Notes from the Covid Classroom
My experience in corona-crazy private schools
https://allamericanwarriormonk.substack....covid-classroom
All-American Warrior Monk
Sep 27


We shuffled into the gymnasium for day one of orientation. New teachers met old teachers with smiles hidden behind covered faces. Voices forced through cloth bounced off basketball backboards. Unread lips and strained ears. Unheard words lost in a muffled cacophony. Darting eyes searched for a speaker.

Welcoming glances and distanced bodies, a pandemic performance. We sat down to hear our head of school speak about the year to come, another year in the covid theater of the absurd.

After a greeting and some platitudes, the covid conversation began. “We are still very much in a pandemic,” our portly, barefaced and bearded chieftain said. “But we can get through this. Masks are amazing; the vaccines are amazing!” The audience sat silently.

I thought: how could he honestly state such a contradiction? The masks couldn’t be amazing. If they were, we wouldn't need them anymore; they would have “stopped the spread.” And the vaccines couldn’t be amazing. If they were, we wouldn’t need the masks. He was gaslighting from the get go.

I’m a new teacher at an affluent progressive private school. As far as I can tell, my colleagues have fully accepted the pathological new normal. Rarely does a mask slip below the nose when indoors. Hand sanitizer stations abound.

When we approached lunchtime on day one of orientation, teachers stood in line masked up waiting for their food before sitting down to eat in a rare moment of pre-pandemic like normalcy. We ate for thirty minutes or so with faces free of cloth, conversing together at our tables. However, when someone needed to get up for a napkin, or to use the restroom, they put their mask back on as if the act of walking made one a covid carpet bomber. I pointed out the lunacy of this to those at my table - and those that dined with me agreed. But they did the same when they stood up and walked to the dessert station. Compliance is a virtue; they earned their cookies.-- excerpt, rest at link above --

unreal...