IS POSSIBLE TO SAFELY REOPEN SCHOOLS

As a parent of two kids and a middle School Science Educator in an inner-city school, I do understand how important is to keep students in the classroom. Students, especially the lower grades, are developing social skills, routines, and basic academic skills. The main issue is how we can safely re-open schools. Before the Covid-19 pandemic, I had over 30-35 students in each of my classes (150 students total) and most of our teachers struggle every day to have the essential equipment to teach our kids. Most teachers have to spend a substantial part of their earning to buy school supplies, teaching materials, and other resources to support teaching and learning. Furthermore, teachers have to spend extra hours planning for instruction (two different teaching environment), identifying and preparing themselves to apply modifications and best practices, and contacting parents. How school districts and teachers will balance in-person instruction, maintain social distancing, and other health practices.

The CDC guidelines to reopen schools require social distancing, small groups, minimize personal contact and time of interaction, minimize exposure in a close environment, and minimize student transitions. If we follow the recommendations place by the Scientific community, students will need to stay in the same classroom, no team or group work, no recess, and no sharing equipment. In reality, you are taking away all the strategies that support social interactions and a sense of community. As an Educator, I am going to be teaching in a Science class that does not allow interactions or group work. The reality of a Science classroom is that most of the laboratory experiences require group work due to the social skills that need to develop and the number of resources that we have in the classroom. In reality, I don't have materials for each student but I group them so all can share materials, work collaboratively, and experience a hands-on inquiry experience.

We all know that the new normal will be completely different from what we use to, and that includes schools. Teachers, in places that they will provide hybrid education, have to prepare the in-person lesson and learning activities and online instruction (teaching materials and strategies are different). Besides, we have to deal with the school reality that includes a lack of resources, changes in protocols, and support. As a teacher and a single mother, I will be exposing myself and my kids to a virus that can make kids extremely sick. Right now, we are observing a lack of compassion towards the school community. A few questions that still unanswered by academic leadership are what it's going to happen or what protocols teachers and staff have to use if we have a positive Covid-19 kid in the classroom? Are we going to have back up teachers or staff to support teaching and learning? How school districts are going to monitor students (testing)? Are we going to have additional personal or resources to support our student's social-emotional development?

In middle school and High School students move from one to another (they don't stay in the same class during the school day). In this environment is not possible to keep students in one place all the time. How middle school and high school teachers will minimize their risk when every hour they will be in contact with a different group of students. We have to implement creative, educated, and compassionate strategies to ensure adequate instruction, support, and minimize exposure.

Sometimes adults make decisions based on their routines and not what is the best interest of their kids. As a single mother and a teacher, I do understand you have to choose between working or supervising and supporting your child's education. For working parents, it's difficult to keep kids at home. Teachers want to go to the classrooms and interact with their students. We love them! Because we love them, we are concern about their health. As a teacher and parent, I am terrified if one of my kids or one of my students gets a virus and ends in an ICU or recovery but with long term damage caused by the virus. Is not our responsibility as an adult to protect our kids? Unfortunately, some adults are not thinking about that, they just want to treat this virus like the flu and go back to normal (their routine).

All school community wants to go back but is scary to know that leaders are not making decisions based on data (something that I teach my students from day 1), health guidelines and how the virus works, infections rates, and community spread. We close the schools with 3,000 cases but we are re-open them with 60,000 new cases a day.To safely re-open schools, we need resources, training, testing ( all students and staff), adequate PPE, mental-health services, and lower the number of new cases for at least 14 days.