I don’t even get excited anymore. I know that a) we have piles of evidence showing this already, and…
b) Anyone who didn’t get this memo already – alternately known as Team Remote Learning and Team Motivated Reasoning – will find a reason to blow off this one, too.
“But this is pre-Omicron!”
“But long COVID”
“But the immunocompromised!”
“But their immunocompromised grandparents’ neighbors!”
“But future variants!”
And no one even meeds to have evidence for any of it! Just the virtue of A Concern.
So, for all of my equally-dismayed friends, watching an important profession discredit itself as vocal members refuse to embrace a growing pile of reassuring evidence, I offer you….
Did you know the @CDCgov changed the mask guidance a few months back, to call for cloth masks with clear panels for children learning to read, among other cases related to speech and language development + special needs?
I won’t soon forget that in the Great Debate between @ClaraJeffery and @NateSilver538, Jeffery was basically erasing last year’s school closure history.
Fact check: 53% of schools were closed in 1st week of Jan ‘21, and 37% hadn’t yet been opened (source: @BurbioCalendar).
Perceptions of public education are changing… and not only because of the perceived lack of reliability / lack of child-centering due to closures.
The way the loud voices talk on here is a real problem.
And I’ll be honest, every day I log on and I have to consciously work…
… to think about the MANY educators I know personally, and how we talk/DM about kids and closures, to keep myself from getting cynical about some of the educators in my replies.
I have met thousands of Eds and seen great teaching. I count many Eds as friends and advisors.+