The New York Times - USA (2020-12-01)

THE NEW YORK TIMES, TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1, 2020 N A

Tracking an OutbreakEducation and Justice

At Farmington Central Junior
High in rural Illinois, classes still
start at 8 a.m. But that’s about the
only part of the school day that
has not changed for Caitlyn Clay-
ton, an eighth-grade English
teacher tirelessly toggling be-
tween in-person and remote stu-
dents.
At the start of the school day,
Ms. Clayton stands in front of the
classroom, reminding her stu-
dents to properly pull their masks
over their noses. Then she delves
into a writing lesson, all the while
scanning the room for possible vi-
rus threats. She stops students
from sharing supplies. She keeps
her distance when answering
their questions. She disinfects the
desks between classes.
Then in the afternoon, just as
her in-person students head
home, Ms. Clayton begins her sec-
ond day: remote teaching. Sitting
in her classroom, she checks in
one-on-one via video with eighth
graders who have opted for dis-
tance learning. To make sure they
are not missing out, she spends
hours more recording instruc-
tional videos that replicate her in-
person classroom lessons.
“The days where it’s 13-plus
hours at school, you’re just ex-
hausted, hoping to make it to the
car at night,” Ms. Clayton said,
noting that many of her col-
leagues feel similarly depleted.
“We’re seeing an extreme level of
teacher burnout.”
All this fall, as vehement de-
bates have raged over whether to
reopen schools for in-person in-
struction, teachers have been at
the center — often vilified for chal-
lenging it, sometimes warmly
praised for trying to make it work.
But the debate has often missed
just how thoroughly the coronavi-
rus has upended learning in the
country’s 130,000 schools, and
glossed over how emotionally and
physically draining pandemic
teaching has become for the edu-
cators themselves.
In more than a dozen inter-
views, educators described the
immense challenges, and exhaus-
tion, they have faced trying to pro-
vide normal schooling for stu-
dents in pandemic conditions that
are anything but normal. Some re-
counted whiplash experiences of
having their schools abruptly
open and close, sometimes more
than once, because of virus risks
or quarantine-driven staff short-
ages, requiring them to repeat-
edly switch back and forth be-
tween in-person and online teach-
ing.
Others described the stress of
having to lead back-to-back group
video lessons for remote learners,
even as they continued to teach
students in person in their class-
rooms. Some educators said their
workloads had doubled.
“I have NEVER been this ex-
hausted,” Sarah Gross, a veteran
high school English teacher in
New Jersey who is doing hybrid
teaching this fall, said in a recent
Twitter thread. She added, “This
is not sustainable.”
Many teachers said they had
also become impromptu social
workers for their students, direct-
ing them to food banks, acting as
grief counselors for those who had
family members die of Covid-19,
and helping pupils work through
their feelings of anxiety, depres-
sion and isolation. Often, the
teachers said, their concern for

their students came at a cost to

themselves.

“Teachers are not OK right

now,” said Evin Shinn, a literacy

coach at a public middle school in

Seattle, noting that many teachers

were putting students’ pandemic

needs above their own well-being.

“We have to be building in more

spaces for mental health.”

Experts and teachers’ unions

are warning of a looming burnout

crisis among educators that could

lead to a wave of retirements, un-

dermining the fitful effort to re-

sume normal public schooling. In

a recent survey by the National

Education Association, the coun-

try’s largest teachers’ union, 28

percent of educators said the co-

ronavirus had made them more

likely to leave teaching or retire

early.

That weariness spanned gener-

ations. Among the poll respond-

ents, 55 percent of veteran teach-

ers with more than 30 years of ex-

perience said they were now con-

sidering leaving the profession. So

did 20 percent of teachers with

less than 10 years’ experience.

“If we keep this up, you’re going

to lose an entire generation of not

only students but also teachers,”

said Shea Martin, an education

scholar and facilitator who works

with public schools on issues of

equity and justice.

A pandemic teacher exodus is

not hypothetical. In Minnesota,

the number of teachers applying

for retirement benefits increased

by 35 percent this August and Sep-

tember compared with the same

period in 2019. In Pennsylvania,

the increase in retirement-benefit

applications among school em-

ployees, including administrators

and bus drivers, was even higher

— 60 percent over the same time

period.

