We are Teachers. We are scared.

The national dialogue happening around educators in America is frightening…especially when it would seem that most of this dialogue is happening in the absence of teachers’ voices. Teachers have been relegated to self-submitted op-eds, blogs, and self-publishing platforms, and in some cases, their own unions have left them high and dry.

Let me start by saying that no teacher is trying to get away with doing nothing. In New York City for that matter, teachers in the public sector worked non-stop from March 13 to June 26. We were given four compensation days for our time, but when we finally got to June 27, we could hardly enjoy the fruits of our hard-given labor. The clamor for schools to re-open has already intruded on the little peace we had, and we are learning from the news briefs what September may hold.

Teachers have been working tirelessly even into the summer. I have been invested in an online community of Bitmoji Classroom makers who are trying to generate real-life school experiences in an online world. These have been time-consuming efforts that teachers have freely shared with one another in the form of shared Google Slides. Teachers have branched out to make digital planners, online notebooks, and worksheets that go far above and beyond what they may have done in the normal real-life setting.

Teachers are also spending their hard-earned money. Most budgets were frozen in March so teachers have not received any extra compensation to go out and purchase their own supplies, PPE, subscriptions, and computers in order to be prepared for whatever may come their way in September. One online group acts as a watchdog for the latest drop of cleaning supplies and PPE. I had to leave this group when teachers began discussing things like wearing scrubs once the fall came. Very practical, but traumatizing indeed.

At the baseline, teachers want to do and be their best for their students, but we are scared. We are scared of what their education will look like. We are scared for our health. We are scared of what politicians will ask us to do in the name of the economy. I can’t believe we are even having this debate, but the absolute vacuum in leadership has left teachers scrambling to know what to do next.

So why are we scared? Because no one has asked us what we think about returning to school in the fall. No one has asked us about the emotional toll this will take. No one has checked in to see how we coped with the sudden shifts in education in the spring. We have simply plodded along because there hasn’t been a moment of reflection.

I was one of the teachers who grew increasingly alarmed in March when we continued to attend school despite the growing trends of COVID-19. When we were told that NYC was following the “Italian Model,” I couldn’t understand why students and staff were still shuttling en masse to the school building to be huddled in tightly enclosed spaces. I had just had the flu at the beginning of the month, and upon hearing that the effects of COVID-19 were much much worse, I wrote an e-mail to the parents of my students to tell them why I would no longer in good conscience be attending school. The parents thanked me for the e-mail. School officially shut down that following Monday.

We are scared because there has been an absence of leadership. The chancellor of the New York City public schools has checked in with teachers maybe once, in a generic letter thanking us for the school year. Otherwise, we have been bystanders to long correspondences directed towards parents talking about us as if we were not in the room. I have felt so disrespected and disregarded as a professional, so I certainly cannot trust this leadership to have my best interests in mind when it comes to reopening.

And we are scared because we are traumatized. We have witnessed students, their parents, our friends, our colleagues, and our community contract this disease. It does not play, and it constantly changes. It was first a non-airborne respiratory affliction. Now, it is an airborne vascular virus. Its effects are long-term. Even minor cases last for months. And it is on the rise.

Behind every political decision, imagine that you are playing with the lives of millions of scared teachers, students, and parents…but I emphasize teachers here because they have been given very little say in the matter. In the absence of a voice, I ask that you please advocate for us. We cannot in good conscience go back to school in our current state. We can improve our access issues for remote learning, but with each day we drag on this debate, we are losing valuable time. But don’t worry. Teachers know this, and they have already been preparing. But then again, who would know? No one is even asking.