Backup to the backup

What happens when the backup needs a backup? I’ve been working remotely from school for the past 2 weeks instead of working fully remote from home solely because of the extreme absenteeism our school is facing during the pandemic.

NOTE: As of this writing I found out that our Board of Education is having an “emergency” meeting this afternoon and will discuss giving our superintendent the authority to transition schools from “in person” learning to full remote learning if he deems it necessary. My take on that…based on what you’re about to read…is that this decision is about a week too late.

Each staff member regardless of whether they are full remote teachers or working with kids in my building is a backup to someone else in the event that that person cannot be on campus to perform his/her morning and/or afternoon duties. It’s the only way to keep our school safe and secure during the pandemic…or is it?

Last week a really interesting thing happened that pushed the limits to what has already been a very problematic situation with regards to each of us being the backup to someone else. Ten minutes after I had just finished my morning bus duty, covering for a colleague who has been out for almost 2 weeks, I got a phone call.

It was my principal. She called to inform me that the backup (our school librarian) who was with a second grade class, had to leave due to a family emergency. She, my principal, needed me to be the “backup to the backup” because I was one of the only people in the building without students “in person” in my classroom.

It was only a matter of time before something like this happened. So, the second graders were escorted to my room where they proceeded to do their work for the remainder of the day, under my watch. Having them in the room caused me to have to adjust what I was doing with my students remotely. Because my students are so amazing…all I had to do was get them in a pseudo-asynchronous set up so that I could keep my eyes on the younger students that I was now tasked to manage and keep safe.

Back to the question that opened this post; what happens when the backup needs a backup? I’ll tell you what happens.

What happens is learning gets compromised and that was very frustrating for me to deal with. The fact that I had to compromise what I wanted to do with my students to manage a small group of “in person” students did not settle well with me…yet…I really had no other choice. I could not say no to the request…I had to help…no matter how uncomfortable I was having students come into my room…no matter what I thought the day was going to look like, with my own students, before I “got the call.”

I find it problematic that my school district allowed a full week of extreme absenteeism; calling in support staff from other schools that are not currently open to “in person” learning (elementary schools are the only schools engaged in “in person” learning), stressing the remaining, healthy staff (myself and several others included) to “plug the holes;” for what—to say that we were open?