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After a long week of teaching, I started to feel poorly on a Saturday evening in early October, but assumed it was just exhaustion.
After all, I wouldn’t have been the first teacher to feel a little worse for wear when the weekend rolled around.
However, this time it was different. I woke up on Sunday morning with a high fever and managed to get a coronavirus test in the afternoon. Sure enough, when the result came back the following Tuesday, it was positive.
In hindsight, contracting coronavirus as a teacher was perhaps inevitable; people in this line of work surely have a greater chance of exposure when we’re coming into contact with hundreds of children and spending hours in enclosed classrooms. Especially when the government is doing very little to protect us.
I went into the beginning of the term apprehensive but excited about seeing my students and colleagues. My school had put extensive measures in place to try and keep us safe, including the creation of social ‘bubbles’ for different year groups, anti-bacterial wipes in every classroom, around-the-clock cleaning and staggered start times and lunch breaks.
Teachers also have a box marked out on the floor of each classroom for them to stay in, which students are not to cross.
But even with these measures in place, it felt like only a matter of time until I got ill.
I was having to walk to other parts of the site for each lesson – likely walking over five kilometres a day – crossing paths with many others.
Yes, taking all my resources with me – like books, board makers and wipes – was frustrating, but one of the hardest bits of teaching in the age of coronavirus is managing students.
Phrases like ‘Miss, I forgot my mask’ are already standard greetings from some students, and there’s a real worry that if they’re travelling home on public transport and they don’t have a mask, they won’t be able to get back.
Trying to stop the mingling of bubbles and years groups is also an almost impossible feat.
Teachers are bearing the weight of more responsibility than ever right now – meaning stress levels are high and exhaustion common.
We’re overworked and underpaid at the best of times, but this is something else entirely.
We not only have concerns about the safety of our students, but our own. It’s not fair to expect teachers to put themselves on the frontline without adequate protection.
When my test came back positive, it is ridiculous that one of the first things I felt was guilt for taking time to self-isolate during term time.
This period off work was the longest absence I have had in my working life outside of maternity leave. That’s because as teachers we know that taking last minute sick days are disastrous for all involved – staff and students.
It creates inconsistency for students (especially when they have already suffered a long absence during lockdown in this instance) and adds to the already bulging workload of other teachers who are left to cover their lessons and set work for the students.
This time, the school had to ask any staff that I share a space with to self-isolate, too.
I am fortunate that my symptoms were mild, but I’m frustrated that the UK leaders hadn’t done more to protect teachers and students.
Where is the PPE? Where was the money so that schools could afford the considerable cost of additional cleaning?
If the UK’s leaders had used the summer holidays to ensure schools would have the capacity and resources to begin the term using a blended approach of online and in-person learning facilities, this would have allowed for a gradual rotation of students on-site and slowed down transmission.
But it seemed like they had bigger priorities, like creating a £12billion ‘world-beating’ test and trace system, which still isn’t up to scratch.
The same amount could have supported a lot of school children with online learning platforms in this crisis. It could have secured a safe learning environment whereby routine blanket testing was taking place for everyone that worked at a school – staff and students alike.
Moving forward, we need to plan ahead for the eventuality of more lockdowns; we cannot and must not repeat the debacle of last summer’s GCSEs and A-Levels.
The current plan – which is to postpone next year’s tests by a mere three weeks – is simply not fit for purpose. Three weeks of extra time is no compensation for months of disrupted learning.
Students have a right to secure an education, and they’re having to fight for that – along with teachers – against a government that is doing nothing to support them and putting us all at risk in the process.
Do you have story you’d like to share? Get in touch by emailing james.besanvalle@metro.co.uk.
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