Course: PUSH Weekly Assignment: May 26-May 31stTeachers: Memory, Ceja, and Ruddick

Contact Information:Mrs. Memory: memoryl@luhsd.net or call me on Google Voice: 925-385-6476 Mrs. Ceja: cejas@luhsd.netMrs. Ruddick: Ruddickj@luhsd.net

Zoom Office Hours: Ask your teacher when they are holding office hours. Check your email for zoom invites!

Remind 101: Check with your teacher for the code!

Weekly Text/s:

Video: Blended Learning & Flipped Classroom, Osmosis, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paQCE58334M

Considerations for Schools, https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/schools.html

We Cannot Return To Campus This Fall, Harley Litzelman, https://medium.com/@harley.litzelman/we-cannot-return-to-campus-this-fall-1ad91b8a65e0

Weekly Assignment:

Congratulations! We have done an entire quarter distance learning. For this last assignment, we, your PUSH teachers, want to hear from you about your distance learning experience. Please take the time to read the articles and watch the video. Do not skip this step! This could be our reality come next school year.

There are three parts to this assignment:

1. Read the articles and watch the video above for background information: Resources to help give perspective to our situation. Full articles in the links to the resources on the title page, or at the end of the document.

2. Survey: This will be collected by all PUSH classes to create a report on your experience and may be shared with others.

3. Design Your Ideal School: Short answer essay question. Please use at least one resource given to support your position. This should be a detailed paragraph or multiple paragraphs to fully explain your answer.

Submission Instructions: Email your completed worksheet as an attachment or print the document, fill it out, scan, and then send it to your teacher.

Due Date: Sunday, May 31st by 5pm (Monday is a holiday)

Part 2: SurveyPlease check/circle/BOLD/highlight the answers that best fit your experience. There is a place to give anecdotes (a short story explaining your answer) to give detail to you answer if you choose to.

1. How was your experience distance learning compared to the classroom experience?

1, Terrible 2, Struggled 3, No Difference 4, Better 5, GreatGive an anecdote (a short story explaining):

2. What do you MISS about not being in the ‘traditional school’ setting?

Daily structure Social interactions with teachers Social interactions with school staff Social interactions with students within the

classroom Social interactions during free time (lunch) Club meetings

Student Body events (rallies, music at lunch) Group work in the classroom Studying with others around Assignments with specific equipment Other:

Give an anecdote (a short story explaining):

3. What was your best experience distance learning?

Access to curriculum Availability to create own timeline for work No need to travel

Dress code Control of your environment Teacher / Student communication

Give an anecdote (a short story explaining):

4. What was your worst experience during distance learning? What was your biggest challenge?

Access to curriculum No exterior timeline for work

No change in environment Teacher / Student communication

Give an anecdote (a short story explaining):

5. What does your distance learning academic schedule look like?Daily

Work just in morning (7am-12) Work just in the afternoon (12-4pm) Work just in the evening (4pm-8pm)

Work just at night (8pm-12) Work randomly throughout the day. Work all day until it is done.

Weekly

All classes done early in week(Monday – Wednesday)

All classes done late in the week (Wednesday – Friday)

All classes done over the weekend(Sat – Sun)

Evenly spread out (a class or two a day)

Give an anecdote (a short story explaining):

6. Did you ever communicate with your teachers beyond just turning in assignments? Yes No

a. Was that more or less then when you were in the classroom? Same More Less

Give an anecdote (a short story explaining):

7. Did you ever participate in clubs during distance learning? Yes No

a. Was that more or less then when you were in the classroom? Same More Less

Give an anecdote (a short story explaining):

8. How was teacher/student commutation during DL vs in the classroom?

1, Terrible: no communication; no feedback, no answers to questions

2, Spotty: some communication, little feedback, some answers to questions

3, No Difference, same as we would be in class

4, Better, more communication, clear feedback, answered most questions eventually

5, Clear and consistent, constant communication, clear feedback, answered all questions quickly

Did it depend on the teacher? Yes NoExplain in detail by class name (not teacher)

9. How was admin/student communication?

1, Terrible, no communication, no direction

2, Spotty, some communication, some direction

3, No Difference, same as we would be in school

4, Better, more communication, clear directions

5, Clear and consistent, constant communication, answered all questions quickly

Did it depend on the department? Yes NoDid it depend on the person? Yes NoGive an anecdote (a short story explaining):

Part 3: Design Your Own SchoolWith the possibility of shelter in place restrictions being lifted, the question for our district is how to safely open our schools. You have had the opportunity to experience both in person instruction and distance learning. There are benefits and disadvantages to both systems. We would like to pose the question to you: if you were to reopen the schools, how would you do it? How would you design a school to be safe for students, staff and the community at large?

Or:

On the flip side of this, if we must continue distance learning into the next school year, what would an online school look like? What lessons have we learned from this experience that we could use to improve this type of learning? What worked? What did not work? What would be expected of teachers? Students? What would grading look like?

Using your reflections from the survey and the background resources given, design your ideal high school.

Discuss the daily and weekly schedule and class sizes in regard to social distancing.

Discuss the sharing of public spaces and materials.

Discuss different methods of learning. Use and site at least one resource you are

referring to in your discussions.

Part 1: Background InformationReference

Video: Blended Learning & Flipped Classroom by Osmosis https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paQCE58334M

Articles:

Considerations for Schoolshttps://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/community/schools-childcare/schools.html

Updated May 19, 2020

As some communities in the United States open K-12 schools, CDC offers the following considerations for ways in which schools can help protect students, teachers, administrators, and staff and slow the spread of COVID-19. Schools can determine, in collaboration with state and local health officials to the extent possible, whether and how to implement these considerations while adjusting to meet the unique needs and circumstances of the local community. Implementation should be guided by what is feasible, practical, acceptable, and tailored to the needs of each community. School-based health facilities may refer to CDC’s Guidance for U.S. Healthcare Facilities and may find it helpful to reference the Ten   Ways Healthcare Systems Can Operate Effectively During the COVID-19 Pandemic. These considerations are meant to supplement—not replace—any state, local, territorial, or tribal health and safety laws, rules, and regulations with which schools must comply.

