick it out and struggle, but move forward.
If the public school system failed or had reduction in the number of operational schools and teachers, that might not be a bad thing. In fact, it might open the doors to real competition in education, improving the lives of everyone.
I'm with DeVos. If a school system doesn't open up for students to be there physically, then it should not get any Federal money. Send that money to the parents of the school children, to help pay for educating them
NYT owners are a family of slave owners.
When will Antifa/BLM burn it down?
How many times do people have to prove with statistics that kids are NOT getting CV-19 and are NOT spreading the disease? How is it that Grocery Clerks, baristas, Gasoline attendants, servicemen, police, prison guards and medical personnel can all go to work yet THE POOR TEACHERS can't?
Do you realize that only 10,000 people under 50 have died from CV-19? The death rate for those under 50, is no worse than the annual flu! But, who cares? If someone doesn't want to teach, don't pay them. Its not like Public Schools are useful anyway.
I'd give the comment a C- ... How exactly are schools "taking the brunt of economic inequality" and how does that relate to re-starting school in the fall?
Before writing that piece for NYT yesterday, Martinson got her teeth cleaned, then got dinner from the grocer, a merlot at the liquor store, filled up her car at the gas station, and finally picked something up at the post office.
My local radio guys were talking about this. They made the point that a lot of kids lives are saved by school. Their parents work, and they get to be safe and sound for 6 hours a day, plus they get fed and receive medical attention (if necessary). BTW, some school districts are going to "distance learn" - but what if you're too poor to have a computer or internet?
These public school teacher unions -especially in the large cities - are nothing more than rackets designed to extract the most money from the parents while doing as little work as possible. They teach the kids leftism, and are UnAmerican, but always wrap themselves in the aura of being the great educators.
It's interesting that the teachers union in LA is supporting defund the police.
School teachers are GETTING paid. It’s the real world snowflake. Quit!
It would be more of a dilemma if the real risk were greater than it actually is.
In reality the risk of dying from this if you are under 65 is similar, or even significantly less than, a normal flu season. The infection fatality rate (IFR) is somewhere between 0.1% and 0.005%, where the 0.1% number comes from a paper asking just that question about Stockholm, Sweden and 0.1% was calculated by assuming that 2.5% of the population had been infected (2.5 months ago) based on a PCR sampling survey.
The 0.005% figure comes from my calculation based on this recent interview with a Swedish researcher where she revealed that they are finding Covid-19 T cells (part of the immune response) in 30% of the Stockholm population and then using more up-to-date death counts.
Well 0.005% is a quite low IFR which would mean that Covid-19 is much less dangerous than the flu.
If that seems implausible please recall that this is all in the context of people being 65 and under.
So it would seem that a lot of the fear is groundless or at least inconsistent with how people have previously behaved in their lives.
The dilemma would be more real if the virus were more dangerous. But if we imagine that then I still suspect that the ethical thing to do is for the teacher to take responsibility and to quit if he or she feels the risks are unacceptable. It's tough but does anything else make sense?
Hey teacher
You do know that deaths for ALL ages are down to almost zero. That's even with juking the stats.
Death rates for under 55 have always been low.
Covid is not even in the top 5 causes of death for under 25 years old. Zero deaths under 25 for week ending 7/11.
Here's a chart showing Kung Flu deaths by week for the year week ending 7/11. https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/nvss/vsrr/covid_weekly/index.htm#AgeAndSex
Here's the number of deaths by age group for the week ending 7/11
0-24 0
25-34 4
35-44 7
45-54 12
55-64 37
65-74 66
74-84 80
85+ 132
338 people out of a population of 330mm or so.
And bear in mind that this is "reported" deaths of people dying "with" kung flu. At least 1 was due to a motorcycle accident. Others may or may not have had kung flu (not tested, only guessed) and so on. The actual total is probably far less. I would not be surprised if it was half the 338.
338/330,000,000 = a really, really low percentage that my calculator won't even display.
John Henry
D Begley:
As I remember law school, a professor never has to get within 20 feet of the students to teach a class.
The other thing I take issue with is Rebecca Martinson's comment that "It isn’t fair to ask me to be part of a massive, unnecessary science experiment. I am not a human research subject. I will not do it."
As a public school teacher I have no doubt that she has as part of her curriculum a very strong dose of social science that she is doling out these empty young minds. She is OK with the approved scientific experiments of say- inculcating kids with the 1619 project- but is not willing to take one for the team to do it because she views that as one scientific experiment too far.
I get that. I'm not sure I'd go into the classroom full time as an upper aged guy. But I would not whine about it. I know what's best for the kids. They HAVE to be in school. For many reasons- education, socialization, physical activity, meals. I'd have to consider moving on if I were her. As I am now doing in my own life.
Life continues to happen and there is nothing you can do about it except to adapt. Or you can blame Trump.
BTW, the teachers attitude is actually better than the Pro Athletes. I listen to the sports talk shows and its a constant whine fest about how the NBA/NFL/MLB players "feel" unsafe. Never do the talk show hosts mention that as young, healthy, men their chances of dying are basically zero. OR that Grocery clerks are exposing themselves for 1/100 the pay. OR that they're getting tested EVERY DAY. So the chances of anyone spreading the disease is about zero.
They CONSTANTLY talk about the CV-19 diseases as if it's the Black Death, and never discuss the fact that 99% of healthy people under 70 don't even get hospitalized.
