Unpublished Op-Ed submitted to The Star

The pandemic has thrust many issues like anti-Black racism into the spotlight. Similarly it has exposed teaching as a critically important yet highly under-valued profession characterized by extreme complexity in the midst of what appears to be a simplistic relationship. For teachers however, charged with caring for and educating the children they teach, it is a solemn and a daunting responsibility. Teachers are rarely given the courtesy of being consulted. Returning to school without modifying class sizes is ridiculous and adds a layer of complexity and concern to a job that is already hard enough.

First, it has become painfully apparent if it wasn’t before, the key role that teachers play in the economy by providing high quality custodial care. Without teachers, parents (women) cannot work. With women making up almost half the workforce today this is a huge economic hit. The importance of teaching has increased immensely in the new economy. Even in our liberated world women still do the lion’s share of the caring work. This is true across society where professions that involve caring for people of any age and in any capacity are done by women. Nurses, teachers, ECE workers, PSWs, cleaners and retail sales workers are dominated by women. In all cases these workers are generally underpaid and over-worked.

Second, the complexity of the job. Parents, other professions, governments hold an infantilizing view teaching as “women’s work.” That is work that has historically been done by women in a patriarchal society. This work has been underappreciated. However, teachers today are well-educated, work to continually upgrade their skills more than any other profession and work in the most complicated profession in the world. Teachers are constantly balancing the psychological, social-emotional, physical and intellectual needs of each of the approximately thirty students in their class, while providing them with quality, often individualized instruction. Add into that teaching also includes a second full time job prepping for the next day’s classes and marking and the workload is immense, 24/7 and intense. Teachers juggle three jobs simultaneously. For all this complexity it is handled with ease by teachers but that doesn’t mean its easy. In addition, teachers deal with the politics of education – trustees, principals, superintendents, parents – all whom have become politicized and assertive and come with their own baggage. Like all front-line essential workers they come last in the decision making cycle. They are rarely consulted when major decisions are made but they get all the abuse when things go wrong. Teaching is a thankless job in itself often made much worse by the self-centered and selfish people both inside and outside the profession who constantly disparage teachers.

Teaching is one of the few professions where the professional is required to work with thirty clients at the same time for five hours a day, for ten months of the year and deal with all the needs of those clients on a daily basis. Every other profession deals with clients one person at a time. Teachers do an incredible job of this, reflected in the miniscule numbers of problematic student events that occur in Ontario on a daily basis given the millions of students that are being dealt with each day. No other profession has a track record of quality care and success like teaching.

The government’s plan to open schools with full class sizes demonstrates how little the government, the public and the medical profession understand about teaching. Stuffing thirty students into a 750 sq. ft. classroom with or without protective measures will be a disaster. There is no room to move in our egg-crate classrooms and this type of reopening is a wide open invitation to COVID-19. It puts teachers, students and society at risk. Bad idea.

Teaching is the most honourable, dependable, demanding profession in society that is treated with disrespect because it employs a large number of women. It is also one of the last one’s where those in it are there for altruistic rather than monetary gain. It’s about time that society began to show the same respect for teachers that they show for doctors, lawyers and every other profession starting with pay. Teachers are a bargain at any price but its time to upgrade the profession and bring it out of the 1950s. Every other profession that we value we pay well. It’s time that teachers (women) were made equal partners in society. Its time to stop treating them like the governesses of our society’s children who should be seen and not heard and begin to acknowledge that like many other jobs that women do their work is critically important to the economy and to society. Teachers should have the last word on whether schools reopen and how.