In 10 years of teaching, I have seen Texas enact policies that have eroded families’ trust in public education. Time and time again, Texas officials have shown us that they do not care about the students they serve.
COVID delivered us another knockout blow. Texas Education Agency decided not to fund the last 12 weeks of the school year, despite the fact that schools immediately shifted to teaching online. To Commissioner of Education Mike Morath, no teaching was occurring because there was no STAAR. Since then, TEA has announced that we’ll be returning in August, despite the explosion of COVID-19 cases in Austin and the lack of guidelines for how to do so safely.
Let’s step aside from that outrage, and admit this: Teaching online is not comparable to teaching face-to-face. While there are some students who can succeed remotely – who have the motivation to do work, parents who are able to support them, and the academic skills to succeed independently – they are in the minority. What about the others?
The moment my students walk into my classroom, I know who’s having a bad day. I know who needs a hug, who needs me to back off. I know who needs to eat something and who’s distracted; I know who had an argument at lunch and who’s struggling at home and who needs me to text their therapist.
Teaching is an inherently social act. It’s not done effectively over a screen. As I move through the lesson, gestures, looks, movements, all carry meaning. Where should I stand? When should I stop talking? When should I be tough? When should I show emotion? These are skills that have taken years to develop; they cannot immediately transfer to online.
Effective teaching is reciprocal. It requires students to feel safe and empowered to share their thinking, discuss the content, compare and contrast ideas, some of which may be uncomfortable. How do students feel safe to do that when they are all ensconced in their homes? How can they access the community of a classroom when none of us are in it?
Let’s say that somehow we could fix all that: We could take the delicate, social, nuanced art of teaching and shift it to an online model. What about students who can’t access that? What about students whose parents work and cannot remind them to log on? What about the students who needed one-on-one support in the classroom? What about the students who will simply disappear if we convert to distance learning?
We have two unassailable facts. First, the distance learning model is not as effective as in-person teaching. Second, unless some extraordinary developments are made in the next eight weeks, we will not be able to return to physical classrooms in August without putting every single Texas child at risk.
How did we get here?
The past few months have been devastating for everyone. COVID has been allowed to run rampant. Our leaders did nothing to prevent the spread.
As a result of Gov. Greg Abbott’s waffling, his fear to take a declarative stance against COVID, education will have irreparably changed in the fall. As a result of his policies, and Morath’s, I am hurt. Families are hurt. Students are hurt.
Every time the state of Texas has eroded trust between families and schools, I have been there. Neither Abbott nor Morath have ever stepped into a classroom to teach, nor have they ever needed to build relationships with students and families. Neither of them ever have to sit down with angry families and attempt to rebuild trust when those families have very little reason to believe that we have their child’s best interests at heart. Neither of them have to bear the brunt of families’ absolutely justifiable anger at the way the system has failed their child.
But schools do.
Teachers do.
I do.
I would like to know why this is acceptable. How this is normal. Most of all, I would like to know how I look my students and their parents in the eye and tell them that they’ll be okay.
Alyssa Potasznik is a special education teacher in Austin.
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See related letter to the editor from Frank P. Ward III, Director of Media Relations at Texas Education Agency.
This article appears in July 3 • 2020.