And there is this:
https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/texas-health-officials-remove-over-3-000-probable-coronavirus-cases-from-overall-count
Most of that came from a single county.
John Henry
""It isn’t fair to ask me to be part of a massive, unnecessary science experiment. I am not a human research subject. I will not do it.""
What would my cats do without me??
In Detroit, BAMN is protesting the opening of a purely voluntary summer school program even thought it is designed to meet all CDC requirements. There are teachers that are willing to teach in-person and parents who want there kids to attend in-person. It's obvious to me that something is going on here that has nothing to do with concern for kids or teachers.
So teachers aren't actual heroes after all?
Seriously, @Gahrie nailed it...I worked for many years at a high school. As with blacks, I have many friends who are teachers : )
95-plus percent are not only liberal, but crazy lefties. During the GW Bush years most cars were plastered with generic anti-Bush stickers but also those of the Bushitler variety.
On the other side there were also those same teachers who were really good at teaching and really good with students. I just wish they would be content with doing their actual teaching jobs and take it easy on the indoctrination...
When I tutored chemistry to high schoolers a few years ago, there was a sharp difference in pay rate for in-person vs. online instruction. Online tutoring paid about 25% less per hour. Teachers need to adjust accordingly.
A friend of mine's wife is a highschool teacher in Massachusetts. She's in her early 40s and she has Crohn's so she's on immunosuppressants. She's pretty afraid to go back. It's hard to tell people to simply not be afraid.
Good lord, does this simpering weakling cower in fear every flu season as well?
The over the top paranoia has become an indetifier to me for people who have no understanding of the swamp of infection that all lifeforms live within.
This existed before corona, it will exist after corona.
Go home and live in a plastic bubble, let the rest of us get on with life as before.
She has “underlying conditions.” How is she typical or even relevant? Will the NYT ever tire of wasting people’s time with junk like this?
My son and daughter in law are going to homeschool this year. 11th and 7th grade. Their SDA private school will reopen but with so many lockdown restrictions that it is not worth the effort to attend.
I've always been very impressed with the school. They do a great job. I just don't think they can do it in these times.
My wife is a HS teacher and I am trying to get her to retire and daycare/homeschool my daughter's kids (4&2) I don't think there is any danger to her, our death rate in PR is about 1/10th (0.006% vs 0.04% for the US IIRC) the rate of the US as a whole but they are going to make her jump through so many hoops that it does not seem like it is worth the effort.
John Henry
Don’t let the door hit you on the way out.
I’m a high risk teacher in PA. My students need in-person school. I’m not the one to do it though. I still don’t know the plan to return but I’m asking for reasonable accommodations (teaching via Zoom which was good enough in May) under the ADA.
Heh. Does she whinge about seasonal flu, too? Did her mother quit in 1968? Most of the people that I know who were diagnosed with COVD-19 got over it within a few days.
If she believes she has to quit, fine with me.
Children are not shedders of the virus and do not transmit to adults. I assum these people go to the store, go on vacation, and are around other people. Take precautions - mask, wash hands, disinfect hard surfaces and it will be fine. This is not EBOLA. 99.5% of the people recover. Average age of death's is 80+. If you really cannot teach due to medical reasons - even during flu season, take medical disability.
Can the federal government (DoE) force state schools to open up? Or is it a state decision? It seems like all COVID related decisions are being enacted at the state level. Is this true? What control do the feds actually have?
I've been in a great situation that's just been blown to Hell.
My roommate walked in with his latest "girlfriend" and her kid last night, after we had discussed her situation the night before. We had words and he got in my face - another sign he's not thinking about covid at all.
The prospect of looking for a place during a pandemic is a nightmare.
No man is an island, but - no matter what I do - someone's always attempting to undermine everything.
Here's where it's very important for American teachers/resistance to avoid discussing other countries. And please don't mention the "heroes" who worked at day-cares because "essential".
she points out "More than 75 New York Department of Education employees have died of Covid-19"
Hyperlink goes to:
"Though these deaths are not confirmed by the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene (DOHMH) as related to COVID-19, they were self-reported to us as such. Out of respect for the privacy of families during their mourning we are limiting the level of detail, and we are not disclosing lists of names of those who we have lost.
As of June 22 , 2020 we have lost 79 DOE employees:
75 school-based employees
31 are teachers
28 are paraprofessionals
5 are food service staffers
3 are guidance counselors
2 are administrators
2 are facilities staff
2 are school aides
1 is a parent coordinator
1 is a School Computer Technology Specialist
4 central office employees
---
By the way, NYC began closing its schools March 15th. When did these folks die?
Did they live at school?
Per Wiki
" The City School District of the City of New York (the New York City public schools) is the largest school system in the United States, with over 1.1 million students taught in more than 1,800 separate schools.[2] The department covers all five boroughs of New York City, and has an annual budget of nearly 25 billion dollars.[4"
Keeping the schools shut for a year or so is just as much an "experiment", a social one, but likely vastly more significant in its direct effects than any likely ill effects of this virus.
Schools in the 19th-20th centuries remained open in most cases, other than for rather short outages at most, during modern wars, bombing campaigns, sieges, large scale terrorism, enemy occupations, ethnic cleansing incidents, in refugee camps, in concentration camps (See "Three Came Home", Agnes Kieth, or "Rampage", James Scott, the parts about Santo Tomas), during droughts and famines.
