For many around the country, the new school year has already begun. And many districts are pushing forward with in-person schooling, even though we are in the midst of another COVID-19 spike, with new cases around the country rising to their highest point since January. Large swathes of the population are still unvaccinated, including 50 million children nationwide under the age of 12. Combined with the fact that vaccine and mask mandates have become another contentious subject of culture war hysteria and with the more contagious Delta variant causing a critical mass of new hospitalizations, school districts around the country appear to be on yet another collision course with COVID-19 that will likely lead to panicked returns to remote learning.
This week on Working People, we talk with Casey Scully, a former elementary school teacher and current high school math interventionist in Charleston, South Carolina—a state that is second only to Tennessee in terms of new COVID-19 cases. We discuss the path that led Casey to become an educator, how she has navigated the past year and a half, and what she and her coworkers are currently experiencing with schools reopening.
Additional links/info below…
- Casey’s Twitter page
- Dan Levin, The New York Times, “The U.S. Reaches a Daily Average of 100,000 Covid Hospitalizations for the First Time Since the Winter Peak“
- Tina Hesman Saey, ScienceNews, “Schools Are Reopening. COVID-19 Is Still Here. What Does That Mean for Kids?“
- Jeff Amy, AP News, “Schools Reopen with Masks Optional in Many US Classrooms“
- AP News, “COVID: S. Carolina School District Back to Virtual Classes“
- The New York Times, “Tracking Coronavirus in South Carolina: Latest Map and Case Count“
Featured Music (all songs sourced from the Free Music Archive: freemusicarchive.org):
- Jules Taylor, “Working People Theme Song“
- Jules Taylor, “Carolina King”
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