In a survey in Indiana this fall,

72 percent of school districts said

the pandemic had worsened

school staffing problems.

“We’ve seen teachers start the

school year and then back out be-

cause of the workload, or because

of the bouncing back and forth”

with school openings and clos-

ings, said Terry McDaniel, a pro-

fessor of educational leadership at

Indiana State University in Terre

Haute who led the survey.

To express their concerns, un-

named educators have turned to

“An Anonymous Teacher Speaks,”

a discussion site started in Octo-

ber by Mx. Martin. It has quickly

become a collective cry for help,

with demoralized teachers saying

they felt “defeated,” “overloaded,”

“terrified,” “ignored and frus-

trated” and on the brink of quit-

ting. A few even disclosed having

suicidal thoughts.

“I work until midnight each

night trying to lock and load all my

links, lessons, etc. I never get

ahead,” one anonymous educator

wrote. “Emails, endless email.

Parents blaming me because their

kids chose to stay in bed, on

phones, on video games instead of

doing work.”

Teachers singled out hybrid

programs requiring them to in-

struct in-person and remote stu-

dents simultaneously as being

particularly taxing.

On Mondays and Tuesdays, Ms.

Gross, a high school English

teacher in Lincroft, N.J., teaches

cohorts of ninth and 12th graders

in her classroom while instructing

other students who are learning

from home by video. On Thurs-

days and Fridays, the second

group comes to school while the

first group tunes in from home.

She also teaches a third group of

students who never come to

school because they are doing re-

mote-only learning this fall.

“You’re trying to be two people

at once, trying to help the students

who are online and the students

who are in front of you,” Ms. Gross

said, adding that the remote stu-

dents often can’t hear their peers

in the classroom and vice versa.

All the while, she tries to keep

one eye on the classroom, making

sure her in-person students are

wearing masks and maintaining

social distance, and the other eye

online where remote students of-

ten need her help with computer

and connectivity problems.

“It’s not sustainable,” Ms. Gross

said. “That’s the hardest thing to

come to grips with for myself and

my colleagues.”

Teachers in schools providing

remote-only learning said they

too were run ragged, though for

different reasons.

In a normal school year, Mircea

Arsenie, an environmental sci-

ence teacher at a Chicago public

high school, teaches lab classes

where students learn through

hands-on experiences, like dis-

secting the stomachs of birds to

examine the plastic trash they

have swallowed. With remote-

only learning in the Chicago Pub-

lic Schools this fall, he has had to

entirely remake his approach.

But the district’s remote learn-

ing schedule, involving a full

school day of live group video

lessons, he said, was not designed

to accommodate the many extra

hours teachers like him need to

adapt their classroom lessons for

online learning. As a result, Mr.

Arsenie said, he was spending

many evenings and weekends de-

veloping virtual labs and other on-

line projects for his students.

“I won’t lie,” he said. “It’s been a

challenge.”

But his most strenuous endeav-

or, he said, is more emotional:

summoning the energy every day

to project a calming, can-do atti-

tude during live video classes,

even when he is worried about his

students’ health, home lives and

educational progress.

“I’m just exhausted today, try-

ing to maintain a sense of opti-

mism and a sense of normalcy,”

Mr. Arsenie said, adding that two

of his students had just tested pos-

itive for Covid-19. “In the greater

context of the pandemic, who

cares about photosynthesis?”

With Chicago considering re-

suming some in-person instruc-

tion early next year, Dwayne

Reed, a fourth- and fifth-grade so-

cial studies teacher in the district,

worries that many school children

are still experiencing pandemic

trauma at home.

“Just the fact that I have to give

grades to 9-year-olds right now

doesn’t seem morally right,” Mr.

Reed said, noting that two of his

students’ grandparents recently

died of Covid-19.

Mr. Reed said the burdens are

particularly heavy for educators

of color like himself, who teach

young Black students keenly at-

tuned to the twin risks of the co-

ronavirus and racial violence.