It is perhaps too much to ask a normal woman to be an Agnes Kieth, but there were any number of American women who were "ordinary heroes" at Santo Tomas, who kept their cheer, energy and compassion in the face of constant fear and starvation and death in Santo Tomas.
Tell that to the Grocery store clerks and the delivery people.
And cut our property taxes while you are at it. Why pay for a service we have to do ourselves now??
Vouchers would allow millions of small 10 person schools to arise. And end the government funded child abuse.
In 2011, NASA, per instructions by Congress signed by George W Bush, quit flying the Space Shuttle and I lost my job. I didn't whine that it was unfair. I simply found another job, and frankly it is a better job with much better benefits, allows me to work from home, and pays much better. This isn't hard, and if you think it is hard, then you shouldn't be teaching children.
learn to code,
In other words, rather than take responsibility for my own health and well-being, and (for example) take a leave of absence), I'm going to inflict my problems on my students.
This is a microcosm of the insanity of the whole approach: impose huge costs on healthy people rather than ask the sick and vulnerable to protect themselves. Mass hysteria, not to mention tyranny.
It is a difficult predicament that I don't wish on anybody, but should this person get paid, or get paid the same amount, if they are not able to work as productively as previously. Government workers have fared the best in the crisis, but why should that continue indefinitely.
Police officers in cities like Portland go to work every day and get spat on. But this woman feels that its unfair to ask her to go back to work and earn her paycheck. We have reached the point where if you want to get a paycheck you need to work to get it.
Wisconsin has moved opening of schools to stage 5 off their reopening chart so that even private schools can not provide education to their students. The governor of Wisconsin was the superintendent of of public instruction prior to his election to governor. Many public school teachers have no interest in doing their jobs well. They just want a paycheck with as little effort as possible.
SSI for Martinson, work for the able.
It isn't faaaaaiiiiirrrr.
Said by so many toddlers.
Then resign your position and cower in fear at home. And no, you won't get disability or unemployment. I've got 4 kids working in grocery stores. Lot's of human contact. They are happy to have the work.
Its funny that the feminist propaganda does not in fact use the stories of real female heroes in their material.
I propose three, who also wrote their own stories, extremely well.
Yay Panlilio - "The Crucible" - intelligence agent, guerilla chieftain, regimental commander. And a divorced single mom with three kids.
Agnes Kieth - "Three Came Home" - Imprisoned with the rest of the colonies' wives, children and dependents in Borneo, the goal was to keep everyone alive.
Lynda Van Devanter - "Home Before Morning" - A US nurse in Vietnam, about a year in a surgical hospital in Pleiku. The rough basis for the TV series "China Beach".
"The two professions requiring a constant, ass kissing, round of applause like Teachers and Nurses."
I will disagree on the nurses. I've had major surgery in the past few years. My son had major surgery as a child. And my wife had major surgery recently. Nurses might just be the closest thing to angels we have on earth.
Yes, they can have bad days and be cranky, etc. like everyone else, but would you really want to do their job? I wouldn't. Good nurses are worth their weight in gold as far as I'm concerned.
I'm so-so on firemen and cops. In my town there is so little crime that the odds of getting shot as a cop are much less than the odds of getting hit by lightning...not exactly the 'front lines.' : )
Teachers (and all the rest of us) have our daily lives made possible courtesy of other people who are stepping outside of their houses every day, and coming into contact with the public.
In many cases, those people who step outside of their homes to work, and who come into contact with the public in order to do their jobs, have school-age children. It really sucks for these people to be told that they can't send their kids to school.
The folks making $12 an hour at the grocery store could not be reached for comment.
The mortality rate for Covid in the U.S. is 438 per million population. Or stated another way, the average person living in the U.S. has a 0.04% chance of dying of the virus.
If you are under 80 years old, those numbers drop by almost 1/2.
High risk teachers should be in charge of the homeschooling kids. It’s not hard.
My supply of TS chits is running low. California schools won't reopen until the teacher's union says so. They've got Gruesome Newsom by the political short and curlies.
No work, no pay.
Public school, iffy future.
No school, no future.
Can't do the job? Won't do the job?
Quit. Somebody who can do it and will do it should do it.
You aren't special.
Cry me a f'ing river.
Never been a better time to abolish the current public school system, and give ALL parents vouchers to send their children to the school of their choice. And make home schooling the dominant form of education.
The teacher unions are using going back to teaching as a bargaining chip to wrangle other concessions that the Democrats want, such as this. No teacher is showing up in such a high profile public venue as the NYT without the support of the union, at least not if she wants to keep her job.
There is no organization on the planet that overlaps with the Democratic Party more than the teachers' unions. Teachers tend to get quite upset when this is pointed out to them. It's like they really swallow that "Oh, we selfless crew, we band of sisters, be we ne'er so vile that our jobs don't gentle our condition" malarkey hook, line & sinker. I mean, everyone has the right to petition the government for a redress of their grievances & all, but don't pretend to saintliness while you supply multiple Democratic pols with money & feet on the street.
And, besides, the science ain't so clear.
Be the individual you and decide for yourself what you can do for a living. If you can't teach, then don't expect to keep your teaching job and your teacher's salary, even though you love it. This virus seems to be forcing job mobility, which just might be a positive result in the end.