Guiding Principles to Keep in Mind

The more people a student or staff member interacts with, and the longer that interaction, the higher the risk of COVID-19 spread. The risk of COVID-19 spread increases in school settings as follows:

Lowest Risk: Students and teachers engage in virtual-only classes, activities, and events. More Risk: Small, in-person classes, activities, and events. Groups of students stay together and with

the same teacher throughout/across school days and groups do not mix. Students remain at least 6 feet apart and do not share objects (e.g., hybrid virtual and in-person class structures, or staggered/rotated scheduling to accommodate smaller class sizes).

Highest Risk: Full sized, in-person classes, activities, and events. Students are not spaced apart, share classroom materials or supplies, and mix between classes and activities.

COVID-19 is mostly spread by respiratory droplets released when people talk, cough, or sneeze. It is thought that the virus may spread to hands from a contaminated surface and then to the nose or mouth, causing infection. Therefore, personal prevention practices (such as handwashing, staying home when sick) and environmental cleaning and disinfection are important principles that are covered in this document. Fortunately, there are a number of actions school administrators can take to help lower the risk of COVID-19 exposure and spread during school sessions and activities.

Promoting Behaviors that Reduce Spread

Schools may consider implementing several strategies to encourage behaviors that reduce the spread of COVID-19.

Staying Home when Appropriate

Educate staff and families about when they/their child(ren) should stay home and when they can return to school.

o Actively encourage employees and students who are sick or who have recently had close contact with a person with COVID-19 to stay home. Develop policies that encourage sick employees and students to stay at home without fear of reprisal, and ensure employees, students, and students’ families are aware of these policies. Consider not having perfect attendance awards, not assessing schools based on absenteeism, and offering virtual learning and telework options, if feasible.

o Staff and students should stay home  if they have tested positive for or are showing COVID-19 symptoms.

o Staff and students who have recently had close contact with a person with COVID-19 should also stay home and monitor their health.

CDC’s criteria can help inform when employees should return to work:o If they have been sick with COVID-19 o If they have recently had close contact with a person with COVID-19

Hand Hygiene and Respiratory Etiquetteo Teach and reinforce handwashing with soap and water for at least 20 seconds and increase

monitoring to ensure adherence among students and staff. If soap and water are not readily available, hand sanitizer that contains at least 60%

alcohol can be used (for staff and older children who can safely use hand sanitizer).o Encourage staff and students to cover coughs and sneezes with a tissue. Used tissues should be

thrown in the trash and hands washed immediately with soap and water for at least 20 seconds. If soap and water are not readily available, hand sanitizer that contains at least 60%

alcohol can be used (for staff and older children who can safely use hand sanitizer).

Cloth Face Coveringso Teach and reinforce use of cloth face coverings. Face coverings may be challenging for students

(especially younger students) to wear in all-day settings such as school. Face coverings should be worn by staff and students (particularly older students) as feasible, and are most essential in times when physical distancing is difficult. Individuals should be frequently reminded not to touch the face covering and to wash their hands frequently. Information should be provided to staff, students, and students’ families on proper use, removal, and washing of cloth face coverings.

Note: Cloth face coverings should not be placed on: Children younger than 2 years old Anyone who has trouble breathing or is unconscious Anyone who is incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the cloth face

covering without assistanceo Cloth face coverings  are meant to protect other people in case the wearer is unknowingly

infected but does not have symptoms. Cloth face coverings are not surgical masks, respirators, or other medical personal protective equipment.

Adequate Supplieso Support healthy hygiene behaviors by providing adequate supplies, including soap, hand

sanitizer with at least 60 percent alcohol (for staff and older children who can safely use hand

sanitizer), paper towels, tissues, disinfectant wipes, cloth face coverings (as feasible) and no-touch/foot-pedal trash cans.

Signs and Messageso Post signs in highly visible locations (e.g., school entrances, restrooms) that promote everyday

protective measures pdf icon  and describe how to stop the spread pdf icon  of germs (such as by properly washing hands and properly wearing a cloth face covering image icon ).

o Broadcast regular announcements on reducing the spread of COVID-19 on PA systems.o Include messages (for example, videos) about behaviors that prevent the spread of COVID-19

when communicating with staff and families (such as on school websites, in emails, and on school social media accounts).

o Find free CDC print and digital resources on CDC’s communications resources   main page.

Maintaining Healthy Environments

Schools may consider implementing several strategies to maintain healthy environments.

Cleaning and Disinfectiono Clean and disinfect  frequently touched surfaces (e.g., playground equipment, door handles, sink

handles, drinking fountains) within the school and on school buses at least daily or between use as much as possible. Use of shared objects (e.g., gym or physical education equipment, art supplies, toys, games) should be limited when possible, or cleaned between use.

o If transport vehicles (e.g., buses) are used by the school, drivers should practice all safety actions and protocols as indicated for other staff (e.g., hand hygiene, cloth face coverings). To clean and disinfect school buses or other transport vehicles, see guidance for bus transit operators.

o Develop a schedule for increased, routine cleaning and disinfection.o Ensure safe and correct use and storage of cleaning and disinfection products external icon ,

including storing products securely away from children. Use products that meet EPA disinfection criteria external icon .

o Cleaning products should not be used near children, and staff should ensure that there is adequate ventilation when using these products to prevent children or themselves from inhaling toxic fumes.

Shared Objectso Discourage sharing of items that are difficult to clean or disinfect.o Keep each child’s belongings separated from others’ and in individually labeled containers,

cubbies, or areas.o Ensure adequate supplies to minimize sharing of high touch materials to the extent possible (e.g.,

assigning each student their own art supplies, equipment) or limit use of supplies and equipment by one group of children at a time and clean and disinfect between use.

o Avoid sharing electronic devices, toys, books, and other games or learning aids.

Ventilationo Ensure ventilation systems operate properly and increase circulation of outdoor air as much as

possible, for example by opening windows and doors. Do not open windows and doors if doing so poses a safety or health risk (e.g., risk of falling, triggering asthma symptoms) to children using the facility.

