We look back at the most disruptive year for education through the lens of a filmmaker and a newspaper reporter who spoke with Georgia teachers, parents, and principals. These stories — “The Virtual Toll,” a short film by Darnell Wilburn, and “The Split Reality” by Ty Tagami — provide a glimpse into the mental, physical, and emotional toll this year has taken on educators across the state.
by Darnell Wilburn
In this short film, four Atlanta-area educators reflect on the ways they’ve navigated technology, mental and physical health, and community building for themselves and their students over the past year.
It’s been a little over a year since schools went into lockdown, not knowing when they’d open back up for students to traverse the halls again. But as the days grew longer and hotter, the unity would be fractured by politics, yielding a much deeper divide. It was one uncertainty heaped atop another, which made for some uncomfortable times. Still, as we sat glued to our screens, we contemplated moving forward in this new normal.
Teachers were in limbo. I was sympathetic to their concerns, as I had stepped away from teaching at the Art Institute of Atlanta to do more freelancing prior to the lockdown. I was still very much connected to friends and former colleagues who were trying to navigate all the changes.
Virtual learning emerged as the de facto method of education, and teachers, parents, kids, politicians, and business leaders were divided on whether or not this was the best way forward. What was obvious, as I delved deeper into this story, was that opinions varied wildly. Some parents wanted kids back in school, while others held their kids out. Some teachers fought tooth and nail to keep from going back into the classroom out of concerns for their safety and that of their students and co-workers, though some of that particular tension eased up when vaccines became available to teachers. Even with the new measures in place, the weight of loss tied to COVID-19 infections still sits heavily upon a lot of educators.
It is my hope that one of the takeaways viewers will have after listening to the stories of these educators is that their concern for students is palpable in a way that isn’t always articulated in the media when school matters are discussed. Just know that it is front of mind for teachers on the frontlines trying to deliver the best performance possible — while still trying to be protective of their own space and health.
If there is any silver lining in this whole mess, it’s that there is an increasing appreciation from parents toward educators. Suddenly faced with full responsibility for their kids from sunup to sundown, parents have realized just how much teachers do. Teachers, much like all essential workers, are overworked and underappreciated. They deserve our respect and protection.
by Ty Tagami
An Atlanta Journal-Constitution education reporter and public school parent looks back on what he calls “the most bizarre year in my life as a reporter.”
It was March 9 of last year, and it would be another two days before the World Health Organization would declare the coronavirus a pandemic. I was driving to the headquarters of the Fulton County school system for an afternoon press conference. I remember dousing my hands with sanitizer after stopping at a gas station to fuel up and buy a snack, so the growing threat was certainly on my mind.
The room was filled with an uncharacteristically large number of reporters for such an event. The atmosphere was tense, expectant.
Superintendent Mike Looney arrived and announced that a teacher had been infected. The entire school district would close the next day for cleaning and disinfection, he’d said. One day became two and by that Thursday, Governor Brian Kemp was holding his own press conference to encourage school districts across the state to close. A man, 67, had just died after infection.
By then, events were moving quickly. College campuses across the country were closing. I went to Emory University and spoke with stunned students hauling boxes, preparing to move out and finish their semester at home.
It was the last time I would interview anyone in person without wearing a mask. Mostly, I went on to report about the pandemic over the phone.
After the chaotic shift online, schools regrouped over the summer, planning a more organized approach for fall. Yet there would be no consensus about how to return. Much of metro Atlanta went online. Other school systems around the state took a more traditional approach. I scrambled, along with reporters from across the country, to write about high schools in Paulding and Cherokee counties, where photos emerged of unmasked crowds of teenagers.
Disputes erupted online. Parents and teachers were sometimes afraid to let me publish their names; the virus had become too politically charged, with disagreements about the level of risk, the seriousness of infection, whether masks should be mandated, and the necessary amount of physical distancing. Many teachers, parents, and administrators wouldn’t go on the record because they said they were afraid of losing their jobs or of being ostracized in their communities.