And there have been a number of encouraging developments lately:
1) a vaccine, quote:
Explaining how the vaccine works, the study lead author, Professor Andrew Pollard, of Oxford, said: "The new vaccine is a chimpanzee adenovirus viral vector (ChAdOx1) vaccine that expresses the SARS-CoV-2 spike protein.
"It uses a common cold virus (adenovirus) that infects chimpanzees, which has been weakened so that it can’t cause any disease in humans, and is genetically modified to code for the spike protein of the human SARS-CoV-2 virus. (from the Electronic Telegraph)
Few side effects. It elicits both Covid-19 antibodies and Covid-19 T cells. It sounds very promising.
2) Fenofibrate. This is a drug developed to suppress cholesterol levels. But guess what? For reasons we don't completely understand, if given early in the course of infection it significantly reduces the odds you will be hospitalized. Since it's approved already for cholesterol, and the side effects are minor except for some people that shouldn't be taking it, it is between you and doctor whether you get a prescription beforehand and then if you get a Covid-19 symptom you can immediately start taking it and cut your odds of hospitalization in half or more.
It's a similar story as with hydroxychloroquine and zinc, which by the way still work.
3) Interferon beta protein. It's not a big surprise that this seems to be working since similar interferons are being used against other viruses. And it's expensive. But this is the kind of thing that may be appropriate to give to people that very ill and already hospitalized.
I'd prefer all public schools as they now function be closed, the DOE ended, and a ground-up restructuring of education happen. I should be happy that this self-centered twit (Does she even mention concern for the science experiment on the children?) is leading the way.
They're frightened ninnies being frightened by other frightened ninnies all being encouraged by the mainstream media and Democrats (though that's redundant) telling them they're going to die because of TRUMP! Seems that liberals and schoolteachers (another redundancy) are incapable of understanding cold hard numbers.
Healthy people under age 50 don't die of covid. 80% don't show symptoms. Even those of us 65 and older don't die as long as we're in good health. Some of us are naturally immune. From exposure to other similar coronaviruses. Edward Jenner discovered that cowpox protected people from the more dangerous smallpox. Seems the novel dreaded covid, with the media and frightened ninnies emphasizing novel over and over again and again to prove we know nothing about it isn't so novel after all since it's been proven many already have immune responses to it. From exposure to something similar.
Take your vitamin D daily, along with vitamin K, and go about your life.
I'd post links to covid deaths by age and covid deaths with comorbidities- but everyone here has already seen those links posted here before by me and others. Cold hard numbers- otherwise healthy people don't die from the dreaded covid. And I will continue to call the unwarranted panic The Covidiocy.
@Gusty
"The two professions requiring a constant, ass kissing, round of applause like Teachers and Nurses"
A major difference is nurses are still doing their jobs. Hopefully a lot of teachers will quit and we'll create a better, less biased public school system. You can always hope.
"Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality and an anti-science administration." From their governors and/or their local/regional Boards of Education.
Poor thing. Maybe she could get a job at Walmart or at a hospital.
Inner-city teacher here. I am reposting some of my comments on teaching from last week. I noticed that Alex Berenson is posting news from various local outlets on teacher and student flu deaths in recent years. These have been more common than C19 deaths in the young, but were never reported as a big deal nationally. I recommend Berenson and Aaron Ginn on Twitter— they aren’t batting 1000, but are much more accurate than the doomsayers.
On returning to school: Many of us are eager to get back with our kids; we want school to restart as normal. I know how low the risks to kids are, and that they are not major spreaders of the disease. I plan to wear a face shield so the children can see my face, but do not expect my 4 year olds to “socially distance” (where are the double blind studies to prove that works?). They learn best through discovery, experiences, and interacting with each other. I refuse to interfere with their learning. We will probably spend more time outside at recess, the safest place they can be at school, where I will use the extra time to work in some math and science. The kids love it!
Most of my students come from poverty and Spanish-only households. They don’t have books at home, and have never been to a library or the local children’s museum. About 40% of these families could never get the technology to work consistently this spring. I finally went to their houses wearing a mask and asked them to pass me their iPads on the front porch. I fixed all the issues I could and then Clorox wiped them. This worked for a few. Most of these children do not have educated parents and would not benefit from being homeschooled.
I hope our parents and teachers don’t freak out over the expected small rise in cases. We now know that the risk to people under 70 is similar to that of the flu. At a virtual meeting our district held to ask teachers what we thought, too many expressed fear about opening at all. There were a few legitimate concerns, from teachers with elderly parents or a cancer patient in their homes. The superintendent said that the district could be flexible: those teachers could stay home and provide virtual lessons for the families who opt for online instruction while the rest of us teach in person classes. We hope to find out later this week what the school year will look like, but it could all change when we see how many families opt for in person school.
Update: the superintendent proposed that school start a few weeks later and end in early June, in person, (which is best for inner city children and families). The options for families and teachers at high risk remain.
“ Millions of people go to work every day and they don't whinge about it. Accommodations should be made for high risk teachers, but the rest of them need to stop being so shitty and selfish. Or stop cashing their paychecks--nobody's making them be teachers.”
Most teachers though are probably low risk - young without comorbidities. The question should be what is best for the students, or at worst, what is best for the combined student teacher population. And that clearly is that the students go back to school. If they get COVID-19, most won't even show it, and that would go a long way to developing a national herd immunity. But a lot of these teachers would rather work from home, or not at all, and still collect a paycheck, so the case of the few with significant comorbidities are highlighted. The only thing of interest here is that anyone is surprised.
