Dear Premier Pallister,
Your crocodile tears disgust me.
I have no doubt that you believe your own narrative, in which you paint yourself as the poor leader burdened with hard choices in a bleak winter, gaining the attention and sympathy of the world as you do, but you are not fooling anyone, or at least not me.
The only thing you prioritize and serve is the mighty dollar, consistently choosing money over the welfare of children, the well-being of workers, and the lives of the elderly.
Your premature decision to restart the economy was certainly not the first indication of your greed as cutting services in health care and education while simultaneously fighting to avoid paying teachers and nurses fairly through collective bargaining is par for the course for you and your government.
But now your choices, keeping K-8 students in schools, K-3 students unmasked, not distributing the federal funds provided to hire significantly more teachers and create more space to allow for social distancing, and most importantly not providing regular and rapid testing, and prompt public health contact tracing required to keep students, teachers, and our communities safe, have put us in the situation we are in today.
We wouldn't see our numbers remain steady in the three-five hundreds, and vast community spread, where contact tracing is so backlogged, despite your claims, that public health is catching up with cases at the end of what should have been the 2 week isolation period, had it not been for you and your government's choices.
It is because of the diligence of students and staff in schools on a daily basis, vigilantly caring for the health and well-being of themselves and their communities, that schools have remained relatively "safe," and not many students are getting sick from each other in the classroom, in spite of the lack of preparation and series of illogical choices you have made for Manitobans during the second wave of this pandemic. There is no guarantee, or proof, students are not carrying it out into the community.
Your approval rating continues to plummet, not because the safety measures you put in place are unpopular, but because the policies you have implemented, from raising Manitoba Hydro rates on citizens already struggling, to arbitrarily closing small businesses and restricting sales to what may or may not be essential to Manitobans in your judgement, to cutting services in hospitals and then accusing doctors of having self-serving motivations, are dismissive and insulting to the intelligence of Manitobans like me.
Premier Pallister, I have no doubt that you care about your job, your position, and your power. You care about money, the economy, and the impact of the pandemic on the fiscal future of Manitoba and that clearly motivates you to make the choices you make every day.
What I wonder, really, is while you consider the province, do you actually recognize its citizens?
Do you care about Manitobans as human beings at all?
Your actions to date, your disregard for the voices of nurses and teachers and their exhausted calls for help, the senseless and preventable deaths of so many grandparents in long term care homes, where they should have, and could have, been safe had you acted sooner and heeded the warnings from other places, indicate no feeling whatsoever. No caring. No compassion. No empathy.
I would agree with your description of yourself as The Grinch, but not to invoke the sympathy you wish, and have so adeptly manipulated from the media around you, but because you have shown yourself as the character you have always been, only without the miracle at the end.
Your disdain for your citizens indeed parallels that of The Grinch and the explanation that your heart is "two sizes too small," may be as good as any to justify the choices you and your government make, which consistently hurt, rather than support many Manitobans, including teachers like me.
I have been writing you directly, along with your ministers, my MLA, and other party leaders, and while others have responded, some personally and frequently, you have never once deigned to acknowledge my experience, or those of my colleagues, though your campaign was filled with promises of empathy for teachers, acknowledging their importance in society, highlighted all the more in these "unprecedented times."
Yet this week my students and I returned to the chemical scent of our fumigated classrooms, and beyond heightened cleaning protocols, to our learning routines. In the paradox of life, in our days at school, nothing and everything has changed.
I can't write much more about it here now. Not because I am exhausted, which I am, or because I don't want to, which I don't, but because I cannot.
It is too risky, too dangerous for a public forum, especially for someone who is just a teacher.
To the chagrin of my uncle, and hopefully the relief of my principal, I cannot share my school experience as it is too challenging to straddle the tightrope of public and private.
It is impossible to tell the school stories without including those of my students and colleagues, whose stories aren't mine to tell. Even if I reflect on my own experiences, these days it is just too complicated to try to describe classroom life while also ensuring I don't break privacy laws or my professional code of conduct. We may live together in a social democracy, but it is one where others have power over me and I value my job.
In a time when every school professional is shouldering increased workloads and high stress to ensure the safety of our students and limit spread in the community, it is ironic that describing it will only bring them, and me, more harm.
For now I will have to hope that what I can't say here speaks volume.
I will say I am grateful my students and I returned to the classroom healthy and ready to resume our learning and will again tomorrow. We know we were lucky that we didn't all get sick, and while we can't account for the potential asymptomatic spread in our community, and I don't actually know if my students' families were/are sick, I feel reassured that wearing masks in the classroom is effective in stopping what Dr. Lin describes as the "virus cloud." I believe my students and I are all just a little more aware, and grateful.
The past week went by quickly, with studies in health in ELA and body systems in Science among other learning that will carry us into the break and inform our future projects. I am very much looking forward to the holidays. Hopefully the next ten days pass just as smoothly.
I am also happy the government made a decision, as half-assed and self-serving as the choices seem. It is nice to have some time to plan for the two weeks of remote learning in January, for which my students are very well placed to make the most of their learning, both in terms of curriculum and the course of our studies, and in their confidence and ability to take responsibility for their learning and follow through. I will spend it Zooming with them from my empty classroom. I am too tired to fight that fight again.
My students have demonstrated more resilience and adaptability in the last three months than Premier Pallister and his government have in during all their terms in office combined. I will follow their example and not yours.
Hopefully that time at home will do what is supposed to do and be enough to make a difference and help lower our numbers, though it seems a long time to wait and see. I could be teaching from my empty classroom already, or at least the week prior to the holidays in December.
Alternately, I ask, would it really have been that harmful to keep everyone at home an extra 5 days before the winter holidays? Would it not have been beneficial to give school staff the chance to breathe, and also serve to emphasize the clear, consistent, and serious message, to stay home this holiday season? Doesn't make more sense to have everyone safe at home for an extra five days in December given the extended state of emergency?
As long as we are in class during these next two weeks, Premier Pallister, I once again invite you and Minister Goertzen to come visit my classroom. Come meet some students, learn their stories, their dreams, their challenges, and most importantly, what they really need to be successful in school. Listen to their teachers and school leaders while you are there. You may be surprised, maybe you will meet Cindy-Lou.
You may even astound us and learn about the true meaning of school, learning, caring, empathy, compassion, respect, responsibility and true service to people, and that it is not found in a remote learning center.
Maybe there will be a Christmas miracle after all, and you will start making choices that will save lives now, beginning by acknowledging that community spread is happening through schools making contact tracing practically impossible, so that families can gather safely in the future.
Sincerely,
Cari Satran
M.Ed., PBDE, B. Ed.
