I walk around our local headland as part of my walk most days; it’s one of the most northerly points in Northern Ireland. And just now, it feels as though we’re all standing on the edge of a precipice. On my local headland, thrift or sea pinks are blooming in relief against the cliffs, towards the sea. The chance of escaping from lockdown soon, as the spring blooms into early summer, is dizzyingly tempting. But it’s scary as well. Just like at a real cliff edge, a false step could be fatal for so many.
As a teacher, of course, I’m wondering, like so many people, when (and how) the schools will be instructed to reopen. Of course, I have to qualify that by saying that the schools aren’t really closed: many are open every day for the children of key workers, and stayed open in that capacity through the Easter break. Online learning is alive and reasonably well from most teachers’ homes – whether it’s Google Classroom, Loom plus Powerpoint, Zoom lessons, or home learning packs. Very few schools are providing nothing at all, and most teachers are doing an awful lot. Most of us are putting in hours which run far beyond the usual 9-3:30 classroom day, and because we’re sitting at our computers, many of us probably don't even notice when the hometime bell would normally sound.
And yet we’re being lambasted on social media and in some parts of the press. Former Head of Ofsted Sir Michael Wilshaw, interviewed on BBC Newsnight, commented that teachers should expect to be working evenings and weekends once schools reopen, right through to Christmas, to make good the shortfall incurred during lockdown. Sir Andrew Adonis, Labour peer and former Secretary of State for Education from quite some years ago, gave teachers a resounding ‘not good enough’ on Twitter, saying that he was reporting us to Amanda Spielman, current Head of Ofsted, for not providing sufficient online learning and resources to our hopelessly neglected students. His complaints, predictably, drew much consternation and anger among the lively education presence on social media, but it fuelled the fires of teacher-hate which survive online as well. ‘What are teachers doing at home on full pay?’ asked Rupert Evelyn, ITV News correspondent for Wales and the West of England. At least 20% more than the workers on the furlough scheme, replied one detached and witty teacher, but the tweet drew vitriol as well as ardent and justified anger and self-defence.
I was brought up to respect ‘the papers’, to admire the work of journalists and assume there was some integrity in what they did. Just recently, I’ve lost respect for so many journalists and even for ‘the papers’ overall. And that has been focused most of all on the announcement of Sunday’s headlines late each Saturday night.
A few weeks ago, the Sunday Times was trumpeting a return to school for everyone (social distancing be damned) throughout the UK on 11th May. This weekend, the clarion call came from the Sunday Telegraph, that primary schools would open on 1st June. Both (and these are just examples of many papers’ ‘exclusives’) came without a legitimate government announcement, but claimed to be backed by ‘government sources’. Several papers have also claimed that they know with absolute certainty that schools will be ordered to work through the summer holidays, to make good the work that students have missed. While teachers have clearly been, obviously, sitting at home on full salary baking banana bread or sourdough, binge-watching Netflix and growing out their greying roots, or whatever it is teachers do when they’re not at work.
These headlines spike anxiety in all school staff and very many parents, just in the same way that opening schools too soon risks a second spike of the Covid-19 virus. Emerging data shows that Danish schools’ reopening led to the crucial R level rising back above 1 almost straight away, even though this move had been held by those clamouring for a swift reopening of UK schools as the ultimate model. But when asked about this risk at the government Press Briefing on Friday, Secretary of State for Health Matt Hancock merely said that there was little evidence that children spread the virus among themselves. Let’s leave the selfish teachers out of this for a second and remember that children tend to go home to parents, grandparents and so on, and could pass the virus to them. Once we’ve considered the customers, then let’s remind ourselves that schools are full of grown-ups too: teachers, classroom assistants, admin staff, canteen staff, supervisors, cleaners… and what about the people driving packed school buses? Do these lives count as well, or are school staff just so reviled by now that really, it would be a blessing if we just became more data for 5pm some afternoon?
A columnist in the Daily Telegraph wrote about schools reopening, just after what would normally have been the Easter break, with the headline: ‘Teachers need to have some courage and get back into the classroom.’ She didn’t respond to the tweet I sent her, to ask if she was writing this from her safely isolated home or from an office packed with up to 30 people in one medium-sized room… but I know what I suspect the true answer would be. Others have said we’re selfish. Feckless. Holiday-grabbing. Lazy. And when it comes to the predicted or calculated grades for the students in the three examination years: don’t even get me started on what I’ve read online about teacher prejudice, favouritism, racism, class discrimination, bowing to parent pressure and lazy, unethical procedures.
None of this sounds much like the two-teacher household I’m living in, where we often forget to take breaks because we’re so busy with work, Google Meet sessions, marking, planning and so on. None of it resembles any of my colleagues or any colleagues I know from other schools. When I peer at social media on my computer or phone, now having to put on my glasses to do so, because that’s what 10 hours of online teaching for however many weeks it’s been has done to my eyesight, it’s not pleasant to feel bullied. I would wager the 20% of my salary, which I’m clearly not doing enough to earn, that many other teachers feel exactly the same way. The allegation about grade prediction and rank ordering does not sound remotely like the sleepless nights, the hours, days of data analysis (and no, I haven’t been doing that when I was meant to be engaging with my students, that came in the evenings, at Easter and at weekends), the meetings, discussions, emails, opinions… judge me whatever way you want, if you’re reading this; whatever grades my students get in August, my department members and I will certainly have considered every single student properly and predicted as ethically as anyone possibly could.
So what do I think about schools reopening, then? After all that ranting?
I think the dates the papers and the tweeters are demanding are too soon. I admire the decisive step taken in the Republic of Ireland to restart the clock in September, with robust online learning in the meantime. I love school, but I don’t want to risk my life (and the lives of my elderly family members) by going back too soon. I don’t want to risk the lives of my colleagues, students and their families either. I know it’s not as simple as all that: schools reopening will assist the economy and personal livelihoods in letting Mums and Dads get back to work. But restarting the economy can’t be at the price of lives and health.
But what would I know.
I didn’t realise, when I went into teaching, that I was resigning myself to a lifetime of ‘could do better’ comments from outside. Teachers tend to rate themselves this way most weeks anyhow: we’re always looking at how to move on from what we’ve done, get better results, better behaviour, better care of our students, better staff development. But this? This is like the sadistic old-fashioned PE teacher, screaming at the unfit child struggling to run laps of the hockey pitch to go faster, better, harder. All the time. Even at almost midnight on a Saturday. I didn’t realise that, in being vigilant about bullying among my students, I’d also have to watch my back about being bullied, along with every teaching colleague, by people whom I’d never know or meet.
Ahead of the roadmap, I have never felt so deflated or so anxious. The sensible part of me knows that I haven’t short-changed any of the students in my care; my online teaching has been fine, I’ve kept in touch by email and private message, I’ve encouraged, praised, cajoled, supported. I’ve kept in touch every day with colleagues. I’ve done my best. I’ve faced the vitriol with other teachers where all other key workers seem to get applause.
Whatever is next, I hope the people making the decisions have a better view of teachers than some of the people in the papers and on social media. I hope they’ll remember that our lives, and our families’ lives, count too.
In the meantime, we’ll just have to wait on that precipice a little longer.
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