As teachers push back against going live in areas like Chicago, I’d like to try to put a face to these protests. Who are these teachers?

She may be just out of school, nearing retirement or anywhere in-between. In elementary school, the odds are almost 9 out of 10 that she’s female. In middle school and high school, she’s probably also female, but she’s sharing the hallways with many more men. She’s likely to be much less worried about COVID if she’s younger and on her own, but starting teachers sometimes live with their extended family. That starting salary in many locations comes in somewhere in the mid-thirties and Montana’s average starting salary is only $30,036. (Teacher Salaries in America – Niche Blog). Since it’s an average, that means lots of people are starting below $30,000.

The kids who are coughing openly and furiously are not in the classroom this year, But kids are always sick. Let me repeat this: Kids are always sick. And some kids’ noses run like faulty faucets. They leak perpetually. Those kids may not be home.

“It’s just ‘Benjamin,'” mom will say, and the teachers know she’s right.

The rooms are small, even with reduced class sizes. The masks don’t always work well. Watch a mom with little masked kids in the grocery store if you have doubts. And Benjamin cannot deal with his nose without removing his mask. Unless he just covers his mask in snot, which some kids will do, the same kids who cover their sleeves in snot.

Now, let’s say you are Benjamin’s teacher. If you are especially unlucky, Benjamin had a fever last week. Was it caught on the first day? The second day? Maybe Benjamin’s not the talkative or complaining type. I got insanely sick a couple of years ago, and I’m, pretty sure the source was a nonverbal specIal education student I helped one morning. I didn’t catch the problem until he took my hand on the way to the bathroom before lunch. That hand was HOT.

Now let’s say you are that older teacher or young teacher living in a multigenerational home. You wake up with a slight sore throat. A very slight sore throat. You know your school is short of subs, like so many other schools. They are using paraprofessionals to cover classes — not legal, but they have to put some adult into those rooms — because they have no one else to cover classes. Unfortunately two of the school’s paraprofessionals just quit. There’s no one to cover for you. And you are probably fine.

Will you go into school? Maybe you will. Let’s say you are older and suffer from acid reflux, which causes occasional mild sore throats. You may say, “I’m sure it’s just reflux.” Because it’s really too damn scary to consider the alternative.

Except you are scared. You get to school and Benjamin’s absent. Now you are walking on psychic eggshells. He didn’t look right yesterday — maybe a little too flushed. Was he unusually quiet?

“He’s got a fever,” his mom says. But no one has tested him. The lines are crazy long still in a few places, and testing is a nuisance regardless. He is not coughing and the doctor told mom testing could wait since he does not yet seem that sick. What now? You are going to have to wait to find out what is happening. Should you go home?

That’s Wednesday. What about Thursday and Friday? And the next week? Unless, of course, Benjamin sends his family and maybe his whole class into quarantine. Speaking of scary…

Eduhonesty: Vaccinate the teachers. Those states who have not prioritized teachers have their heads so far down into the sand they have clearly buried their brains. But, in the meantime, I’d like to ask all the parents and noneducators, the people who have never worked in schools, to visualize those classrooms. Remember what those rooms were like. Remember the smells? Those rooms where the smells lingered and lingered for hour after hour? Yes, districts have been working to improve air circulation. But in older buildings, that task is monstrously huge and expensive. Do you trust those efforts? Understandably, many teachers do not. Imagine daily life in those rooms in the winter of 2021.

Kids are always sick in elementary school, and often sick for most or all of the winter in middle school. High schools are a little better; diseases don’t work through high school classrooms with the same ferocity. Still, I guarantee some of our “Felicias” and “Benjamins” are perfectly capable of ignoring a low-grade fever to go to school so they can spend the day near their latest romantic interest.

This will be a short post. The Front page of the Chicago Tribune says it all today.

I do not personally know anyone yet who has received the first vaccination shot here in Illinois. I am certain those many thousands of healthcare workers are out there. But the elderly and the teachers? They are 1B — and we are hoping to start 1B next week in Cook County. Caveats are being issued all over the place — never mind the ongoing discussions of lack of overall vaccine, but I believe those vaccinations will be taking place over the next few months.

Those Chicago teachers? We are nearly on the cusp of vaccinating. Why are we forcing anyone into the classroom right now?