Water Systemso To minimize the risk of Legionnaire’s disease and other diseases associated with water, take

steps to ensure that all water systems and features (e.g., sink faucets, drinking fountains,

decorative fountains) are safe to use after a prolonged facility shutdown. Drinking fountains should be cleaned and sanitized, but encourage staff and students to bring their own water to minimize use and touching of water fountains.

Modified Layoutso Space seating/desks at least 6 feet apart when feasible.o Turn desks to face in the same direction (rather than facing each other), or have students sit on

only one side of tables, spaced apart.o Create distance between children on school buses (g., seat children one child per row, skip rows)

when possible.

Physical Barriers and Guideso Install physical barriers, such as sneeze guards and partitions, particularly in areas where it is

difficult for individuals to remain at least 6 feet apart (e.g., reception desks).o Provide physical guides, such as tape on floors or sidewalks and signs on walls, to ensure that

staff and children remain at least 6 feet apart in lines and at other times (e.g. guides for creating “one way routes” in hallways).

Communal Spaceso Close communal use shared spaces such as dining halls and playgrounds with shared playground

equipment if possible; otherwise, stagger use and clean and disinfect between use.o Add physical barriers, such as plastic flexible screens, between bathroom sinks especially when

they cannot be at least 6 feet apart.

Food Serviceo Have children bring their own meals as feasible, or serve individually plated meals in classrooms

instead of in a communal dining hall or cafeteria, while ensuring the safety of children with food allergies. pdf icon

o Use disposable food service items (e.g., utensils, dishes). If disposable items are not feasible or desirable, ensure that all non-disposable food service items are handled with gloves and washed with dish soap and hot water or in a dishwasher. Individuals should wash their hands after removing their gloves or after directly handling used food service items.

o If food is offered at any event, have pre-packaged boxes or bags for each attendee instead of a buffet or family-style meal. Avoid sharing food and utensils and ensure the safety of children with food allergies. pdf icon

Maintaining Healthy Operations

Schools may consider implementing several strategies to maintain healthy operations.

Protections for Staff and Children at Higher Risk for Severe Illness from COVID-19o Offer options for staff at higher risk for severe illness (including older adults and people of all

ages with certain underlying medical conditions) that limit their exposure risk (e.g., telework, modified job responsibilities that limit exposure risk).

o Offer options for students at higher risk of severe illness that limit their exposure risk (e.g., virtual learning opportunities).

o Consistent with applicable law, put in place policies to protect the privacy of people at higher risk for severe illness regarding underlying medical conditions.

Regulatory Awareness

o Be aware of local or state regulatory agency policies related to group gatherings to determine if events can be held.

Gatherings, Visitors, and Field Tripso Pursue virtual group events, gatherings, or meetings, if possible, and promote social distancing

of at least 6 feet between people if events are held. Limit group size to the extent possible.o Limit any nonessential visitors, volunteers, and activities involving external groups or

organizations as possible – especially with individuals who are not from the local geographic area (e.g., community, town, city, county).

o Pursue virtual activities and events in lieu of field trips, student assemblies, special performances, school-wide parent meetings, and spirit nights, as possible.

o Pursue options to convene sporting events and participation in sports activities in ways that minimizes the risk of transmission of COVID-19 to players, families, coaches, and communities.

Identifying Small Groups and Keeping Them Together (Cohorting)o Ensure that student and staff groupings are as static as possible by having the same group of

children stay with the same staff (all day for young children, and as much as possible for older children).

o Limit mixing between groups if possible.

Staggered Schedulingo Stagger arrival and drop-off times or locations by cohort or put in place other protocols to limit

contact between cohorts and direct contact with parents as much as possible.o When possible, use flexible worksites (e.g., telework) and flexible work hours (e.g., staggered

shifts) to help establish policies and practices for social distancing (maintaining distance of approximately 6 feet) between employees and others, especially if social distancing is recommended by state and local health authorities.

Designated COVID-19 Point of Contacto Designate a staff person to be responsible for responding to COVID-19 concerns (e.g., school

nurse). All school staff and families should know who this person is and how to contact them.

Participation in Community Response Effortso Consider participating with local authorities in broader COVID-19 community response efforts

(e.g., sitting on community response committees).

Communication Systemso Put systems in place for:

Consistent with applicable law and privacy policies, having staff and families self-report to the school if they or their student have symptoms of COVID-19, a positive test for COVID-19, or were exposed to someone with COVID-19 within the last 14 days in accordance with health information sharing regulations for COVID-19 external icon  (e.g. see “Notify Health Officials and Close Contacts” in the Preparing for When Someone Gets Sick section below) and other applicable federal and state laws and regulations relating to privacy and confidentiality, such as the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).

Notifying staff, families, and the public of school closures and any restrictions in place to limit COVID-19 exposure (e.g., limited hours of operation).

Leave (Time Off) Policies and Excused Absence Policies

o Implement flexible sick leave policies and practices that enable staff to stay home when they are sick, have been exposed, or caring for someone who is sick.

Examine and revise policies for leave, telework, and employee compensation. Leave policies should be flexible and not punish people for taking time off, and should

allow sick employees to stay home and away from co-workers. Leave policies should also account for employees who need to stay home with their children if there are school or childcare closures, or to care for sick family members.

o Develop policies for return-to-school after COVID-19 illness. CDC’s criteria to discontinue home isolation and quarantine can inform these policies.

Back-Up Staffing Plano Monitor absenteeism of students and employees, cross-train staff, and create a roster of trained

back-up staff.

Staff Trainingo Train staff on all safety protocols.o Conduct training virtually or ensure that social distancing is maintained during training.

Recognize Signs and Symptomso If feasible, conduct daily health checks (e.g., temperature screening and/or or symptom

checking) of staff and students.o Health checks should be conducted safely and respectfully, and in accordance with any

applicable privacy laws and regulations. School administrators may use examples of screening methods in CDC’s supplemental Guidance for Child Care Programs that Remain Open   as a guide for screening children and CDC’s General Business FAQs for screening staff.

Sharing Facilitieso Encourage any organizations that share or use the school facilities to also follow these

considerations.

