I would say I don’t have a lot of faith that we will do everything necessary. I think especially because we’re seeing a lot of push from the national level and then individual people, parents saying, you know, we need to get our kids back to school so that we can get back to work or they need to be back in school so that they’re learning. So I’m worried that because of that big public push that there may be corners that are cut, that we may not have all of the PPE that we need to be able to do our job safely.
Because of the nature of my job, as a speech language pathologist, I’m not in a classroom with students. I’m working one on one or in small groups of students. And I imagine that even if students are back in school face to face, there will be different ways for us. For those specialists to work with students that wouldn’t necessarily be face to face. So I’m a little bit less concerned for myself, but I’m definitely concerned for the classroom teachers.
My district was a little bit different because we have a lot of families who have high poverty. So a lot of families don’t have access to the technology that they need to do online learning. So my district made the decision to not actually continue with online learning, but to have kind of optional learning opportunities so that those families who could participate could participate. But nobody was really going to get left behind if they couldn’t participate. So I did not have a lot of students who participated in those optional learning opportunities. But for sure, there was for me, there was a big learning curve of learning the technology of how and to try to get as many of my students involved as possible with whatever whether it’s over the phone or sending them paper packets or, you know, however we can get them involved.
I found that some of the students were using the mom’s phone and that was really the only option. Maybe there was a tablet, but a lot of them didn’t have a laptop. Some families don’t have access to the Internet at all. If you have a family where they’ve got two or three kids and the only way to get online is one phone or one tablet, one kid can do that at a time. They’re not able to participate in the full school day.
That is absolutely one of my concerns that the schools that I work in are high poverty. They’re the ones who don’t have access to either the district materials or even things that their parents can provide, whether they may not have as many books at home or opportunities to get online and do other learning activities. So that’s one way they’re already behind because of the high poverty. But then also all of the students that I work with have disabilities. So they, by definition, are already behind where their peers are. So they’re losing out in both of those aspects.
I’ve definitely heard a lot of concerns from parents, whether it’s parents of the students that I work with or just, you know, on social media that, you know, their child has an IEP and, you know, the IEP (Individualized Education Plan) hasn’t really been met. It’s a legal document that basically states where that student is performing and what services and accommodations they need to be able to access their education. But as the people who are providing the services, our hands were really tied because there wasn’t a way to provide that service. They’re already behind and they’ve lost another three months of the last school year. Looking forward into the next school year, how much time are they going to lose?
One of the things that I did this summer is that I bought a mask that has a clear spot around the mouth. So I bought one of those so that if I am working face to face with students, they’ll be able to see my mouth because that is an important part of my job; I’m working on speech. So they need to be able to see what I’m doing. I’m hopeful that with my job, since I see students for half an hour, then go see another group of students that I have a little bit of a break, that I could step outside and take my mask off before I put it back on. Maybe I’ll be providing my services online so I won’t even need to be face to face with students and won’t have to wear a mask. But that’s several for teachers. That is a big concern that they will be in the classroom with the students all day. They’ll need to be wearing their masks all day. Whether the students will need to be wearing masks also is another concern.
I see teachers as being frontline workers. I think hopefully one of the things that people have learned from this experience is how important teachers are. Initially when parents were having to homeschool or support their child’s education at home and I saw a lot of comments about how difficult that was. So at that point, I felt like teachers were getting a lot of respect, at least from parents who are realizing how difficult their job was and how important their job is. And I hope that continues moving forward. When we realize that getting the economy back really does depend on teachers at this point, that teachers have a very important role for children, but also for the economy. So hopefully people can respect teachers and pay them what they’re worth.