“It means ‘Crazy Parents.’”
That’s what one of my high-school students told me when I wrote the words on the white board: in loco parentis, Latin. We’d been talking about our “run, hide, fight” protocol: what you do if, God forbid, an active shooter turns up in the building. I’d told them I’d have to make fast decisions for their safety, for their well-being. I’d told them that I’d be acting in loco parentis.
There were puzzled looks, and I figured I needed to ask if they understood the term. And that’s what one of them came up with.
Years ago, an education intern, I had that phrase drilled into me. Every teaching class, every adolescent psychology course, every instructor told us: Your job is to educate your students, yes, but you’re also acting as the parents, who have put their kids into your hands, and you make decisions FOR them while they’re in your care.
Teachers, in effect, accept the role of daytime foster providers of up to 30 students per class. We take seriously all the responsibilities associated with that role. Aside: It’s also why we’re urged to carry liability insurance.
In August meetings before students arrive, we faculty members would always go through the “Run, Hide, Fight” protocol, listening tensely as our school resource (read: “police”) officers recounted in grim tones what’s happened in other schools, what’s been learned from those situations. Never would any of us—teachers, principals, officers—consider abdicating our responsibility to EVERY SINGLE CHILD, to say to some, “Well, you feel as if the protocol abridges your personal freedom, so you don’t have to do it. You can stand in the middle of the hallway and say, ‘Stop!’ if you feel led to. The rest of us will hide and, then, fight. Good luck to you.”
No: it would always be our job to do the best we could to ensure the safety of every kid … even the ones who rebelled or felt invincible, as teenagers will. We were told to grab loiterers from the halls, even if they weren’t our own, yank them into our rooms, and protect them.
Both the former and the current presidents have called the COVID-19 virus an enemy, and that’s perhaps a good way to look at it. From a scientific point of view, it would be infinitely preferable for everybody just to get that vaccine, neutralize the enemy before it advances. But people didn’t want to do that, so here’s what the virus is doing now: it’s made one round through the world, and in that process, has modified itself to better spread. Allowed to continue its rampage, it will do what all efficient viruses do and will adapt again and again unless it’s stopped. The most current mutations have become deadlier and more contagious, overwhelming hospitals, ERs, ICUs. Herd immunity is beyond us, now.
So, the enemy. Think “multiple active shooters in the hallways, all with AK-47’s and grenades.”
This spring, after my family and I received our second shots and had gotten past the minor fevers and headache that lasted a day or so, I hung all our extra masks by the back door, so that we could grab one on our way out if we didn’t already have one in a backpack or purse. It was somehow less obsessive than we’d had to be earlier, reminding each other at night, double-checking our supply. The older daughter, an adult who’s a biologist, looked at the bits of colorful fabric and then at me, knowingly, and said, “You’re sure we’re not done with this.” Not a question. And I told her, “I am sure we’re not done.” And I chose not to teach this year; I saw it coming. Too many people standing in the hallway, only saying, “Stop,” allowing the enemy to advance. No running, no hiding, no fighting.
I want people (including politicians) who oppose mask mandates to clearly understand me here. You’re telling me, a teacher, to abrogate one of the two primary responsibilities of my profession: to fight to protect the kids—for whom I’m acting in loco parentis—from an enemy. You’re taking one tool from me that might be the only one I, in a room with 25 kids, can easily and dependably use in the battle, can actually, immediately, see the kids using, themselves.
And it is too much to ask of me.
Sheila Alawine Thead has taught in a number of schools in Mississippi, including in Lowndes County.
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