Support Coping and Resilience o Encourage employees and students to take breaks from watching, reading, or listening to news

stories about COVID-19, including social media if they are feeling overwhelmed or distressed.o Promote employees and students eating healthy, exercising, getting sleep, and finding time to

unwind.o Encourage employees and students to talk with people they trust about their concerns and how

they are feeling.o Consider posting signages for the national distress hotline: 1-800-985-5990, or

text TalkWithUsto 66746

Preparing for When Someone Gets Sick

Schools may consider implementing several strategies to prepare for when someone gets sick.

Advise Staff and Families of Sick Students of Home Isolation Criteriao Sick staff members or students should not return until they have met CDC’s criteria to

discontinue home isolation.

Isolate and Transport Those Who are Sicko Make sure that staff and families know that they (staff) or their children (families) should not

come to school, and that they should notify school officials (e.g., the designated COVID-19 point

of contact) if they (staff) or their child (families) become sick with COVID-19 symptoms, test positive for COVID-19, or have been exposed to someone with COVID-19 symptoms or a confirmed or suspected case.

o Immediately separate staff and children with COVID-19 symptoms (such as fever, cough, or shortness of breath) at school. Individuals who are sick should go home or to a healthcare facility depending on how severe their symptoms are, and follow CDC guidance for caring for oneself and others who are sick.

o Work with school administrators, nurses, and other healthcare providers to identify an isolation room or area to separate anyone who has COVID-19 symptoms or tests positive but does not have symptoms. School nurses and other healthcare providers should use Standard and Transmission-Based Precautions when caring for sick people. See: What Healthcare Personnel Should Know About Caring for Patients with Confirmed or Possible COVID-19 Infection.

o Establish procedures for safely transporting anyone who is sick to their home or to a healthcare facility. If you are calling an ambulance or bringing someone to the hospital, try to call first to alert them that the person may have COVID-19.

Clean and Disinfecto Close off areas used by a sick person and do not use these areas until after cleaning and

disinfectingo Wait at least 24 hours before cleaning and disinfecting. If 24 hours is not feasible, wait as long as

possible. Ensure safe and correct use and storage of cleaning and disinfection products external icon, including storing products securely away from children.

Notify Health Officials and Close Contactso In accordance with state and local laws and regulations, school administrators should notify local

health officials, staff, and families immediately of any case of COVID-19 while maintaining confidentiality in accordance with the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) external icon .

o Inform those who have had close contact with a person diagnosed with COVID-19 to stay home and self-monitor for symptoms, and follow CDC guidance if symptoms develop.

We Cannot Return to Campus this Fallhttps://medium.com/@harley.litzelman/we-cannot-return-to-campus-this-fall-1ad91b8a65e0

May 18 

Physical distancing and obsessive sanitation at schools are impossible. Now is the time for schools to prepare robust distance learning, close the technology gap, and meet our families’ basic needs.

By Harley Litzelman

“This is what a room of 21 desks looks like with desks physically separated by 1.5 meters,” one teacher tweeted on April 28, referring to an attached photo of a classroom. In the photo, you can see 14 student desks, each with a detached chair tucked tightly underneath. In the back, two other desks and an office chair at each. The ivory white floor tiles are spotless, probably recently mopped or polished. In other words, this was an empty classroom.

“To have kids back, we can make this work,” he continued, “USA, Canadian, European, African, South American teachers, get ready.”

I felt some kinship with this optimistic teacher. He sounded like every teacher who knows how to make it work. This was the spirit of a teacher who spent several hours composing the perfect graphic organizer for a week-long lesson segment only to find both copiers out of toner on Monday morning. This was the spirit of a teacher ready to start the online research segment of a month-long argumentative writing unit, only for the school WiFi to collapse for two days. This was the spirit of a teacher struggling to deliver the best instruction they could in a system unequipped to give students what they deserve.

This is the spirit upon which parents, politicians, and administrators have always depended to bridge the gap between the little governments have been willing to invest in education and the promises education is supposed to deliver. Of course, this gap is greatest for working class communities of color, whose states and school districts demand the most from teachers with the fewest resources. But as this academic year winds down and anxieties about next year begin to fester, teachers are already sighing in disbelief as non-teachers recklessly speculate what teachers and school staff will have to do to reopen schools in late summer or fall.

In response to top-down decisions in education made by non-teachers, I’ve heard teachers often respond: Have you ever met children? I hope this article leads you to ask the same question in response to politicians’ claims that schools may safely reopen this fall if they implement physical distancing and adequate sanitation. Let this high school history teacher take you on a tour of life in a high school reopened in the middle (yes, middle) of a global pandemic. Parents: No matter how exhausted or confused you are after a few months of helping your child with distance learning, I hope you are horrified at the mortal danger these politicians’ ideas pose to you, your children, and the professionals who teach them. Educators: I hope you’re ready to fight for what many of us already know to be true. We cannot return to campus this fall. We must use the time we have to build the best alternative we can: robust distance learning, universal computer and internet access, and community services for students and families throughout fall semester and, if necessary, spring semester too.

Here in California, Governor Gavin Newsom outlined a four-stage process for reopening California; stage 1 focused on “Making [the] essential workforce environment as safe as possible.” We just began stage 2, even though California is one of a few states whose recent cases and deaths have outpaced researchers’ models. This allows gradual reopening of “lower risk workplaces with ADAPTATIONS,” including academic summer programs and schools, though they will remain closed for this academic year. Stage 3 allows for the reopening of “higher risk environments with adaptations and limits on size of gatherings,” such as gyms, nail and hair salons, movie theaters, and churches. Stage 4 ends the stay-at-home order, reopening the highest risk environments like concert and sports venues. To determine when California is ready to move from one stage to the next, Newsom is using six indicators. Along with measures like capacity for testing and contact tracing, Newsom includes the “Ability of businesses, schools, and childcare facilities to support physical distancing.”

This four-stage framework sets the flawed foundation upon which Newsom’s reckless speculation about reopening schools relies. Newsom’s administration views schools as a “lower risk workplace” that simply requires adaptations to allow a safe reopening. Nowhere does he articulate why a nail salon is riskier than a school, when nail technicians regularly use masks and gloves and usually see fewer than 50 clients per week. Meanwhile, my contract with the Oakland Unified School District (OUSD) allows schools to assign secondary teachers a caseload of 160 to 260 pupils per day depending on the subject with no promise of basic cleaning supplies, much less medically adequate PPE. It should go without saying that nail salons still carry a high risk of disease transmission; it’s Newsom’s cavalier underestimation of the risk of schools that should concern us.