Monitor for symptoms at the door. Wear a mask (and goggles) if for nothing more than a placebo effect. Wash your hands before touching your mouth, nose, eyes, etc.
Perhaps they can simulate a protest which seems to grant PC color blocs immunity from Her Choice, or follow the Progressive example and invite foreign students to force transgeographic exchange.
Fine. Don't teach but also forfeit your salary for not doing your job. Seems fair.
If the person who wrote that comment were to start a GoFundMe, maybe all those people who liked her comment would send her money. But I suspect they would prefer that her problem be solved at no cost to themselves. Or anyone else, for that matter. Le the government pay for it! The Free Shit Army marches on.
""It isn’t fair to ask me to be part of a massive, unnecessary science experiment. I am not a human research subject. I will not do it.""
Notice, it is all about her. In most of our minds, the purpose of public schools is not to give teachers nice salaries and cushy benefits, but to educate their students. She puts herself above the welfare of her students, and thus shows that she shouldn’t be in the classroom.
This thread must be an echo chamber because I found every thought/response I wished to express already set forth in the 12 comments currently posted. Need to get out more.
Do these people actually know what COVID is and what the symptoms are? It's an upper respiratory infection, fever, body aches, cough, just like every other nasty thing that comes in the winter. The majority of people live through it. If you have underlying conditions, you may get worse, just like every other disease process. This is not the black death, it's not a death sentence if you get it, your limbs don't fall off and your skin remains on your body. You don't become a zombie. These idiots are treating it as if it the worst disease in the universe and I blame the media, CDC, and the idiot politicians for terrifying everyone. They know most of the population can't cope with any adversity, they aren't equipped for it. And the people want someone to save them, so the media et al, is throwing everything at these poor stupid people.
"No man is an island, but - no matter what I do - someone's always attempting to undermine everything."
@Crack
Great outlook on life...it's somebody else's fault. With that attitude you'll go far. Maybe it's time to get your own place...
Are teachers less capable of learning hygiene than Walmart workers?
I’m a 55 year old teacher and I’m really irked of the whiners. We need to go back. If you’re too scared, quit. In my district most people complaining are the young female teachers who have the least risk.
JRoberts said...
Maybe they should learn how to write code.
That won't do them any good. I've been writing code for 25 years. I got laid off last year and have been out of work for 10 months.
The NYC teachers union and their members are declaring themselves and their jobs non-essential. Who would know better than them? Perhaps we should burn down the unoccupied school buildings, just to be safe--could be COVID cooties lurking from February. If it only saves one life.
So, in the hierachy of truly essential workers, teachers are incredibly low on the totem pole, it seems.
I wonder if these teachers realize that their job won't be there for them long term if they don't provide the service society demands.
Parents with means will find alternative arrangements (private schools, tutoring, homeschool, etc). They won't come back.
This all reminds me of Laslo's brilliant reference to Morlocks and Eloi made at the start of the shutdown madness.
If she doesn't want to risk it, then she should fucking quit and take a job she can do from home.
rcocean: "How many times do people have to prove with statistics that kids are NOT getting CV-19 and are NOT spreading the disease? How is it that Grocery Clerks, baristas, Gasoline attendants, servicemen, police, prison guards and medical personnel can all go to work yet THE POOR TEACHERS can't?"
Stop it!
You're going to make Tim in Vermont cry and call you a murderer.
The science backs reopening the schools.
The science experts on MSNBC said so.
A Guardian article from 2 months ago: "Schools reopening has not triggered rise in Covid-19 cases, EU ministers told"
Heck, a commenter over at David Thompson's site related this:
"I wander over to the CDC data portal and pull up COVID deaths by age. If I'm reading the tables correctly, total deaths by COVID for children up to 14 years of age is 30. That's thirty. Three-zero. Across all 50 states. Since February.
"By comparison, deaths of adults 55 and older comes in at 106,088. By further comparison, deaths of children 14 and under from non-COVID causes is 10,574."
The data is in. The science is clear.
Reopen the schools.
I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher...
tim in vermont said...
Around here they are letting teachers over 50 take early retirement. You can’t say “protect the vulnerable and let everybody else live their life” if you are unwilling to do it.
Bzzt
Thank you for playing, have your lovely consolation prize.
"Over 50" isn't "vulnerable". Over *70* is "really vulnerable".
So, any 70+ year ol teachers want to retire? Go for it.
Under 60? They can go on unemployment, and get what everyone else in their situation is getting.
Given her lack of mastery of the facts---that children do not die from the virus, or even transmit it unknowingly to adults----this lady is someone I wouldn't trust to "teach"my kids anything.
Upthread it's been noted that grocery store clerks and cashiers have been working throughout the pandemic. I've made it point to praise them for doing so.
But this little flake thinks she's unfairly being made part of an experiment.
Despicable.
Ann Althouse said...
I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher
She not a teacher. She's an entitled, whining, baby.
Actual teachers care about teaching their students, and it's obvious thn none of the "teachers" involved in these whinefests do care about their students learning.