“You’re so exhausted after one

day — after one class,” Mr. Reed

said. He added that, at age 28, he

has started taking naps out of

emotional depletion. “My kids are

literally living through the disease

of coronavirus and the disease of

racism, and they’re experiencing

it as 11-year-olds, as 10-year-olds.”

A few weeks ago, he asked

teachers on Twitter for sugges-

tions on how to make remote pan-

demic teaching “more sustain-

able.” He received 200 responses.

Aware of the widespread burn-

out and the possibility that it could

derail the resumption of regular

schooling, many school adminis-

trators are regularly checking in

with their teachers, urging self-

care and offering counseling re-

sources. Some districts have gone

even further, giving educators ex-

tra time every day — sometimes

an entire day every week — for

pandemic lesson planning.

In early November, Gov. Tim

Walz of Minnesota, a Democrat,

issued an executive order requir-

ing schools to give teachers 30

minutes of additional prep time

every day for remote or hybrid in-

struction. The order also warned

schools against requiring educa-

tors to simultaneously teach in-

person and remote students.

A few additional hours every

week could give educators more

breathing room. But it will not

solve the central problem at the

heart of their exhaustion and de-

spair, many say.

“Three years ago, we started to

learn how to run from armed in-

truders,” said Amanda Kaupp, a

high school psychology teacher in

St. Louis. “Last year we learned

how to pack bullet wounds. This

year, we’re trying to figure out

how to bring back learning in a

pandemic.”

THE FUTURE OF LEARNING

U.S. Faces a New Crisis: ‘An Extreme Level of Teacher Burnout’

By NATASHA SINGER

Caitlyn Clayton, a teacher in Farmington, Ill., must toggle between in-person and remote students. She spends hours after school recording instructional videos.

LAUREN JUSTICE FOR THE NEW YORK TIMES

They live in crowded condi-
tions, sharing bathrooms and eat-
ing facilities where social distanc-
ing is impossible. They have high
rates of asthma, diabetes and
heart disease.
Many struggle with mental ill-
ness. A disproportionate number
are Black and Hispanic, members
of minority communities that
have been hard hit by the corona-
virus pandemic.
So should prisoners and other
detainees be given priority access
to one of the new Covid-19 vac-
cines?
With distribution expected to
start as early as this month, public
health officials are scrambling to
develop guidelines for the equita-
ble allocation of limited vaccine
supplies. The Advisory Commit-
tee on Immunization Practices of
the Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention will meet on Tues-
day to make initial determinations
about who gets the first shots.
There is broad consensus that
health care workers who treat
Covid-19 patients should be first in
line. Other high-priority groups
include residents and employees
of long-term care facilities, essen-
tial workers whose jobs keep peo-
ple fed and society running, and
medically vulnerable and older
adults — roughly in that order.
Inmates are not ranked in the
top tiers, even though some of the
largest outbreaks have occurred

in the nation’s prisons. More than

2,200 inmates were sickened and

28 people died, for example, after

an outbreak in the San Quentin

State Prison in California over the

summer.

Yet the C.D.C. advisory commit-

tee has prioritized correctional of-

ficers and others who work in jails

and prisons for the first phase of

immunizations. The federal pris-

on system will set aside its initial

allotment for such employees, ac-

cording to documents obtained by

The Associated Press.

The discrepancy raises a chill-

ing prospect: another prison out-

break that kills scores of inmates

after the only preventive was re-

served for staff. Officials at the

Justice Department did not re-

spond to a request for comment.

Now several groups, including

the American Medical Associa-

tion, are calling for vaccines to be

given to inmates and employees

at prisons, jails and detention cen-

ters, citing the unique risks to peo-

ple in confinement — and the po-

tential for outbreaks to spread

from correctional centers, strain-

ing community hospitals.

“We aren’t saying that pris-

oners should be treated any better

than anybody else, but they

shouldn’t be treated any worse

than anybody else who is forced to

live in a congregate setting,” said

Dr. Eric Toner, co-author of a re-

port on vaccine allocation pub-

lished by the Johns Hopkins Cen-

ter for Health Security.