What adaptations does Newsom recommend? At his April 14 press conference, he set the education headlines buzzing: “We can conceivably stagger the individual students to come in as cohorts. Some in the morning, some in the afternoon…Assemblies, PE, recess, looking at how you provide meals to our kids, all of those things would have to be reconsidered. Deep sanitization, massive deep cleaning, a predicate, by the way not just in our schools, but disinfecting our parks, our streets…”

So begins the spatial, logistical, pedagogical, disciplinary, and epidemiological nightmare into which non-teaching decision makers in education across the country are welcoming your children.

—

More than a thousand of Skyline High School’s 1,500 students pay $2.75 every day to pack themselves onto county buses to and from school. Green and grey buses whine as they drive up the steep incline of Skyline’s long driveway, while AC Transit officers monitor the caravan of buses when they careen down the hill and into the streets of Oakland. As the minute hand teeters toward 3:05 PM, students anxiously petition their teachers to let them out even a minute early so they can guarantee themselves a seat on the long ride home, unlucky students left standing.

What would physical distancing, sanitation, and PPE look like on a bus? To guarantee the physical distance on buses that Newsom imagines for assemblies, PE, and recess, AC Transit would need to double, if not triple, the number of buses servicing not just Skyline, but the 121 schools that AC Transit services throughout Alameda County. This is the same AC Transit that nearly cut service to Skyline and two other Oakland schools after OUSD abruptly cut funding for AC Transit in 2017, despite the daily fares kids still paid. Fortunately, OUSD and AC Transit reached an agreement before students were left stranded, but this is evidently not a system prepared to keep kids six feet apart and enforce mask requirements.

The first wave of buses arrives at Skyline between 7:25 and 7:30 AM. Students gather in hallways, open spaces, and classrooms. A dozen or so kids play pickup basketball on the outdoor court by the gym, and a couple others rally a volleyball. They gather in the 30’s building and talk shit and laugh and hug and shake hands and play music and enjoy the 30 minutes or so they have before they have to sit quietly and listen to instructions and read 1984 and think-pair-share and cross-multiply matrices. These are the settings in which a school’s culture and community thrives or dies. Teachers may write and revise their curricula to be more engaging, relevant, and critical (while others do not). Teachers may have activities that relax the mind and build community: icebreakers, brain breaks, stand-and-stretches, and community circles (while others do not). But the sum total of what teachers ask students to do — the challenges we expect them to complete, the difficulties of college for which we prepare them — is draining. Exhausting. Somehow, an inspiring proportion of our students do it. But without huddling in those hallways and open spaces and libraries and cafeterias and student centers and senior lawns where students find the strength to do what their teachers ask of them, they couldn’t. You wouldn’t either.

Fast forward to August 10, 2020, the first day of school at Skyline. Students have not enjoyed one another’s company since Friday, March 13, the last day of school before the shutdown. A lot of kids are wearing masks, some of them bedazzled and decorated, but some of them aren’t covering their mouths and noses, some are strapped under their chins, and plenty aren’t wearing any mask at all. At first, the joy is palpable. Students howl and cackle upon locking eyes from across halls and lawns before rushing to embrace and take selfies and pose for photos of their first-day-of-school outfits. Skyline’s 1,500 students and 200 workers exceed the capacity of The Fillmore theater in San Francisco, which remains closed while Skyline fills up. But now there’s something new. Before school started, the principals presented a new policy, decreed by the state and relayed by the district: All campus staff must help enforce physical distancing before school, during passing periods, lunch, and after school. They also must enforce the new mask policy, demanding that every student wear their mask at all times. The district has already authorized administrators to breach our contract and infringe upon our 30-minute duty-free lunches, betting that the union’s grievance will take months to process.

Abrasive echoes of “Six feet please! Six feet please!” and “Mask please, wear your mask!” fill the air. Never mind the fact that people can transmit the virus much farther than six feet depending on a variety of factors: whether they are speaking loudly, running, coughing, sneezing, or simply breathing in an enclosed space or a space with circulated air. Six feet is enough to pretend we’re doing something. Pickup volleyball and basketball are banned. Skyline staff zig-zag through campus to break up non-compliant cliques of friends and teenage couples, good kids doing nothing wrong aside from finding camaraderie in a crisis they did not cause. Some

oblige; others migrate and regroup out of sight. The same nooks and crannies of campus where kids made out and passed joints and shared Gatorade are still occupied by the same teenage antics until they’re shooed away. Except this time, a few of them are sharing billions of specimens of SARS-CoV-2. Most of these kids do make it to class once they’ve quenched their thirst for a few extra minutes of unpoliced social reprieve, bringing the virus with them.

Lunch is miserable. The line to the cafeteria now wraps around several buildings as campus supervisors demand at least six feet of distance between students. Lunch is either 30 or 35 minutes long depending on the day, and it previously took about 25 minutes for all students to get their meal. With more parents out of work and less money in their pockets, more kids line up for their daily infusion of bland carbohydrates and protein. Now more kids than ever are guaranteed to miss their meal, which may have been the only meal offered to them that day. A few kids hang around after the bell to get their trays, but they’re no longer allowed to eat in classrooms. They scarf down a few bites on outdoor tables, eating in lonely peace before arriving late to fifth period, again. Students who got their lunches early, brought their lunch, or just gave up on lunch altogether have a few options. They sit or stand with their friends six feet apart. Or they don’t. They gravitate toward one another; their habits of human contact resume, until some adult demands that they separate. Kids tired of the harassment just eat by themselves, staring at their phones, no longer nourished by the social pleasure they needed to get through three more periods of school, a cramped bus ride home, and maybe a shift or two at work. Or they go home, skipping fifth, sixth, and seventh periods entirely. Teachers eat alone in their rooms if they’re not on distance duty; the few minutes we had to vent with other adults about the frustrations of our day are gone.

