Teacher Exchange Rate: When the price is too high

If you made a successful transition from the classroom, my hats off to you.

For those of us still (barely) holding on, my hats off to you too.

I know I am not alone in thinking about what I sacrificed, or exchanged, to become better at my craft, pre-pandemic…right?

Bathroom breaks at the necessary time. This is especially true for people with a uterus. I shudder to think of the longterm damage of prolonging bathroom breaks.

Lunch breaks where you actually chewed and savored your food. Drinking water to keep yourself hydrated.

Planning periods where you actually reflected on what went right/wrong with a lesson and making adjustments for the next day.

Staying after school (contractual time) to grade, send parent emails, make copies, update digital lessons/platforms, etc. instead of resting, exercising, reading or hanging with family.

Those were the things most of us did before the pandemic to ensure we were prepared for our students each day.

What’s changed? In addition to all of the above-mentioned, we are now doing our best to avoid getting Covid. Scouring the internet for legitimate and reasonably priced KN95 masks. Or, playing a virtual game of Parkour to find tests or testing sites after working in places with lax masking policies (or none at all).

But what other minefields are we navigating?

The angry ‘Keep the Schools Open’ groups. The even agrier ‘My body, my choice’ anti-maskers. A ban on something that’s not even taught in K-12 schools. Books by authors from marginalized groups being removed from school libraries.

Some us are navigating something else, something much less visible unless you spend time in online spaces. In essence, our personal safety and First Amendnent rights are threatened almost daily. Misinformed and hate-mongering conservatives spend countless hours pouring over social media feeds of teachers, professors, authors, etc…(likely, while earning salary from some corporation for something else) in hopes of finding something to prove we are racist (which, BTW, is not possible for Black people). If you don’t believe me, go read an account of any Indigenous, Black, Hispanic or Asian person who has spent any amount of time in this country. These concerned citizens are desperately clinging to any hope of finding something to prove we are indoctrinating kids or teaching them things that might hurt their feelings. If I had the power to indoctrinate anyone, I’d use it to get them to wear masks and wash their hands.

We are being told, vis a vis lack of support, to stop speaking the truth.

We are being told to leave our identities at home.

We are being told not to interact on social media, unless we stick to posting pictures of cats and Pinterest-esque classrooms.

When did you notice the price for your silence, via complicity, was too high?

Was it when you started losing sleep?

Gaining/losing weight?

Or was it when you noticed that even on a good night’s sleep, you still didn’t have the energy or usual excitement to face the day?

If anyone is going to demand my silence, I will politely tell them that they do not have the financial range to make such demands. A $20k salary cut, lackluster benefits, and cold weather are not the best bargaining tools when demanding someone temper how they interact online. Or how they teach.

They cannot afford my silence.