I can fully understand that someone who is high risk wants to remain isolated and they should be accommodated as much as can be. However, given that the medical experts appear to be nearly universal in favor of reopening the schools and reopening the schools would greatly benefit a large swath of society, it is difficult to produce any sympathy for low risk teachers, which is going to be the large majority of them. We are all making sacrifices that we did not expect would be necessary this year. We all are in this together, or so I am told.
I will also note that from a young age I quickly discovered that no one has a higher opinion of teachers than teachers. According to teachers, no one works harder than teachers, no one gets less respect than they deserve than teachers, no one is so vastly underpaid than teachers, no one is more important than teachers, and, golly, when we go on strike is most definitely for the children.
Ann Althouse said...I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher...
I can't think of a reason to be. But if someone can articulate one, I will reassess.
That would be the right feeling. A person this irrational, given to respond emotionally rather than understand the facts, should not be teaching in the first place.
Ann Althouse said...I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher
I am sympathetic. My 58 year-old wife had asthma issues in the past and has to deal with unruly teenagers who think Art class is time to play.
However, people in many professions take small risks in doing their jobs.
Her biggest fear is that the school administration gas no idea how to handle this situation and will ask the impossible from teachers.
"I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher..." Well, you see this stuff a lot. Teachers' unions: "What, you think that my supervisor should be able to just fire me because he doesn't like me?! How is that right? And I should work for decades with no decent health plan and no decent pension plan? If you cared at all about your schools and your teachers you would do better." Got news for you, Mr. or Ms. Teacher. 95% of the rest of us have jobs exactly like you're describing. Our supervisors can fire us any time they want, for no reason. Our only defense is to do a good job and keep up a good relationship so that they will think that that's a bad idea. Our health plan is nowhere near as good as the one you think is unacceptable. Same with our pension plan, if we have one.
I see a lot of comments on the NYT article comparing teachers to health care workers. With the response, Then pay us like health care workers. Well, let me compare you to workers in the local 7-11 instead. They come in to work or they lose their jobs, finished. Do you want to trade places with them?
I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher...
I wonder if her underlying condition is worse than White Fragility.
I know a couple teachers, some with immuno-compromised children. I have sympathy for the choices they have to make. But everyone does face these kinds of choices to some degree throughout life. There probably will be teachers who take an illness home to their child and the child catches it and subsequently becomes ill. This will be (especially pre-election, or if Trump is re-elected). Want won't be discussed, or mentioned: How often has this happened in the past?
She puts herself above the welfare of her students, and thus shows that she shouldn’t be in the classroom.
" When children pay union dues, I will care about children." Albert Shanker. AFT President.
"Few side effects. It elicits both Covid-19 antibodies and Covid-19 T cells. It sounds very promising"
Let's be clear- it elicits antibodies and killer T-cells to the spike protein as expressed on the chimp adenovirus. It remains to be determined whether or not these antibodies and t-cells actually help against COVID-19 itself.
What happened to "Its for the children!"
"will Ms Fauci approve it for general use?"
His/her decision depends on the current value of his stock options and the closing on the small estate somewhere in the south of France.
One of my children home schools. And for some odd reason has recently been asked by many of his friends about it. Particularly those associated with his Trail Life USA group and other couples associated with his church. A Catholic Church with the Tridentine Mass. With a younger and larger nd more active membership than the ones with folk masses.... FYI- I am not RC, my wife is- and that's what the kids were brought up in. You have to bring your children up in a religion, or they'll end up believing anything and becoming liberals.
One other thing they're all planning on doing is asking rather loudly why the hell they're paying school taxes when there's no school.
It's interesting that she posts at NYT, invokes NYC stats when she works an hour outside Seattle...
"I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher..."
I think people would be a lot more sympathetic if we weren't hearing all of the stories of teachers' unions around the country holding kids and parents hostage.
Demanding a laundry list of left-wing causes before reopening; defunding police, Medicare for all, a moratorium on charter schools, and a new wealth tax, is pure extortion. The above list is courtesy of Los Angeles teachers, btw.
I know teachers and have friends and relatives who are teachers, and public teachers are only important until they aren't.
2020 could be the year that people figure out that it is better for three or four families to band together and hire a teacher to teach their kids at a home, or even at an office park. In California, the kids couldn't possibly get a worse education, and the teacher would make more money.
"but the rest of them need to stop being so shitty and selfish.”
This message brought to you by Trump Supporters United and has been registered as an in-kind contribution to the Biden campaign.
And then you will explain how many teachers will vote for Trump and how many will change their vote because of this.
Catching up with Roger Seheult:
See Coronavirus Pandemic Update 96
1) More and more papers on von Willebrand factor which seems to be a key part of the story of what happens in detail when the virus kills people.
2) Ivermectin. A retrospective study shows Ivermectin cutting mortality by 40% in hospitalized Covid-19 patients. Dr. Seheult speculates on why Ivermectin would work and that speculation tells us a lot about the emerging picture of what is happening at a detailed level. Ivermectin is an anti-malarial drug. If the speculation is correct it's not a coincidence that anti-malarial drugs tend also to be effective against the bat coronavirus.
Since Ivermectin is already approved for malaria, and the side effects are relatively minor, you could again pre-arrange to get a prescription for this from your doctor, and the benefits, if any, would probably be greater if given earlier in the course of an infection.
The FDA knows doctors are giving prescriptions for this to themselves and has issued a statement asking that people wait for further study and in particular pointing to a probable issue with the dosage.
