MERIDEN, Connecticut (AP) – Jill Biden, the White House teacher, along with new Secretary of Education Miguel Cardona returned to classes on Wednesday in a public effort to show districts that they have not yet made the transition to face-to-face learning that can be done safely during the pandemic.
“Teachers want to be back,” said the first lady after she and Cardona spent about an hour visiting classrooms and other areas at Benjamin Franklin Elementary School in Meriden, Connecticut. “We want to be back. I am a teacher. I am teaching virtually. “
Biden is a veteran English professor at a community college who now teaches remotely at the White House. She said her students recently said they can’t wait to get back to the classroom.
“But we just know that we have to get back to safety,” she said.
The trip was the first thing to do for Cardona, the former Connecticut education commissioner, who took up his new position at the Cabinet just a day earlier.
Biden and Cardona also visited a Pennsylvania high school on Wednesday. They joined the heads of two major teacher unions on the trip, Randi Weingarten of the American Federation of Teachers in Connecticut and Becky Pringle of the National Education Association in Pennsylvania.
The visits took place as time progressed with President Joe Biden’s promise to open most K-8 schools for classroom teaching by the end of his first 100 days in office, or the end of April.
To help stimulate this, Biden said on Tuesday that he is pressing states to administer at least one coronavirus vaccine to all teachers, school officials and daycare centers by the end of March.
The issue of teacher vaccinations has become a critical issue in school districts across the country, as many teachers have stood in line and refused to return to their classrooms unless they received the vaccines.
The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention did not include vaccinating teachers in their guidelines for schools to consider when they reopen after months of remotely teaching students via computers.
“We must continue to reopen schools in America for face-to-face learning as quickly and safely as possible,” said Cardona. He said the president’s directive that school teachers and staff be vaccinated quickly will be “my top priority”.
Later on Wednesday, Biden and Cardona visited Fort LeBoeuf Middle School in Waterford, Pennsylvania, where parents said they appreciated the fact that the school district asked for their opinion on the reopening.
After closing in March 2020, the school with several hundred students from the sixth to the eighth grades began to receive them personally, on a voluntary basis, from the beginning of September.
“I love that you take this holistic approach,” said Biden.
She and Cardona also visited a robotics class in high school and a class for students who need or want a little extra push.
Supporters of former President Donald Trump waved flags with his name on it and raised their thumbs upside down as Biden’s entourage walked away from the school. Anti-abortion protesters held up signs that said “Protect all children” and “Abortion is not medical care”.
During their visit to the primary school in Connecticut, Biden and Cardona saw children sitting some distance from each other in individual desks, each wearing a mask. Transparent plastic dividers separated groups of four students seated at half-moon tables. Hand sanitizer dispensers were available in the halls.
“I love it,” said Biden after a teacher pointed out the partitions. The teacher also said that her children “had no problems” with the use of the masks.
The school reopened in late August, Cardona said, and “it was done in a way that protected students and their families.”
The First Lady and Cardona also visited a “sensory room” complete with colorful climbing walls, zip lines, monkey bars, stability balls and a rug, where students with special needs can collect their emotions.
Biden asked the teacher in the sensory room if she had seen children’s anxiety increase because of the pandemic. The teacher said yes.
Biden and Cardona later heard another teacher describe her transition back to personal learning.
The visit to the school also served as a homecoming for Cardona, who is from Meriden and was so warmly praised that Biden referred to the welcome as a “festival of love”. His parents were among those present in the school lobby for comments.
“Now our nation will have that love for you,” she said.
“Educators’ three favorite words are not ‘I love you,’” she joked. “It will be the Secretary of Education Cardona.”