STR Partners LLC published a guide for schools on implementing physical distancing between students

Rumors about students’ and staff’s contact with COVID-19 are multiplying if they haven’t been confirmed, especially in Oakland. We’re already Alameda County’s hardest hit city, and our two largest private employers are the Kaiser Permanente and Sutter health systems. Under the guise of emergency action, district officials escalate police presence on school campuses to enforce physical distancing and mask policies. Overwhelmed administrators get tempted to lend more and more disciplinary duties to on-campus police, reversing the progress that the Black Organizing Project and other groups have made toward eliminating police presence and improving restorative justice in Oakland schools. As they do already, students of color and students with disabilities then bear the disproportional burden of the police’s pandemic harassment.

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Despite what your children may say about the thrill of the classroom, we’re living in an exciting age of pedagogical innovation. Sure, there are lots of classrooms that look like snapshots from Ferris Bueller’s Day Off: students lose consciousness in rigid rows of desk-chairs while Ben Stein stands and delivers a fill-in-the-blank lecture on FDR’s New Deal. But there are thousands of new teachers and old teachers learning new tricks in pedagogy. They are leading a paradigm grounded in facilitating academic discourse, project-based learning, career-based linked learning pathways like Skyline’s, and other curriculum projects and pedagogical frameworks that shift attention away from what the teacher does to what the students do.

This paradigm has brought teachers and students closer to one another, literally. Teachers experiment with countless classroom layouts and new furniture when they can. Whether we’re grouping desk-chairs into pairs or 2x2’s, ditching desk-chairs altogether for detached tables and chairs, or creating hip new classroom lounges with bean bag chairs and couches — these new layouts facilitate elbow-to-elbow, face-to-face learning. We strive for these layouts and the lessons we teach to facilitate the conversations we want students to have. We know we’ve taught a good lesson when we feel the relief that one feels when starting a fire without a match. With enough technique and a little brute force, we get a spark. But a spark isn’t that hard to light. It’s far more difficult to build the perfect environment for that spark to become a flame that feeds itself and keeps you warm. Every teacher knows the thrill of seeing that spark catch, when students’ conversations take off without your effort, letting you sit back and watch how they learn.

Teachers ask kids to do a lot to build this environment. Teachers ask kids to pick up the new handout on the way in, get the old handout from yesterday, get an extra if you lost it or if you were absent, get out your Do Now, get out your pencil, get an extra pencil off my desk if you need one, find your seat, and sit down on your seat that several other students have already sat on. We ask them to find a partner, find a new partner, go to the corner of the room that corresponds with the character you most agree with, film a video outside, form a circle, two circles, now switch. We ask them to get a Chromebook from the class’ Chromecart that four classes have already touched that day. They’ll need to line up to put away the Chromebooks and make sure to plug them in. Sometimes they need to go to the back and get the markers, crayons, paintbrushes, tissues, paper towels, bandages (so many bandages), and textbooks, and they’ll do this a dozen times in a class period. As they weave in between the desks, they nudge and bump their peers and step on their backpacks, breathing one another’s air, and smelling one another’s stink.

Students share posters, markers, notes, pens, journals, thoughts, phones, gum, Hydroflasks, Takis, and baby carrots coated in Tajín. They stand up, sit down, chat, text, scroll, FaceTime, talk shit, take calls, walk outside, peer out the window, and crumple papers into three-point shots into my garbage can that they inevitably miss while shouting “Kobe!” (yes, even in Warriors territory). My students ask me for more than 1,000 Kirkland Signature Soft & Chewy Chocolate Chips Granola Bars, which I provide unconditionally to keep their blood sugar high enough to complete a few dozen complex, cognitive tasks per class. They do all of this whether you’re okay with it or not, whenever they want, though some kids more than others. And this is what they do to keep themselves from hating you, because they’d rather not. They want to like you; they want to learn. But they need to bring their full selves into the classroom, the selves they built on the playgrounds, blacktops, senior lawns, JV swim teams, homecoming games, Sadie Hawkins dances, and every other place they’re no longer allowed to enjoy.

Students file into my new classroom on August 10. This year, I’ll be teaching seniors who I’ve already taught as sophomores, some as freshmen too. Except this year, they won’t sit in pairs or 2x2’s. They’ll find their desks in rows, each desk-chair painfully isolated from their neighbors. However, my desks are not six feet apart. Like the teacher I mentioned at the top of this article, I can only fit 1.5 meters between them, about 4 feet, 11 inches. The small group table is gone. I can’t greet them at the door on the first day of their last year in high school. They’ll find me standing at the front, masked and gloved. Since I had taught these kids before, I was hoping to speed through my class norms and expectations, but now I teach new norms for a new normal.

They must wait outside before I allow them to enter, because I must wipe every desk, chair, and counter between every class. I would rather delegate this to my 17- and 18-year-old students, but only I am legally allowed to handle disinfecting wipes and sprays according to an amendment to California’s Health School Act of 2000 — that is, after taking a one-hour training on proper disinfectant use. This takes at least 10 minutes, eating at least five minutes of the next 51 minute period. If I want to use disinfectant wipes to clean these surfaces well, I’ll need to use a few dozen wipes between each class because their efficacy significantly drops after wiping more than two square feet. If I had to make any other adjustment between classes — change or fix slides, sort handouts, print a résumé for a student, or God forbid, go to the bathroom — it will take longer, or it won’t happen. If I’m rushing back to my class after enforcing physical distancing during passing period, it will take longer. While my students wait outside, they stand staring at their phones, beaten down by the hot August sun or bitter December rains.

I continue. They shall not stand up during class. If they need something, anything, they must ask me for it. Almost anything I give them is theirs to keep; I no longer ask them to return borrowed pens or pencils. I’ll still need to monitor any borrowing of rulers, scissors, markers, or glue, while my colleagues in math and science monitor any borrowing of calculators, protractors, beakers, test tubes, goggles, Bunsen burners, and the like. They may not touch each other, for any reason. If they do so, they must wash their hands and sanitize anything they shared. They may not eat in class; one lick of cheese dust off their fingers wiped across a shared surface becomes a reservoir of disease. It doesn’t matter if they barely had time to pick up their free school breakfast before heading to first period.

