Teachers are drawing up their wills before heading back to school this fall

Even before coronavirus hit the United States, America has demanded far too much from its underpaid, overworked teachers. They are educators, yes, but at any given moment they are also expected to be babysitters, disciplinarians, chefs, social workers, crisis managers, and whatever other pressing role needs filling both inside and out of the classroom.

Then came the pandemic, and with it the waves of school closures and well-intentioned attempts to replicate the normal educational experience by planting both students and teachers in front of a computer and basically telling them all to figure it out. Suffice it to say, it has not been a smashing success.

So now, despite skyrocketing COVID-19 cases in states across the country, and the Trump administration’s utter failure to stem the tide of a first pandemic wave — to say nothing of bracing for a second one — the president, along with his White House enablers and national network of Republican cronies, is pushing extremely, even fanatically hard, to force public schools to reopen this coming fall, health concerns be damned. Continue reading.