764: School's Out Forever
This episode appears to contain dynamically inserted ads. Transcript timestamps may be approximate.
From W.B.E. Z. Chicago, it's This American Life. I'm Hannah Joffey Walt, sitting in for Ira Glass. So a couple weeks ago, I was calling principals and teachers to find out what it was like to be in schools. I called Principal Brian Cox in Wyoming. Did he have a minute to talk? I can. I've got to be out on bus duty in like 15 minutes. Principal Cox normally does not do bus duty. He also does not normally teach French class because he's a principal and he doesn't know French. He did both the week we spoke because 20% of his staff were absent. Oh, Macron. You know, I told somebody today when we walked in, we had three paraprofessionals down and very key special education classrooms and I told them our goal today is to be a hockey goalie and just keep it out of the net. Two things I learned from calling around to lots of educators over the last few weeks. School is still a mess. That's the first thing. And number two, the situation in schools right now can only be described using metaphor. We're just going to play for eight hours today and try to keep a few of them from getting by us today and then we'll recoup tonight and figure out how we can recover for tomorrow. Oh, man. This year, I'll try not to cry. This year has been hard. Amy Galloway, a teacher in Alaska, says I thought this year was finally going to be normal. This year is not like a creaky, creaky bridge that we're trying to get across. The kind of step where you're not going to die, you're going to roll your ankle, a math teacher in New York City and land with your faith in a mud puddle and being like, okay, I could have probably navigated that obstacle a little differently. They're not enough teachers. They're not enough school bus drivers. You never know which students will come in person, if at all. Some kids have just disappeared. Enrollment and attendance weigh down. The metaphor that I would always use is like it's as though you are creating a vehicle. You can tell this guy's about to go in really deep, right? English teacher. While driving it at the same time on a road whose conditions are unclear in terrible weather, that vehicle, by the way, is a school bus. And not only are there 120 kids there, you're also driving from the back of the bus. That's a metaphor that never ends. Yeah. It just compounds. Mr. Kero Nagayoshi, a high school teacher in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Mr. Nagayoshi was Massachusetts teacher of the year for 2020. In 2021, he quit his job. Quit his job right after being publicly recognized as the very best. He was at the top of his game and he walked away, which is a pretty huge reversal. He didn't plan to leave public school teaching.
Transcription truncated.