3) Moderna Covid-19 vaccine. This is a different vaccine, in fact very different, from the one I mentioned previously. The vaccine has to be given twice, the second time a month later, to elicit a significant antibody response.
The vaccine is made from messenger RNA. It elicited an immune response in everyone on which it was used. Curiously the side effects of the second dose of the vaccine sound an awfully lot like the early symptoms of Covid-19.
A phase III clinical trial is starting very soon. Normally phase III clinical trials take several years, but this is going to be accelerated. If all goes well the vaccine will likely be available sometime in 2021.
Dr. Seheult does a first pass through the paper and warns he's probably be going to talk a lot more about this paper in subsequent updates.
We haven't been told yet whether our grandchildren's school will be open this fall (Verona School District). If it closes we guess we're going to have to bite the bullet and put them in a parochial school. It's clear from this spring that not being in school is not good for them. And that's with a very diligent mother who's doing everything she can to keep up their education. My question is, how is it fair to continue to extract school taxes from us in this situation?
At any time after this pandemic passes the government can create or concoct any reason at all to put us all in shut down. Boo! is all they need to say. This is the great lesson.
wholelottasplainin' said...Given her lack of mastery of the facts---that children do not die from the virus, or even transmit it unknowingly to adults----this lady is someone I wouldn't trust to "teach"my kids anything.
Heh..Not just anything
This article shows the fixed, impervious mentality of those opposing both kinds of re-opening - schools and the economy. I don't know how you talk to them. Maybe the teachers are afraid of being spit on in the undisciplined classrooms they have allowed. But, whatever the cause, probably if you stopped paying full salary unless they did the job, they would do the job. That's my experience in life.
I note that MTI (the Madison Teacher's Union) wanted no in-person school attendance until there were no COVID cases for a 14-day period in Dane County! How out-of-touch can a Union be? I know they're advocating for their members, but Hoo boy.
There is a $300M+ school referendum on the ballot in November too. My vague recollection is that it would add $400 to the average tax bill. Will that have a snowball's chance of passing if school is not in session? It'll be interesting to see how this is sold when everyone is being taught from home (as has been decided here for the first quarter of school).
I wonder if she would fell better knowing that it is not a massive, unnecessary science experiment and she is not a human research subject.
It's her job.
We pay her to educate our kids.
if she will not do it, she is free to quit and we will find someone else to do the job. Jeesh. Police get killed doing their job.
I am not sympathetic to this teacher. But that may be due to the fact that I actively dislike both police and teachers unions. In my mind those unions act in a similar manner to the Catholic Church. The unions make it extremely difficult to get rid of bad and/or dangerous police and teachers. In some instances they shift them from precinct/school to precinct/school to keep them working.
I would also like to see Newsom and Cuomo take a reduction in pay - we should all have some skin in this game.
last May, i was back in Ames, and was chatting up two young (40 year old), women i know. Both are teachers in Story County.
I asked how school was going; if it was over, etc
They said they were both doing 'online learning'
I said, that must be nice... And They Both said, in near unison
"OMG NO! It's Horrible! It's twice as much work!
You have No Idea HOW HARD it is to teach students And take care of your own kids at the same time!"
I smiled politely.
When i left Ames, i stopped at the Walmart to stock up; and thought the workers there must be GLAD that THEY don't HAVE TO work from home
</sarc
rhhardin said...
Find another job or die.
7/20/20, 8:32 AM
This would make a great campaign slogan. It’s catchy. It’s honest. It says everything you need to know.
BTW, some school districts are going to "distance learn" - but what if you're too poor to have a computer or internet?
My district has provided a lap top and internet access to every student in the district. We were moving that way before COVID hit. My district is desperate to get the students back on campus because they know what is going to happen when online learning becomes the norm.
The real issue is when kids start resisting "real" online learning so that they can take the "credit recovery" online classes instead. A smart determined kid could finish high school in a year easy if he was allowed to take "credit recovery" classes to do so.
I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher...
One can be sympathetic to the teacher's situation, insofar as she has health issues that make her reluctant to go back to work. But we are not sympathetic to her demand that she be accommodated at the expense of the children at her school (and their parents, some of whom will be unable to work if their kids are have to remain home). She should be able to keep her job despite supplying an inferior product and preventing others from working because they have to stay home with their kids?
I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher...
I'm a public school teacher, and I'm not too sympathetic to her. But I know a lot of teachers just like her, and will acknowledge that they are terrified, just as was intended.
I
In my district most people complaining are the young female teachers who have the least risk.
As you would expect.
> ""It isn’t fair to ask me to be part of a massive, unnecessary science experiment.
> Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality and an anti-science administration.
THE ANTI-SCIENCE ADMIN IS CONDUCTING SCIENCE EXPERIMENTS
I'm sympathetic to this person who is afraid, but I don't think her fear has basis in what we've learned about the virus, nor does that fear trump obligations related to their public service jobs.
The rough basis for the TV series "China Beach".
Thanks for that Buwaya--one of my favorite shows as a kid, had no idea it was based even loosely on a book.
It's not fair for people to have to pay for services they are not receiving.
"It's not FAIR," she stomped.
And the NYT readers gave her many jazz hands.
someone's always attempting to undermine everything.
I'm constantly reminded of lobsters caught in a pot.