A few weeks or even months will not significantly change our students overall educational status. They might make all the difference in teacher health, however. This blog has been following long haulers from the earliest intimations that COVID-19 lingers in some people. Here is one last sobering article on this theme: Almost a third of recovered Covid patients return to hospital in five months and one in eight die (telegraph.co.uk)

This disease does not always come and go. The above article has the following subtitle: “Research has found a devastating long-term toll on survivors, with people developing heart problems, diabetes and chronic conditions.” Those chronic conditions are proving to be many, with long-term extreme fatigue toward the top of that list.

Eduhonesty: In viral hotspots — almost everywhere right now, it seems — schools should remain closed until vaccinations begin to rein in this monster. Opening those classrooms under these conditions is criminal.

From the John Hopkins coronavirus map for Cook County, Illinois:

Cases: 435,888
Deaths: 9,065

Reader, I would like to ask you to focus on the cases, rather than the deaths. What is almost one-third of 435,888? Let’s use the 29.4 percent in the linked article above to get a rough number. That’s 128,151 people who may no longer be actively sick with COVID, but who are still unwell, if the research from Leicester University and the Office for National Statistics (ONS) in Great Britain is correct. A number remain extremely unwell.

P.S. Things I have learned from social media. They ran out of shots in New York. And in some states, teachers are not even 1B but are in the general pool.

I embrace lengthy discussions about today’s election craziness with high school students and mature younger brothers and sisters in middle school. Young adults are mostly following events anyway. There’s little choice.

Politics has stolen the front pages. In a sobering recap of how badly things are going, a new record was set yesterday: 4,400 people died from COVID-19, as the virus runs almost unchecked, ravaging our nation’s economy and psyche; yet you have to scroll down to the 21st story on the Washington Post website to find it that latest COVID information. Current events have pushed a full-blown plague off the front page.

A better time to flesh out the civics curriculum has hardly been seen in my lifetime. The only event of comparable magnitude that comes to mind is the resignation of Richard Milhous Nixon. I was a teen-age girl in Mexico at that time and I remember people asking me, “But why did he resign?” I would explain Watergate while they continued to stare blankly at me, before saying, “They all do that!” But in my country at that time, people thought more highly of their nation’s leaders. We did not believe they all did that.

Bill Clinton’s little hallway romp with the cute, young Monica hardly hits the meter today. Instead we look at pictures of National Guard members sleeping on the marble floors of the capitol building as we prepare for an inauguration like no other. I have personally tweeted that I’d like the inauguration to be conducted remotely. One advantage to a Zoom inauguration: The President-elect could be in Uruguay or on Mars for all any angry mob would know.

But this post is about our little kids — our incredibly confused little kids on some cases. I’d like to suggest we back away from sharing too much information with elementary school age children. In middle school, a conservative approach should be taken with this topic. I know from my teaching years that the emotional maturity of a thirteen-year-old can be utterly unpredictable. Some are wise far beyond their years. Others go home to watch SpongeBob SquarePants while clinging to toy trucks and well-worn dolls.

As an elementary school-age child, I spent years living in fear after viewing a rather innocuous Outer Limits episode, “The Man with the Power.” During the day, I was fine, but in the dark as I lay waiting for sleep, I kept waiting for that lightening to pop up in the corner of the room. What if the room was destroyed? If I was killed by the falling ceiling? Or if I just disappeared, never to be found?

Children truly do believe in Santa Clause, the Tooth Fairy and the Easter Bunny. They may reach the realization that Santa is just dad or mom when they are five or when they are seven. Perhaps a few will hang on past seven years simply because Santa is such a great idea and their family keeps backing up the Santa story. Why was the Tim Allen movie The Santa Clause such a success? I suspect part of that movie’s longevity is the fact that many of us would like to live in a universe with a real Santa.

But kids truly believe. They believe in heroes and, unfortunately, they also believe in monsters. They can be scared of the lightening in the corner for years. I read a post last year about how to teach 9/11 in first grade. My gut response was NOBODY should teach 9/11 in first grade. It’s too soon. Some ideas should not be taught until children can put them in an at least semi-realistic context that will make sense to them.

