Teaching in a Pandemic

 I don't usually write these posts so close together, but I have to vent today. There are big fights about vaccines and masks and the pandemic in general still. We've been doing this for more than 18 months and we're still arguing about mitigation and how to rid our communities of this virus -- seriously! Half the country remains unvaccinated. The Delta variant of the virus is spreading quickly. Doctors -- real doctors not the tv doctors on cable news -- are reporting that 99 percent of people admitted to the hospital are unvaccinated. Kids are getting sick now and, really, who couldn't see that coming. When all the elderly and vulnerable are vaccinated, where did they think the virus would look for a host? Now, communities are reinstitution their mask mandates. And why, because no masks was for vaccinated people. You don't want mandates, but you don't want to do the right thing either. You have proven again and again you can't be trusted. So, when governors...

I've been thinking a lot about how we handle race and race relations in this country. Last year the entire nation watched in horror and disgust as a police officer kneeled on the neck of a black man for approximately nine minutes.  We watched someone die. The collective shock and trauma and grief we felt at that moment was a moment of unification. People, on lockdown due to a pandemic, took to the streets to protest police brutality.  Black people and Brown people and White people - American people took to the streets by the thousands and protested the murder of yet another unarmed black man, but this time there was no denying, no excusing. Young people, old people, moms, and teachers took to the street. City and suburban people took to the street and to social media in the biggest public outcry since . . . ever. I don't think there has ever been this much support for something. Black Lives Matter became the heroes of the protest as the organization felt vindicated by the murd...