October 25, 2022
Gilbert Sun News
Teachers should refuse to return to classrooms
I have a long history of refusing.
I’ve refused job offers, marriage proposals, desserts while on a diet, dates and countless servings of vegetables as a child.
As I look back, my life has been more defined by what I have refused than what I have accepted.
In the midst of a global pandemic, educators are now being faced with the ultimate choice to enter a classroom, and this time, the consequences of our decisions will far exceed seeing a disappointing number on a scale or having a bad date.
This time, the lives of faculty, staff, students and their families are hanging in the balance.
School administrators, from K12 classrooms to universities, are struggling with the decision of whether to open their institutions to an in-person or all-online campus, or creating a hybrid scenario.
Urgent streams of emails are circulating, describing how students could be distanced from each other, mitigating the spread of the virus. Block scheduling, partitions between desks, mandatory masks, and staggered lunch breaks have all been considered.
The consensus seemed to be that no amount of distancing or precautions were likely to stop COVID-19 from infecting classrooms, teachers, staff and students.
In my home state of Arizona, we have already lost a dedicated educator who was teaching summer school and reportedly did everything in her power to prevent the spread of the disease. The other two teachers in the classroom contracted COVID-19 as well.
Administrators and government officials alike acknowledge that despite our best preventative efforts, illness, disability and deaths are likely to occur.
Jennifer Kady Stanton 
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