Teachers and students are preparing to go back to school in September amid the COVID-19 pandemic.
The teacher of 22 years is immunocompromised and her husband has a serious heart condition. She submitted a medical accommodation document to the Toronto District School Board, but hasn’t heard back yet about where she’ll be teaching — or which grade — when classes start in September.Sunita Albuquerque has been a teacher for 22 years. She said she feels at risk teaching right now.
In her classroom, her 30 Grade 4 students won’t be able to properly distance. “My kids are going to be breathing on each other,” she said. A spokesperson for the province’s ministry of education said while students should be spread out as much as possible, students within a learning group won’t be required to maintain physical distancing all the time.
“If somebody brings home a bug, we all catch it,” Marchiori said. “We’re careful — we were careful before. We wash our hands, we get our flu shots, all of that. But it’s scary to not be in control.”As Grade 2 teacher, Angela says she’s used to being sneezed on by students. Now, the Calgary, Alta. teacher isn’t sure what the plan is for incidents like that in classrooms — or other crucial aspects of her province’s back-to-school plan like emergency staffing or teachers’ mental health.
“They’re basically going to assume they’re walking into a classroom that has had COVID exposure,” she said. “That’s stressful — a lot of [substitute teachers] aren’t going to want to do that.”
Come oooooon