69ý

Opinion
Teaching Profession Opinion

‘I Didn’t Hug My Children for 3 Months’

When COVID-19 rates rose, a teacher’s sacrifices to stay in the classroom didn’t seem to count
By Lora Bartlett — August 02, 2021 2 min read
Conceptual image of teacher voice
  • Save to favorites
  • Print
Email Copy URL

Rachel Larsen taught in person at her rural high school in Iowa all last fall. It was even harder and more stressful for Larsen than for other teachers in her district because her husband is in an extreme high-risk health category.

Determined not to bring COVID-19 home, at school Larsen (not her real name because she was promised anonymity in my research project) masked and shielded-up, installed plastic screens between seats, and altered her instruction to minimize student interaction. At home, she was equally careful. She isolated from her husband and school-aged children, changing clothes after school and restricting herself to a separate part of the house. She was always at least six feet away from them. For three months, she did not hug her children.

At the start of school, things went better than she had expected. Teaching in a mask with barriers between students was awkward, but community transmission rates stayed low, and few at school got sick. On the other hand, Larsen had to redesign all her lessons because the groupwork she liked to emphasize didn’t seem safe in the new physical reality of her classroom with students separated by thin plastic barriers but still very close to one another.

“I tried a lot of things,” she said. “I tried for a while putting them in [digital] breakout rooms, but they were in my classroom on their computer at their desk with headphones. It just didn’t work.”

Unhappily, she turned to a lecture format. “It’s not my style. But … I could do it.”

Adding to the strain of preparing for the four different courses she taught, a post-Halloween COVID-19 spike changed her feeling about the safety of the school environment. Suddenly, she knew a dozen people with COVID-19, absenteeism at school rocketed up, and her family was more at risk.

When I would come home in the evening, I'd change in the garage and put my clothes into a plastic bin. I'd go upstairs and shower and then I would remain in my bedroom. ... We would occasionally eat supper in the garage together, where I could blow [out the air with] a fan.

Larsen was appalled when in November, just as the community approached the transmission rate the board had set as the trigger to shift schools from all in-person teaching to some students online and some in person, the board switched to a higher transmission-rate threshold. Larsen and others favored the hybrid approach because a smaller number of students in the classroom would allow for safer distances between them.

The board’s rationale made their change worse. As Larsen recalls, a member of the school board asked rhetorically at the public board meeting how many teachers were going to big family get-togethers for Thanksgiving. And yet, he went on, teachers are claiming that they’re scared of COVID-19.

At that point, Larsen had been carrying out her elaborate protocols of changing clothes and isolating at home for three months. She said the board member’s remark and the board’s decision disregarded the sacrifices she had made to keep teaching.

Larsen took a leave of absence soon after, and at the end of the school year, she resigned. She is currently unsure if she will ever return to teaching.

More About the Series

Opinion Bartlett1 KNOW THYSELF LINCOLN
Lincoln Agnew for Education Week
Teaching Profession Opinion What We Learned About Teachers During the Pandemic: A Series
In this series, a researcher shows how teachers went from making school happen to having little say in planning for an unprecedented year. View the full series and the researcher’s methodology here.
July 19, 2021

Related Tags:

Events

This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
Artificial Intelligence Webinar
AI and Educational Leadership: Driving Innovation and Equity
Discover how to leverage AI to transform teaching, leadership, and administration. Network with experts and learn practical strategies.
Content provided by 
This content is provided by our sponsor. It is not written by and does not necessarily reflect the views of Education Week's editorial staff.
Sponsor
School Climate & Safety Webinar
Investing in Success: Leading a Culture of Safety and Support
Content provided by 
Assessment K-12 Essentials Forum Making Competency-Based Learning a Reality
Join this free virtual event to hear from educators and experts working to implement competency-based education.

EdWeek Top School Jobs

Teacher Jobs
Search over ten thousand teaching jobs nationwide — elementary, middle, high school and more.
Principal Jobs
Find hundreds of jobs for principals, assistant principals, and other school leadership roles.
Administrator Jobs
Over a thousand district-level jobs: superintendents, directors, more.
Support Staff Jobs
Search thousands of jobs, from paraprofessionals to counselors and more.

Read Next

Teaching Profession Opinion Teacher Contracts Need to Change. And It’s Not Just About Money
If we want to retain effective teaches, we should increase teacher compensation—but we need to do it strategically.
Karen Hawley Miles & David Rosenberg
4 min read
Final Piece Of The Puzzle. Two people about to shake hands over trading a jigsaw puzzle piece needed for the solution.
iStock/Getty Images + Education Week
Teaching Profession The State of Teaching Teachers Say the Public Views Them Negatively
The perception coincides with teachers' low levels of job satisfaction.
2 min read
survey teachers static
via Canva
Teaching Profession Download Play Teacher TV Bingo and Spot All the Teacher Tropes
It's trope bingo; spot the common (and often annoying) mischaracterizations.
Image of bingo cards, a remote control, and a television.
via Canva
Teaching Profession Fictional Teachers on TV Can Skew Public Perception
Media tropes about teachers can give incoming educators and the public unrealistic expectations about the profession.
5 min read
Chris Perfetti, Lisa Ann Walter, Quinta Brunson, and Tyler James Williams play teachers on the ABC sitcom “Abbott Elementary.” Teachers say the show resonates with their experience.
Chris Perfetti, Lisa Ann Walter, Quinta Brunson, and Tyler James Williams play teachers on the ABC sitcom “Abbott Elementary.” Teachers say the show resonates with their experience, but researchers say many other portrayals of teachers are flawed.
Gilles Mingasson/ABC