Many Reasons to Avoid Talking About COVID
In March of 2020, Ms. Bullard relocated from the Midwest to North Carolina and was able to secure a job teaching 9th grade biology at a suburban school for the 2020–21 school year. Ms. Bullard began the school year with a hectic schedule that included two alternating groups of students virtually and in-person, as well as a fully online class. However, she quickly realized that her schedule was impacting her pacing, causing her to slow down in an effort to accommodate in-person and online students. Her students were also struggling with the self-discipline to complete their online assignments, which further stalled the amount of content Ms. Bullard was able to cover.
Everything was taking longer with having to do it in a split group, and then also with the time management and self-management of students. The days that they were remote . . . rather than doing the lessons that I had posted for them to do, . . . they would think it’s not school, like, “I’m not at school, so I don’t have to do school.” I was constantly having to back teach everything to be like, “Okay, these notes should be filled out, and we’re moving on.” And they would not have a clue what I was talking about because they didn’t do the assignments that I had posted for them.
In addition to adjusting to her new school and teaching schedule, Ms. Bullard was informed that the state would still be requiring end-of-course testing for biology students. Although students could fail the exam and still pass the course, she was still held accountable for their scores as part of her teacher evaluation.
The one thing that was particularly difficult is the state still required students taking biology to take the end-of-course exam at the end of the school year. . . . In 2020–2021, it was my first year teaching in North Carolina with a state-based test that I didn’t write.
Because she was focused on preparing students to take the biology end-of-course test, Ms. Bullard did not dedicate class time to teaching her students about COVID, specifically because viruses and virology are not included in the state biology standards.
We have such limited time to cover all of the standards anyways, and I’m losing time because they’re not doing what they need to do, and I need to cover these things, and they have to take the test at the end of the year. I would’ve liked to have brought it in a little bit more to guide the curriculum, to be like, “This is happening to you right now. Let’s talk about how this fits into biology.” But if you really think about how the standards are written, viruses and bacteria don’t have specific state standards. There’s nothing in there that I need to teach them [about viruses and bacteria].
Ms. Bullard noted that the constantly changing information and guidelines also made her wary of attempting to educate her students about COVID for fear that she might provide incorrect information.
I did not feel comfortable educating about things that our nurse should have done. . . . There was somebody that knew what the rules were, what the quarantines were, what the hand-washing right thing to do was, but it changed so often. What we could and couldn’t do changed weekly for a time, and it changed differently for my school than it did for other places, and it changed differently for North Carolina than it did for the US as a whole. And so it was too hard to keep up with what was actually current.
In addition, Ms. Bullard was very afraid of ramifications the topic could have on her teaching position. She knew that the pandemic had become highly politicized in her community, and she wanted to avoid any pushback or negative interactions with parents.
I didn’t want it to turn into people’s parents contacting me and saying that they’re anti-vax and I talked about vaccinating and how good it was in class and now their child wants to get vaccinated. I did not want to step on any political toes by bringing it up in that way, because that’s where it goes. In rural North Carolina, people come with masks and hats that state their political opinions. And if you’re on the other side of that, it can get nasty. And so I didn’t feel like it was my place to tell you what to do or give you information about it because it would’ve been something that would’ve come back on me and probably been negative.
As the effects of the pandemic lessened, the 2021–22 school year became more normal. Students returned to school in-person and Ms. Bullard was able to return to more typical and effective ways of teaching. However, the pressure to teach to her standards and not overstep her bounds with regard to COVID instruction remained.
There was definite discomfort with bringing [COVID] up in anything but a very glossed over, “Hey, this is happening in your life right now.”. . . I didn’t feel comfortable putting any opinions or ideas out there. Even if it’s fact, even if I believe it, it’s not something that I think that the vast majority of my students would be receptive to or their families.