>>Schools are taking the brunt of economic inequality and an anti-science administration
I'll say it again. To some people, *everything* is political. Absolutely everthing.
What a sad way to live.
I get the feeling you folks are not too sympathetic to this teacher...
You must be new around here.
High risk teachers should be in charge of the homeschooling kids. It’s not hard.
Yes, the risk categories have already been discerned, and assignments can be made accordingly. The transmission modes and disease progression are also known. This is, presumably, why Progressives have protested and forced the Fed Gov to overturn its decision to limit excess immigration. Well, that, and the profit motive of international student tuition, the bigotry of politically congruent-granted immunity, and, perhaps, even the science of viral contagion and mitigation.
What the teachers unions have done to education over the last 40 years was an unsanctioned social science experiment and the burning cities are proof they succeeded at one thing, and a decent education wasn't it. Teaching at-risk students was the greatest ten years of my career and the worst. Lack of discipline purposely led to a poor learning environment, which has had the result expected, along with heavy doses of Zinn-related hysteria ladled into the students' skulls. But nothing has been a boon to home-schooling and private ed as the perfidy exposed by COVID and the anti-science hysteria teachers are exhibiting now. I am hoping for a PATCO-like end to this nightmare!
No. I have no sympathy for this skank. Or to be precise, I have exactly as much sympathy for this teacher as she has for the parents thrust into the roll of homeschoolmarms while also trying to keep income flowing. Again, by Federal law, the funding is for AVERAGE DAILY ATTENDANCE and that means it is per pupil in a seat being taught at school. No attendance no ADA money from Uncle Sugar.
Crack- that's tough timing. But, you know you'll figure out a next move. You always have. Most of us always have. It sucks and it's not easy, but you'll do it.
Most of us, who are not teachers figure out our next move.
@Original Mike said:
"My question is, how is it fair to continue to extract school taxes from us in this situation?"
This is the 64-billion dollar question. How long will citizens put up with paying property taxes and not receiving anything for it?
We've already done our fair share...sent both kids from pre-school through college at private schools. We paid for public schools but didn't take up any resources. We're net 'givers.' It cost a ton but it was our choice, and for the most part it was the correct one.
But some families aren't like ours and don't have the resources to go private. In CA that wouldn't even matter now as our idiot governor is banning all schools from opening, public and private.
"It isn’t fair to ask me to be part of a massive, unnecessary science experiment."
haha. you already are, sheep!
What a fraidy cat. The No Mask re-opening in Tx, Az and Fla were a huge open air experiment that proved PDJT 100% right. The Covid is disappearing almost like magic, it's a beautiful thing just fantastic, nobody could believe it. Summer heat and herd immunity are keeping the virus in check in the red states just like the Donald predicted against the silly and cowardly Stalinist demands from pointy headed liberal egghead so-called experts who warned of out of control corona outbreaks. I cannot understand why some teachers don't have absolute confidence in the Betsy DeVoss school reopening plan.
HCQ+Zn+AZ is an effective disinfectant with a demonstrable efficacy when delivered before disease progression and a well-established risk profile. Otherwise, normalize good hygienic habits, don't protest, limit visits to medical facilities in order to mitigate cross-contamination, avoid black holes (i.e. asymptomic fecal transmission), be aware of Planned Parent (one of primary cause of excess deathsm the other is cross-contamination), and control stressors (e.g. social contagion) that degrade your body and mind.
What the teachers unions have done to education over the last 40 years was an unsanctioned social science experiment and the burning cities are proof they succeeded at one thing
Protests and affirmative discrimination are evidence of process misalignments, systemiic dysfunction, and that affirmative action has failed miserably.
>>no matter what I do - someone's always attempting to undermine everything."
Crack - the one common factor in all your failed relationships is you.
As sure as night follows day, some teacher and some school kid somewhere will die from Covid 19, and the media will go ballistic, 24x7 coverage for days, and of course it will all be Trump's fault.
Have you noticed that all the Covid stories are now about Florida and Texas, even though NY has 10x as many deaths. It's almost like they are trying to influence an election or something...
Blogger Gospace said...
...
One other thing they're all planning on doing is asking rather loudly why the hell they're paying school taxes when there's no school.
7/20/20, 11:42 AM
Good point.
If schools are closed, and are going to be so for the foreseeable future (say, next year), where are those taxes, specifically, going?
Imagine (it is not hard if you try, so I'm told) if nurses took the same attitude as teachers.
Actually, you don't have to imagine; my wife had to talk to one of her nurse employees, who posted a sentiment on Facebook that nurses should get hazard pay for dealing with COVID patients. As if COVID is the worst communicable disease a nurse may have to deal with as part of their job. For those interested, the talk was needed because the nurse mentioned her employer.
Keeping the schools shut for a year or so is just as much an "experiment", a social one, but likely vastly more significant in its direct effects than any likely ill effects of this virus.
Another experiment, this time with Polio:
Unintended Consequences? Polio and COVID 19
Indeed, it was the more affluent people with higher standards of living that were most affected by polio epidemics, because their children were more likely isolated from milder strains.
So far, the mitigation strategy has managed to flatten the curve and share/shift responsibility resulting in infection, disease, and mortality spikes, which are comparable to similar viral strains. The leading cause of excess deaths has been Planned Parent, denying or limiting early treatment (e.g. HCQ+AZ+Zn), and cross-contamination in medical facilities.
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