The whole post is worth reading but here are the headline quotes:
today there were 14 absent teachers 1st period
Second period I had another absent teacher. More of the same from 1st period. It was around this time that 25% of kids, including myself, realized that there were no rules being enforced outside of attendance at the start of the period, and that cutting lass was ridiculously easy. We left...
90% of the bathrooms were full of students swabbing their noses and taking their tests. I had one kid ask me -- with his mask down, by the way -- whether a "faint line was positive," proceeding to show me his positive COVID test.
I should note that in study hall and with subs we literally learn nothing. I spent about 3 hours sitting around today doing nothing.
By January the 3rd (when we returned from break) the numbers were up to 100 (as listed on the school Google Sheet). Today there are 226. This is around 10% of my school.
90% of the conversations spoken by students concern COVID.
One teacher flat out left his class 5 mins into the lesson and didn't return because he was developing symptoms
NYC views itself as progressive but honestly it treats most of its teachers like shit. It's unbelievable how inadequate and ramshackle the education system is in poor/working class areas, while a fifteen minute subway ride away sit some of the most prestigious universities in the world... I feel like an entire mini-generation is being permanently damaged by having their childhood stolen away from them capitalists whose fortunes depend on greasing the wheels of the financial system with the blood of the poor, and I only hope that some of the traumatized Zoomers realize who is really to blame for their mental impoverishment.
I Lived Through Collapse. America Is Already There. Living in Sri Lanka during the end of the civil war, I saw how life goes on, surrounded by death
Noteworthy article, not just for the US. People can pretend that things are normal for a looooooooooooong time.
"Collapse is just a series of ordinary days in between extraordinary bullshit, most of it happening to someone else. That’s all it is."
I heard similar story from someone living in Iraq. The gist was basically, "yeah we do the same shit as you. We go to work, we watch TV, we have fun with our friends. But we might get blown up on our way to work, or we might see dead people laying in the street. You just have to learn to live with it because what else can you do."