Civil Disobedience
I was perusing social media last night when I stumbled upon a picture in one of the groups I belong to. It was a teacher convocation in Lubbock. They say a picture speaks a 1000 words and this picture was speaking volumes. It showed hundreds of teachers packed into a cafeteria and not a single one was wearing a mask.
Unfortunately, the picture is difficult to find or I would have posted it here. It seems Lubbock ISD took the picture off of their social media when they got blasted in the comments. Convocations are feel good events for central office administrators. Teachers and campus level administrators have never gotten a whole lot out of them even in the before times.
I remember one particular year where the district brought in the woman from “Dangerous Minds” and had her speak. In another year we had an Elvis impersonator (actually that might have been the same year). We’ve also had the superintendent ride into the room in a toy school bus. These events obviously preclude us from doing over a hundred things more worth our time.
I admittedly never took classes in campus leadership for my masters, but counselors did take a few courses in common with future principals. One of those should have been Communication 101. There are things that should be communicated face to face. There are things that should be communicated in an email. Obviously, there are things that don’t need to be communicated at all. In the age of COVID, convocations should be a thing of the past.
It is hard to call wearing masks and practicing social distancing civil disobedience, but in this state I guess it qualifies. Texas seems to be in a race with Florida and Louisiana for brain dead governance. Abbott has to be in the lead here because if he doesn’t get you with COVID then you always have the opportunity of freezing to death. He truly is an equal opportunity jackass.
It is high time we take the talk of freedom seriously. He has banned school districts from mandating masks, but he cannot bar us from wearing them ourselves. He cannot bar us from encouraging others to do the same. In order to do that they would have to outlaw masks outright. I can’t imagine he would want to go that far, but I’d put nothing past him at this point.
Meanwhile, there is no real reason for district wide meetings to take place in person. We managed to get by with Zoom last year. We didn’t even hold in person faculty meetings. Again, it goes back to Communication 101. If the goal is disseminating information then we need to consider how we can do that efficiently and safely. Our governor may be stupid, but there’s no reason why the rest of us need to be.
Back in the day, my godfather was President of the Harris County Medical Society and the speaker at his installation was Jonas Salk. I can only imagine what speech he might give if he was here today. He and his team spent ten years making and testing the dead polio virus vaccine – even on mentally retarded orphans – and had to fight with the live virus proponents. I can so vividly remember taking that vaccine in a sugar cube. Since then, we have practically eradicated polio. Eradicating COVID by a vaccine or slowing it by wearing a mask shouldn’t be so hard.
1I was a “Polio Pioneer”, part of the Salk vaccine’s huge clinical trial in over a million children. I actually got the shot AT SCHOOL, in a long line of kids whose parents, like mine, knew the risks of polio and were hoping that this vaccine would save our generation the fear and devastation theirs had faced. Our teachers, like our parents, were excited to be a part of this. We found out later that I did get the active drug, not placebo. I later got a Sabin live-vaccine sugar-cube as a booster. And now, polio is history in almost the entire world.
2It is appalling to hear of teachers in Lubbock who are so dismissive of science that they won’t bother to wear a mask. Or perhaps they are scared of their anti-science neighbors. I shudder to think what they are actually teaching in the classroom – no doubt fostering ignorance, bullying, cowardice, and spread of disease.
Very glad that my grandkids are here in our small town, which has been a model for the nation on how to handle the pandemic – 80% of eligible adults in my zipcode are vaccinated, and we have masks required indoors now, including schools, and people actually do this with minimal complaint. Plus we have free testing with 24 hour turnaround of results, and capacity to test thousands and genotype all positive samples.
You are right – it is NOT THAT HARD to do this right. (For what it’s worth, my husband and I are using “Airgami” N95 masks, which are super comfortable and can be washed and sterilized in the microwave.)
This appears to be the photo in question:
https://www.lubbockisd.org/site/default.aspx?PageType=3&DomainID=4&ModuleInstanceID=9102&ViewID=6446EE88-D30C-497E-9316-3F8874B3E108&RenderLoc=0&FlexDataID=19252&PageID=1
3Actually I found that picture. The one I was referring had them seated in a cafeteria at those long tables we used to sit at in elementary school. While the picture you produced is bad, the one I saw was somehow worse.
4Sigh. Bad enough I have to travel on the bus and subway with maskholes.
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