It would be far too overwhelming to tell them this now, but I know that they also will not turn-and-talk about something I want them to discuss because they would likely compromise the minimal distance between them. They will not take a position on a controversial question by moving to one side of the room or the other. We will not have Socratic seminars because I cannot maintain distance between students sitting in a large circle. Most work will be individual: no group posters, mock trials, skits, funny videos, or partner reading. If they need my help with anything, I will no longer kneel beside their desk to give their question privacy. They will need the bravery to raise their hand in front of everyone and ask their question. Otherwise, they will need to email or text me their question in class.

In science, my students will not have lab partners. In theater, no contact between actors or shared costumes between classes. In English, no class sets of books because the disinfectant would soak the pages. In PE, no sports that bring students within six feet of one another: basketball, football, soccer, swimming, handball, field hockey, lacrosse, and weightlifting (and that doesn’t even consider the nightmare of disinfecting all the equipment). No sports, so no coaches to call when the star power forward on varsity basketball needs that extra kick of motivation. Any day we use Chromebooks in class, I’ll probably need to end those classes 10 minutes early to disinfect every single computer and put them away. After weeks upon weeks of sanitation, who knows what effect these disinfectant chemicals will have on the Chromebooks, let alone my hands. School districts that can afford assigning every student their own school laptop may be able to skip this step, but poorer districts that rely on shared computers cannot.

“I think we all know that kindergarteners and first graders will have a really hard time staying six feet away from each other,” Deputy Superintendent of the California Department of Education Stephanie Gregson told CNBC with a chuckle, “So we really have to think through what that would look like in order for them to be safe at school, and for their teachers as well.” Except they won’t have to really think that through, because five- and six-year-olds will not storm the Sacramento offices of the CDE in a few months, spraying snot and saliva in all directions. Like every other impossible task, it will fall to thousands of elementary school teachers and staff to make it work. There’s no way I could do justice to the experience of elementary school teachers, whose skill sets and challenges often mystify us high school teachers. But I will take the liberty to give you a taste.

No more group seating. No story time on the carpet. No small group stations. Coloring must be strictly monitored to eliminate sharing, probably requiring children to keep their own personal sets of crayons and

markers, revealing stark class differences within classrooms and between schools. No fingers in the mouth or nose, and several minutes spent washing their hands after they inevitably forget. They, too, cannot get out of their seats during class, and no longer can they enjoy the couches and bean bag chairs that their teachers have acquired. Again is the time to ask: Have you ever met children?

Recess becomes a huge source of contention, as some schools claim to have the resources, staff, materials, and wherewithal to sanitize playgrounds and toys after every recess while others do not. Other schools simply lock up balls and jump ropes, coil their swings around the crossbar, and wrap their playgrounds in caution tape like a crime scene that hasn’t happened yet. Some schools follow the lead of France and ban playground games altogether. More teachers are forced to supervise more recesses, cutting down on their time to prep and rest. The din of playful children is replaced with a din of whistles and exhausted adults shouting at young children to stay at least six feet apart. Children are bewildered by adults’ strange, menacing behavior in a crisis they don’t understand. They return to class frustrated, bored, antsy, and unwilling to learn in an environment that won’t let them be themselves.

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Everything I have predicted is both a best case and worst case scenario. In terms of pandemic control, I have described the best case scenario: complete and total social control in and out of the classroom. At the same time, in terms of educational best practice, it is a worst case scenario. And as any teacher can tell you, bad teaching makes bad behavior. Hell, good teaching doesn’t eliminate misbehavior, but it certainly reduces it to manageable levels. Under new restrictions that fly in the face of good teaching, kids will “act up”: stand when they shouldn’t, sit where they shouldn’t, talk when I’m talking, talk when someone else is talking, blast music from their phones, shout “I’m so fucking sick of this” to your face, ignore you, dance, wrestle, play fight, actually fight, walk outside, “go to the bathroom” for 25 minutes, fall asleep, watch Netflix, play billiards on their phones, and anything else they need to do to illicitly bring both their authentic selves and novel coronaviruses into the classroom.

Eventually they can’t take it anymore, but not just the kids who are “acting up.” The shy kid two reading levels behind refuses to raise her hand to ask her question out loud, so she gives up. She sits on her phone to text a friend she can’t talk to because they attend different school shifts, and the teacher demands three times to put her phone away. She storms out of class. Now the teacher has to stop class and call the office to make sure this kid doesn’t violate physical distancing, so the secretary sends a police officer who normally doesn’t supervise schools to go find her. The officer finds her and berates her; she marches off trying to breathe. He follows her and grabs her elbow from behind to turn her around. “Get the fuck away from me!” she shouts. The officer calls for backup; now an assistant principal and two campus supervisors surround her. The officer keeps berating her, but the AP knows her well enough to step in and bring her to a cooldown room. She’s sobbing, fumbling with her phone to text her older sister to come pick her up. It was only second period, so she’ll miss the rest of the day.

Eight days later, the grandfather she lives with exhibits COVID-19 symptoms. How? Maybe it was the cop who grabbed his granddaughter. Maybe it was the teacher who stomped toward her and pulled down his mask to demand that she put her phone away. Or maybe it was one of the 40 kids on the bus she takes to school every day and the essential workers who put food on their tables.

Like I said, though, this is still a best case scenario in terms of disease control. Like any best case scenario in U.S. education, it won’t happen. It won’t happen because teachers already spend an average of $479 per year on classroom expenses without reimbursement, and there’s no reason to believe that every school will suddenly be able to provide their staff with millions of antimicrobial wipes and thousands of gallons of disinfectant spray. It won’t happen because students will recognize the ample contradictions between the rules they’re asked to follow and the enclosed spaces they’re expected to fill. They’ll balk at administrators demanding that they separate from their friends while asking them to go to class and sit just as close to their peers. They’ll pinpoint the differences

in enforcement, identifying teachers who are “cool” with eating in class and who are not. It won’t happen because the children of shelter-in-place protesters won’t reject their parents’ politics, and they will find teachers and principals who agree with them. It won’t happen because it is a regime that demands students to leave their authentic selves at home, selves that students are prohibited from nurturing in bombastic conversations at lunch and quiet moments of intimacy with their first romantic partners. It demands that teachers forfeit the interactions that brought them into teaching in the first place: working side-by-side with kids until that light bulb goes off, giving queer kids the only space to be themselves. It is a regime that cannot survive, and throughout its rise and fall, the virus will spread.