The report lists prisoners as a

priority group, Dr. Toner said,

though not “at the very tiptop, but

at the next tier down.”

The idea is controversial. Allo-

cating precious medical resources

to people who are serving time

may be anathema to much of the

public, but it is widely accepted

that the nation has an ethical and

legal obligation to safeguard in-

carcerated people’s health.

There is also a powerful public

health argument to be made for

prison vaccination: Outbreaks

that start in prisons and jails may

spread to the surrounding com-

munity. “Prisons are incubators of

infectious disease,” Dr. Toner said.

“It’s a fundamental tenet of pub-

lic health to try and stop epi-

demics at their source,” he added.

One approach, under consider-

ation by the National Commission

on Covid-19 and Criminal Justice,

would be to prioritize vaccination

only for prisoners and detainees

whose medical conditions or ad-

vanced age put them at great risk

should they become ill.

“This isn’t a criminal justice

recommendation,” said Khalil

Cumberbatch, a senior fellow at

the Council on Criminal Justice, a

nonpartisan group focused on

criminal justice policy. “It’s a pub-

lic health recommendation. The

virus is not in a vacuum if it’s in a

state prison.”

The United States holds some

2.3 million individuals in prisons,

jails and other detention centers,

incarcerating more people per

capita than any other nation. That

includes nearly 500,000 people

who have not been convicted of a

crime and are awaiting trials, ac-

cording to the Prison Policy Initia-

tive. (Some jails have taken steps

to reduce overcrowding since the

pandemic started.)

The figure also includes some

44,000 youngsters who are held in

juvenile facilities and an estimat-

ed 42,000 in immigration deten-

tion centers.

People held in confinement are

uniquely vulnerable to the virus.

Incarcerated individuals are four

times as likely to become infected

than people in the general popula-

tion, according to a study by the

criminal justice commission. Over

all, Covid-19 mortality rates

among prisoners are higher than

in the general population.

At least 200,000 inmates have

already been infected with

Covid-19, and at least 1,450 in-

mates and correctional officers

have died from the virus, accord-

ing to a database maintained by

The New York Times.

Those numbers most likely un-

derestimate the magnitude of the

problem, because reporting re-

quirements are spotty and vary

from state to state, said Dr. Tom

Inglesby, an infectious disease ex-

pert at the Johns Hopkins Bloom-

berg School of Public Health and

another co-author of the vaccine

allocation report.

In Connecticut, doctors tested

over 10,000 prisoners in state pris-

ons and jails from March to June

and found that 13 percent were in-

fected with the coronavirus, ac-

cording to research published in

The New England Journal of

Medicine. Inmates who lived in

dormitory housing were at the

highest risk. Older inmates and

Latino inmates also were more

likely than others to be infected.

Even before the pandemic,

many older inmates had poor

health after decades of “hard liv-

ing,” said Dr. Charles Lee, presi-

dent-elect of the American Col-

lege of Correctional Physicians.

“From my experience, their

physiological age is generally 20

years greater than their chrono-

logic age — from drugs, from

fights, from being incarcerated

and homeless, and not getting

health care,” Dr. Lee said.

Up to 40 percent of incarcerated

adults are Black, Dr. Lee said, a

group with higher rates of chronic

diseases, such as diabetes, hyper-

tension and asthma.

Many argue that regardless of

public health considerations, soci-

ety has both legal and ethical re-

sponsibilities to protect the health

of inmates.

“There are truly bad guys in

prison, but the vast majority of

people in prisons and jails are not

what the media makes us think

about — they are not mass mur-

derers,” said Arthur Caplan, direc-

tor of medical ethics at the New

York University Grossman School

of Medicine. “Many people are

about to get released soon. Many

are in for petty crimes.”

“The ethical obligation is to pro-

tect the lives of prisoners, not just

see them as sources of disease,”

Mr. Caplan added.

U.S. PRISONS

Vulnerable Inmates Aren’t a Vaccine Priority

By RONI CARYN RABIN

Nurses protested the health care conditions at Rikers Island in

May. At least 200,000 inmates nationwide have been infected.

JUSTIN LANE/EPA, VIA SHUTTERSTOCK