A Class Act Expelled From School

Dear Principal,
I just read your email, resulting from the Premier’s announcement today. It saddens me greatly to have to inform you that under no circumstances will I participate in what is essentially a global health experiment.

You are probably well aware that in my 14 years at (school name redacted), I have taken zero sick days. In fact, in my entire 51 year career, I have taken six sick days, five of which were injury and one of which was food poisoning.

I am not one of the perjoratively described “anti-vaxxers”. In fact, a few years ago, my daughter asked me to take the whooping cough vaccine prior to the birth of her first child. I acceded to this, even though I was fit and healthy and had never been within a bull’s roar of whooping cough. But the whooping cough vaccine was not experimental, and had gone through all the checks and balances that vaccines, prior to these COVID vaccines, had to face. I have never had the flu’ vaccine, and I have never had the flu’.

I have always been very careful about what I let into my body. I don’t drink alcohol. I eat a plant-based diet and rarely eat cooked food. I avoid fast foods at all costs. I don’t drink coffee, although I don’t mind a cup of tea. I avoid processed foods. Also, I keep myself reasonably fit, starting off most days of the year with a two-hour, fairly high intensity, physical workout. I sleep pretty well, and I don’t get too stressed about anything at all. Many say I am lucky, and maybe I am, but a lot of it has to do with the choices I have made with respect to my health.

The COVID virus, in the main, afflicts people with health issues. Many of these issues are self-inflicted, such as smoking-induced illness, consuming foods too high in fats and sugars, poor exercise, getting overweight, leading to Type 2 diabetes, drinking too much alcohol, and so on.

So along comes a Premier who thinks everyone has the same health base, and starts making rules about how I should be managing my health. The lunacy of it all is that the protected are demanding that the unprotected partake of the protection that the protected have used, because the protection that the protected have used isn’t protecting them from either the protected or the unprotected. It’s like something out of a Monty Python movie.

As you well know, I love teaching and I think I bring a lot of energy and expertise to the school. I tell everyone that I meet out there that teaching at our school is like dying and going to heaven. I also tell people who grizzle about working at our school to try somewhere else and maybe then they would appreciate how good it is.

I am not blaming you, or the (school) board, for any of this. I have been watching it coming for quite some time. Equally, I can see in six months or a year, the Premier will wake up to the stupidity of what he is imposing, and quietly let these rules abate.

So, I don’t want to actually resign, but I do have about half a year’s long service leave up my sleeve. Maybe at the end of this year, I can take this leave until June next year. Should the rules still be in place, then I can either resign or go on some further extended leave. But I know you have a school to run, and you need to get good maths teachers who want to stay there.

I am more than happy to come and talk to you about this, although I imagine I am not the only person with these concerns, so you might be fairly busy.

Kind regards’
A Victorian Teacher