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As an educator, I’m given the luck and privilege to teach kids and tell them about the Coronavirus.
As an Asian-American educator in an inner-city environment, unfortunately I get comments about the Coronavirus that aren’t the most respectful.
“Stay away from me, Mr. Fan! You got the Coronavirus!”
“Why your people bring the Coronavirus over?”
These are comments despite me being born in the United States and spending all of my life in America, I have to remind kids that these comments are disrespectful and that they shouldn’t go up to any person of Asian descent and make those comments.
However, I get where the fear is coming from, even if it is unfounded, and I wouldn’t be in the job in the first place if I didn’t have thick skin. If jokes about the Coronavirus were the worst I experienced on a daily basis, I would have a pretty easy job relative to what I do encounter.
Talking to kids about the Coronavirus has my own pitfalls, too. We’ve talked about how the Coronavirus is just a variation of the flu, with no vaccine. When kids tell me it’s no problem, I ask them if they have grandparents. I ask them if very young children live in the family, and talk to them about how…
