Forced Alienation: On Being Swept Under The Rug

I was asked by a colleague on Friday if everything was alright? They hadn’t seen me much around the school, and when they did, I didn’t seem my usual self. They said I seemed to be on my own a lot. Quiet. Not talkative. I looked like something was wrong.

I told them they were right, but that it’s not because something is wrong with me. Something is wrong with the school. Specifically it’s approach to keeping us adults safe from COVID-19.

While a lot of time has been spent planning safety protocols for the students - everyone wears masks now, there is hand sanitizer outside every classroom, doors and windows are open when teaching - in shared staff spaces at the school nothing has changed since March. There is no marking out of certain areas to ensure a 2m distance, no furniture has been removed to remind staff to stay apart not has the soft furniture been replaced with something you can easily clean. The staff room door and office doors remain closed from prying students with no guarantee of open windows for ventilation, and most troublingly there is no requirement to wear a mask when congregating in these shared spaces. Or at least there wasn’t until I repeatedly raised the issue. Then there was, a week or two ago, the belated instruction that in shared offices (not the staff room) masks should be worn where social distancing was not possible. A rule I have yet to see enforced anywhere. On Thursday a subject leaders meeting was called by the Deputy Head - “socially distanced and masked” we were assured. Yet upon entering the room (both doors firmly closed, only one window open until I opened a second) the majority were not wearing a mask, including the Deputy Head. Here we were, the so-called “middle leaders” of the school, the people in charge of ensuring school policy was being observed across all areas, and if I hadn’t chastised the room and requested that we put on our masks as advertised only three of us would have spent the hour long meeting masked. Yes there was social distancing of the desks, but with only one small window open and all of us having masks why was nobody wearing them? Because the messaging from the school has been clear - the Covid-safety protocols are for the students, not the staff. The staff can fend for themselves.

Having raised all this multiple times with the school since even before we returned on September 1st (I emailed the Head before our first day back asking how I was meant to carry out the requirement of my risk assessment to return to work and maintain Social distancing during breaks and lunchtime when there was a) no guarantee such social distancing was even possible and b) with no messaging to staff about social distancing, it would seem rude and aloof of me to ignore everyone and eat by myself or away from everyone. I was told not to worry.) eventually, after several weeks of eating as “safely” as possible away from the main crush of the staff room up in the shared Humanities Office, I was given a key and told to use a Year Leaders office which usually was free over lunchtime. I could eat lunch by myself. Note: even here there was no guarantee that the space would be available, and at first the people whose office it actually is weren’t even told it was now my private lunchroom! But at least it meant I could eat without sitting next to maskless people on either side of me with no open windows or social distancing…so long as the room wasn’t in use.

But what it also meant was I no longer got to see my colleagues. Every free period or lunch break I am sat by myself in this empty room. It is great for Covid safety and I can get work done. But it is also pretty miserable. To feel so isolated simply because the school cannot be bothered to figure out a safe way of enabling staff to be together. To be punished simply because I want to be able to go to work and minimise my risk of getting a potentially deadly virus which could kill me (an asthmatic) or the people I come into contact with seems inhumane and wrong-headed. All it would take would be some taped markings and empty spaces around the staff room and offices to symbolically remind us to stay apart; some leadership from those in charge reminding us to stay distanced, open windows, wear masks. I am not “anxious”, I am not “overly cautious”. I am simply aware that every day we are teaching hundreds of random students from hundreds of different families in an incredibly high risk area of the country, in cramped classrooms with limited ventilation, and that there are safe ways to interact with each other, and unsafe ways. Our employer can either choose to encourage and facilitate those safe ways of interaction, or they can ignore our safety, accept that the majority of staff don’t seem to care, and do as they seem to be doing with me: isolate those of us who do speak out and demand the bare minimum of safety requirements in which to work so that we and our complaints are swept under the rug.

Yesterday I went to eat out for the first time since March. Walking in, our temperatures were taken, and the room was arranged sensibly, with some tables out of use to enable socially distanced seating. I felt totally safe to take off my mask and enjoy the brief meal and as I sipped my coffee I thought how ridiculous it was that my school couldn’t ensure the same level of safety for its staff that a small little coffee shop could. Worse, even if they couldn’t, the lack of even trying sends out such a fucked up message.

So, yes. I am aloof these days. I’m not found happily socialising with my colleagues and being my usual jolly self. But it is not because I want to be that way. It is because my school have made it impossible to socialise safely. I would love to sit in a shared, well ventilated, staff room with a handful of socially distanced colleagues and eat my lunch safely, or in our shared Humanities office, masked, and chatting away. But at no point since September 1st have I entered either of those spaces and seen ventilation, social distancing and mask wearing being the norm. At no point has the school leadership insisted that it should be. So I am forced into this state of alienation from my colleagues. Physically isolated and also isolated in my perception of a risk that for some reason they don’t seem to see. Like so many in our country with its rapidly increasing cases, in our high-risk city where compliance with safety measures is generally low, the general vibe seems to be one of both fatalism and a sense that it’s all a bit silly. And with no one telling them otherwise, or expecting anything different from them, why wouldn’t they? The job of being a teacher at a time of Covid is hard enough without taking away the small things that make the day go easier - a joke with a friend, a shared cup of tea. I should know! By abdicating their responsibility for facilitating proper safety measures for staff as well as students, for those of us who are concerned about our wellbeing and community spread of Covid 19 we are left adrift from our peers. Unable to interact, unable to communicate. Marginalised and nomadic - seeking safe spaces away from the unconcerned throng.

So I sit alone in my little room away from the people who can help me get through these tough days. I eat my food. I do my work. And I think what the school is jeopardising for want of a few pieces of tape to mark out safe spaces and the removal of some chairs.