“I don’t want my kids singled out because I fear for their safety,” one father told me last fall when he was quarantining at home after his two sons had tested positive. He thought at least one of them had been exposed to the coronavirus at school. “There’s a lot of people think it’s bull crap,” he’d said.
He was upset that masks were not required and that he was now having to miss work. He soon tested positive.
When I contacted him again in April, he said he was still experiencing symptoms though it had been months since his recovery. He has trouble breathing, uncontrollably swallows fluids down his windpipe, and always feels a little “draggy,” which he said feels a little bit like being hungover. He said he also has developed asthma.
“There’s some days I can barely get out of bed, but I have to work,” he said. “I just go to work and deal with it.”
While much is still unknown about COVID-19 long-haulers, studies have highlighted cognitive dysfunction, headaches, numbness, and continuous loss of taste and smell among top complaints.
With mixed messages from the government about the level of risk, many parents had to become, as Seth Heringer, a father of five small children in Habersham County, put it, an “armchair epidemiologist.”
The risk calculation was, for me, one of the most difficult things about this pandemic.
Research into school safety was constantly evolving, in part because of limited public reporting of COVID-19 data in schools. (In Georgia, the state Department of Public Health refused to release those numbers.) Emerging national data suggested schools were relatively safe, especially for younger students, but the findings were often predicated on variables such as the consistent implementation of safety protocols — mainly the universal wearing of masks and proper social distancing. Not all schools did this.
Community spread was also an important factor; schooling in person was considered more dangerous in places with runaway infection rates, which at times described much of the country, and of Georgia.
Contradictory opinions among experts often left parents to make impossible calculations of their own, weighing the hard-to-know outside risk against their own family’s situation. How old were the parents? Were grandparents in the home? Did anyone in the household have underlying medical conditions that might complicate an infection?
In my reporting, I found wildly divergent experiences among those infected.
When I visited Otwell Middle School in Forsyth County in August, Principal Steve Miller told me he’d been infected, with mild symptoms. He spent his time in isolation watching early seasons of “The Office.”
Barb Turner had 21 kids in her classroom that day, most wearing masks. “Of course, I’m nervous in some ways,” she’d said at the time. “But I think we’re taking the right precautions.”
(One such precaution was the implementation of a new schedule, with fewer class changes to reduce hallway traffic, Miller said.)
When I called Turner this April, she told me things were going well. “I did get COVID, though,” she said.
She’d fallen ill with a mild case during Christmas break, so she doesn’t think she was infected at school. She suspects her husband gave it to her. He’s an assistant principal in a different school district.
Then there were Hart County teachers Greg Gaines and his wife, Kelley, who both tested positive late last year after a trip to Texas to buy a new truck.
Their doctor told them they were probably infected the weekend after school let out for Thanksgiving, even though they’d stayed home that Saturday, packing for their trip.
Gaines still doesn’t know where he was infected. He said he realized something was wrong after he and his wife returned with the truck and one of his three daughters, 10 at the time, mentioned that new-car scent. He’d been wondering why he couldn’t smell it.
Kelley Gaines, 47, was hospitalized in early December and placed on a ventilator several days later. Soon her husband was watching her life slip away. He remembers their middle daughter, 15 then, on the other side of the hospital room window, her hand pressed to the glass as she prayed. She wasn’t allowed into her mother’s room due to infection protocols.
Gaines told me a couple weeks after his wife died that he figured he was the one who would suffer the most if they ever got infected, since he had underlying medical conditions and she did not.
“I got over it. She had none of them and she didn't get over it,” he had said. “There’s really no way to know.”
He’d said at the time that COVID-19 had been politicized in his community. The schools were not mandating masks. That changed after she died and another school employee did too, he told me recently. Masks were mandated for a few months, from mid-January into April.
“It made it real.”