Grandiose ideas of staggered schedules and drastically cut class sizes won’t happen because states and districts have refused to repair teacher shortages, making hopes of halving or quartering class sizes pipe dreams. It won’t happen because California is facing the largest budget deficit in its history, and education finance experts anticipate that the escalating recession will reduce education funding in California by $2,000 per student per year. Master scheduling already requires principals to discover a perfect four-dimensional patchwork that aligns what classes teachers will teach, what periods they will teach them, and which students they will have based on what classes they choose. At Skyline, the process to develop the 2020–2021 master schedule began in December 2019, and we’re already reviewing the first draft of it. This process is not ready to split schedules into morning and afternoon shifts by August when the state hasn’t even confirmed that schools should do that.

Where did those eight students go? Your guess is as good as mine (STR Partners LLC)

Much of this discussion might not even be necessary because of the serious likelihood that the virus will persist and rebound in fall, as Dr. Anthony Fauci has forecast. Big tech companies headquartered only an hour’s drive from Skyline have already extended their work-from-home policies into 2021. The California State University system, the largest four-year university system in the country, announced that it is moving most of its classes online this fall. California is providing every voter with a mail-in ballot for this November’s election. If voting booths will be too dangerous for California voters this fall, why would middle school bathrooms be any safer?

The regime will last longer in some schools than others, mirroring the vastly unequal terrain of education funding and student needs. Schools serving the working class Black and Brown communities suffering most from COVID-19 will be the schools expected to meet the greatest need with the fewest resources. They will do what they can, as teachers always have. They may have some success, discovering practices and protocols that preserve some student and staff dignity. But there will also be failures, “areas of growth” as educators love to call them, and it is within those areas that the virus will spread.

I almost forgot to mention. Newsom wants this regime ready by late July, echoing a similar suggestion by Mississippi state superintendent Carey Wright. “We are considering the prospect of an even earlier school year into the fall, as early as late July, early August…” Newsom announced at his April 28 press conference. Schools would become California’s only public institutions opening earlier than they would without a global pandemic. In fact, under this plan, schools could open during Los Angeles County’s extended stay-at-home order.

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When I’ve offered this argument to my fellow teachers, they wince at its implications before I even mention what has to be done. When I read how exhausted parents are juggling the responsibilities of their jobs (or job search) and their children’s mental health, education, and entertainment, I can only imagine their dejection if they agree with me or rage if they don’t.

We cannot return to campus this fall. We cannot return until the public health community has reached a consensus that physical distancing and constant, obsessive sanitation at schools are no longer necessary to stop the spread of COVID-19. If this means that we cannot return until an effective vaccine has been widely disseminated, then that is what it means.

Today, we stand at a crossroads. One road takes us toward another semester of digital learning. We can use the time and collective expertise we have now to build a robust distance learning regime. We can develop comprehensive, multilingual communication protocols that keep school staff in close contact with all families. We can assure families that everything they are doing to help their child with school is enough, and that it’s our job to meet them where they are. We can reallocate monies usually reserved for on-campus activities toward community services that directly help families meet basic needs like food pantries, health clinics, financial assistance, free laundries, and others. Teachers need to carefully coordinate their students’ online learning experience, staying vigilantly sensitive to the added stress and responsibilities students are dealing with during the pandemic.

This summer, we can give teachers time to do what they do best, but did not have the time to do before: Plan. Collaborate. Share tricks and best practices. Finally figure out how to work Zoom. Debate the ethics of grading and acceptable volumes of work. Fight tooth-and-nail for universal Internet and 1:1 computer access for all students, as Oakland teachers are already doing. We can build the best learning experiences we can under the awful circumstances we are handed because that is what we do anyway.

If we take this road, we cannot allow extended distance learning to become an opportunity for disaster capitalists to seize the future of public education, typically veiled by the lofty branding of “reimagining” or “reforming” education. New York teachers are leading the way as they fight Gov. Cuomo’s backhanded attempts to “reimagine” (read: privatize, union-bust, defund) public education with the help of failed education “reformer” Bill Gates. When Cuomo rhetorically asks “The old model of everybody goes and sits in the classroom, and the teacher is in front of that classroom and teaches that class…why, with all the technology you have?” we must remember that nearly 75 percent of online charter school students are enrolled in programs that graduate less than half of their students within four years. We must learn the lesson of Hurricane Katrina, which Obama Education Secretary Arne Duncan called “the best thing that happened to the education system in New Orleans,” when Louisiana illegally fired more than 7,000 predominantly Black teachers and remade the city into a charter school paradise. We must make it clear that we teachers want nothing more than to see our kids on campus again, but that we simply cannot return until it is safe. Until then, we resist all attempts to exploit this crisis and profit from its misery.

Or we take the other road; we reopen. We begin this grand experiment of bad teaching. We can hope that student rebellion, adult intransigence, institutional failure, and political cowardice aren’t enough to restart the exponential spread of the disease. We can hope that the daily lapses in judgment made every day on every campus, at scale across more than 56 million students herded into 132,000 K-12 schools in the United States, aren’t enough to derail the public health outcomes we desire. We can pretend that school-age children are too

young to suffer the worst of this pandemic, even as researchers clarify the link between between COVID-19 and symptoms comparable to Kawasaki disease in children. We can hope that these cascading factors, along with the general likelihood that COVID-19 will ravage the U.S. again in fall, don’t force us to close schools again, without the public infrastructure or professional preparation needed to resume distance learning.

Maybe the pandemic miraculously collapses, allowing us to return to campus and teach our kids how they’re supposed to be taught. When we reduce the technology gap, guaranteeing universal computer and internet access for all students and families, will we consider that a waste? When we face the next crisis that keeps kids from school — the next pandemic, the greater consequences of climate change — will our readiness to switch to distance learning be for nothing? We risk exerting a lot of effort to learn the craft of distance learning, only for us to return to campus and do the jobs we’ve always done. Which road are you willing to take?