Mrs. Amy Foley is a teacher at Mishawaka High School. She shared the writing below with the School Board Members this week. I commend her for speaking up on behalf of teachers and their well-being. Whether you are a teacher, a health care worker, a parent, or a student - please give yourself grace and time for self care. I don’t think we have ever needed it more. ~Roxy

Change (Amy Foley)

A couple of weeks ago, a dear friend of mine asked me how the school year was going.  I told her that I was very excited to be working with my students again, but that this year was horribly difficult, incredibly exhausting, and that I didn’t know how we -- teachers -- were going to make it through the year.  She -- being an engineer and not a teacher-- asked a simple question. Why?  Why is it that bad?  She wasn’t doubting my statement, but rather was trying to understand the trauma I was describing, particularly in light of the fact that her own children’s teachers still seemed so happy and cheerful.  

I struggled to answer her question.  I struggled to help someone not in the profession understand.  After a very, very long time spent considering her simple question, I think I have a simple answer:  Everything about my job has changed.  Everything.  

Let’s start with the beginning of the school day. Students enter our classrooms earlier than before.  It isn’t a great deal earlier, but it is earlier nonetheless. A few minutes less time for us to center ourselves in preparation for a busy day, a few minutes less to push aside our personal fears and worries, a few minutes less to slip into character to greet our students with the joy, happiness and enthusiasm they deserve. Once students enter the classroom, many of our elementary teachers begin the day with potential increased exposure to COVID as students eat breakfast unmasked.  Instead of beginning the day with clever activities and engaging experiences, they wipe up spills, clean up crumbs, and re-sanitize a classroom that was not designed to be used as a cafeteria.

Breakfast finished, we now begin the learning process. At all grade levels, extra time invested in keeping passing periods, lunches, recesses and physical space safe has eaten into our instructional time and dramatically reduced our preparation time. We have fewer minutes to prepare lessons and fewer instructional minutes to work with students who are already behind in their growth due to the community lockdown in the spring. In education we devote a lot of our precious planning time to “chunking”:  making sure we break down concepts and skills into pieces small enough for the students to process but large enough to challenge them.  With our instructional time shorter and our instructional environment radically transformed, we have had to chunk material in ways we never have before to fill in learning gaps and move our students forward the best we can.  Our virtual teachers must figure out how to do all of that through a computer screen, often with students who can barely read or have difficulty processing. Our secondary teachers must figure out how to do that in not one but two meaningful ways -- at the same time -- for those students in person with us and those online with us. For our elementary teachers with in person students they must do this while maintaining social distancing requirements, routinely sanitizing, and monitoring the health of their students.

The simplest activities of our day are no longer simple. At the secondary level attendance is no longer a matter of marking Kelly absent. Instead, I must mark -- for every student -- whether he or she is with me in person, with me online, or absent entirely.  A 10 second task now takes a couple of minutes. If I want Johnny and Sally to work together on an activity because they are both struggling with the same concept, I have to document the date, location and duration of time that they sat together in case we need to contact trace. A student needs to borrow a pencil or a calculator. Here, borrow mine….but I need to sanitize it first. Students no longer turn in their papers. They take a picture, save it as a pdf, then upload into Canvas. It takes me three clicks on my computer to then access it and another two clicks to offer comments. I must find a way to teach hands on science to students participating virtually when the only scientific equipment I can count on them having at home is a clock. How do I do that?? I must be able to monitor, engage and support students on a Google Meet and in my room at the same time. How do I do that?

And what of the whole child? One defining characteristic of SCM is its emphasis on the Whole Child. When we are teaching students, we are deliberately and intentionally trying to address their social and emotional needs along with their academic needs. But how do I do that now? No high fives, no pat on the back, no hand on the shoulder in support. No opportunity for a personal conversation with a student because they are on a Google Meet and a dozen other students are listening in. I have had four students lose family members this year, and realized with horror that I could only support them through emails. It is harder to read body language when they are masked or out of focus on a camera. Harder to tell when they are having a bad day or needing a sympathetic ear. My heart aches as I watch my online teenage students sit in dark rooms, huddled under blankets, sinking deeper and deeper into depression and anxiety before my very eyes.   

These challenges have taken their toll in a devastating way on your teachers. Most hold it together until the last of their students have left the room, and then dissolve into tears on a daily basis. Most of your teachers have seen their mental and physical health deteriorate at an alarming rate. Depression and anxiety are rampant among our ranks, as are many other stress related illnesses such as high blood pressure and chronic headaches. I was told by a colleague familiar with the horrors of PTSD that he could see the same haunting symptoms in the teachers as they left the building at the end of the day. Almost every teacher speaks of trying to keep their head above water. I have frankly given up on the idea that I can possibly stay above water and instead am praying that my oxygen tank will not run out.  

We love our students. We love our profession. For us it is a vocation, not a job, and for many of us who are spiritually inclined we see it as a divine calling. But we are in serious trouble. We cannot sustain the status quo for much longer and are begging for help. We will be part of the solution, we will work together with you to find a way to ease the burden, but we MUST do something. We have already lost good teachers who have walked away rather than go on like this.  We can’t afford to lose any more. I have lately taken to sharing another analogy with colleagues. We are always putting kids first and doing what is best for our students. But those of you who have ever been in an airplane know that when the airplane is in distress, the safety procedure calls for adults with children to put on their own oxygen mask first, and then take care of the children. Ladies and gentlemen, it is time for us to give our teachers permission to put on their oxygen masks.