Jay Floyd, the Hart County Charter System superintendent, told me the mask mandate was not prompted by Gaines’ death. He said he’d been planning to impose it after Christmas to control an anticipated surge in cases. He had seen case counts rise after Thanksgiving break, when many families had traveled. He said the mandate was “relaxed” after spring break, amid falling case counts.
My talks with Gaines were among the most difficult of the past year. He is exceedingly gracious and generous with his time, and his story.
“I sat in front of a person the other day and talked to her about why she should get the vaccine,” he told me.
He doesn’t know if he convinced her, but he knows he tried.
My family lives in a part of Atlanta with near-universal broadband access, and in a school district that is home to top medical experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and Emory University. School leaders did not offer in-person schooling until recently. Consequently, they focused on providing the best online experience possible, with live, interactive sessions rather than the self-guided experience so common in many places.
And even in this, we were fortunate. My wife and I have jobs that allowed us to work from home (mostly, in my case; all the time in hers), and our teenage children thrived online.
Our experience was by no means universal. I have friends here whose children struggled online, especially younger kids. Our school district was under increasing pressure to reopen classrooms. The schools did not open in the fall after parents and teachers protested and resigned, citing a lack of transparency and poor planning. They began a partial reopening this year.
The controversy became personal for me when I found myself in the awkward position of having to interview some of my kids’ former teachers during those protests outside the school district headquarters.
My daughter’s math teacher, Mary Souther, was among those I talked with for an article about educators choosing to drive to Alabama and Tennessee to get vaccinated. This was in February, when Georgia wasn’t yet prioritizing teachers but most other states were.
I cannot say how all teachers felt about the situation, but many I talked with felt disrespected and fearful.
“I'm on a Facebook group with a lot of people who were very, very, very, very, very upset. I would not put myself in that camp. I was kind of in the middle,” said Souther, who had driven the three-hours-plus round trip to Opelika, Alabama, for her first shot.
She felt that her school had opened a little early, before all teachers had a chance to get fully vaccinated, but said she understood why.
A lot of Souther’s students flubbed a recent test. Half are supposed to be in person, but only a quarter typically show up. In mid-April, most of her students — all seniors barreling toward the end of high school — cut class.
“I was like, seriously, guys? We have school four days a week and you think you can take a skip day?”
She experienced something like the split reality that I did.
“I watched some of my friends and family who just literally didn't leave the house for a year, just literally,” Souther said. “And then others in my family who — ‘I don't need to wear a mask. Vaccination? I don't need vaccination.’”
Souther’s happy to be in the classroom again. She’s happy that she can eat lunch with her colleagues outside the building. She’s happy that teenagers are getting vaccinated.
She doesn’t know if this pandemic, and the way people responded to it, has permanently changed her school, but she is looking forward to a new school year with a building full of students and teachers, even if everyone must don a mask.
“I’m very hopeful that by the fall, at least we’ll be able to see normal.”
Darnell Wilburn is a photographer, teacher, and gallery owner in Atlanta. He was born in Fort Hood, Texas. He worked as a cartoonist for The Cincinnati Herald, an African American newspaper. He’s spent the last 16 years as a freelance photographer, with work appearing in Essence, Ebony, Marie Claire Australia, and “Shaq’s Comedy All Stars.” He’s also done work for GoDaddy, among various other commercial clients.
“Virtual Toll” video speakers in order of appearance: Rodriguez Johnson, principal at North Metro Academy of Performing Arts; Megan Greening, high school teacher at Columbia High School; Courtney Jones-Stevens, middle school teacher at KIPP South Fulton Academy; Kirk Brown, chief development and communications officer at the Ron Clark Academy
Ty Tagami writes about state education issues for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, having previously covered Atlanta City Hall, the governments of DeKalb and Fulton counties, and the school systems in Cobb and DeKalb counties. Before joining the AJC in 2002, he wrote for newspapers in Kentucky, Florida, Pennsylvania, California, and New York. He graduated from the University of Arizona. He has two children and has built stage sets in their schools and coached robotics and cycling.