Timing is everything. I had to be at least eight when I saw “The Man with the Power,” an episode filled with adult themes that all flew right over my head. But I was an imaginative child and that lightening remained after all the mysterious conversation faded away. Our kids right now can’t understand this talk of insurrection and the “end of democracy” or “end of our country.” But they get the word “END.” And they can tell something scary must be happening, especially in those homes that have been watching news they never watched before. They understand what “five people were KILLED,” means, if hazily, and they understand that “DARK, PANDEMIC WINTER” is a bad, bad thing. I hope not too many have been watching the TV from the stairs as that policeman stuck in the doorway screams.

PANDEMIC has already upended our children’s lives. Some have lost family members. More commonly, children have been running in fear of endangering family members, listening to explanations of why they can’t go to play with friends or visit grandma and grandpa.

“We can’t go this year. We have to protect grandma and grandpa.”

Protect them from what? Depending on their ages, the answer to that question will be more or less complete — but on some level, all our children understand that their grandparents are in danger. A scary new kind of death walks the world.

I don’t know what we will call this generation when it comes of age. I know that these kids will be a new generation like no other in memory. They will be the kids who grew up in the times of masks and the drive-thru. Some will be kids who knew dad’s job clerking at Walmart or driving a city bus just might get him killed. Others will be kids trying to recover from holes in their educations, despite best efforts by educators and families.

But we can rescue our elementary school children and their more-sensitive older brothers and sisters by NOT teaching them topics that are too scary for them to process. No one who believes in Santa Claus should be trying to understand what is happening right now to our democracy and the United States of America. Young children know America is where they live. DESTROYING America then becomes an absolutely terrifying idea. Donald Trump can become a terrifying idea — either TRUMP the EVIL MASTERMIND WHO IS DESTROYING AMERICA or TRUMP the HOPE FOR AMERICA WHO IS BEING DESTROYED by the EVIL SOCIALISTS. Kids know what DESTROY means, or its synonyms like wreck and trash. But Santa fans don’t know that lightening can’t come out of nowhere and destroy their bedroom or take their parents away. They don’t know that America will not simply disappear out from under them, sweeping their lives away somehow, probably with dead grandparents thrown into the bargain.

I keep seeing articles on how to teach what is happening. For adolescents, that teaching is wholly appropriate and I’d say vital right now. This is unfortunately the civics opportunity of a lifetime — a chance to help young people understand our government, contracts and law.

But I’d like to plead with teachers, parents and other adults watching this mess — to the extent possible, let’s keep the wee ones out of this mess. Let’s turn off the news. Don’t share the harsher, nitty gritty details. Let’s offer reassurance when complex topics arise.

“Everything in Washington, D.C. will be fine. Things don’t always happen the way we want them to happen, but this country is a great country and we will make things work out right. People are working right now to get it to come out right.”

That’s what our little kids need to hear. The adults have it in control. The adults will keep them safe. They live in a great country. Sometimes people have to work to get that country right, but when they do the work, they can fix the problems.

Hugs to my readers from the blue room!

Cell phones. Small, flat rectangles that easily fit into our hands, whether nested in Otter cases or cute pink, plastic unicorns made in China; these devices are thieves of time like no other. They are simply the laptop or desktop dwarf that holds… what? Messages, Zoom, YouTube, videos, books, movies, social media, photo apps, games, ride-sharing and dinner-delivery options, restaurant rewards apps, music, weather, news, email, and random bits and pieces of cyber detritus, like this app that finds stars and identifies planets.

But winter has fallen and the White Walkers of the Northlands are out there. In the North, children are sitting in houses. Many of them will not go back to school when winter break ends. They will not go anywhere. Maybe they will visit a friend or two in their bubble or pod, but how many children did not see grandma and grandpa this break?

For years now, education and child-rearing articles have warned about the dangers of too much screen time. Too much screen time is bad for kids? One might as well say water is definitely wet. We know that staring into screens creates trouble — short tempers, unfinished projects, and disconcerting zombie-like stares for starters.

But I want to flag those phones today. Cyber burn-out is the enemy for online teaching and learning. Phones eat into children’s limited attention spans, sometimes aggressively. And those limits are real, even if they vary greatly from child to child.

Parents, have you relaxed on the issue of phone time? A lot of us are stuck inside of Mobile with the Memphis blues right now — or wish we were, because Mobile and Memphis at least sound warm. In January in the Northlands, it’s natural to pick up the phone to play a game or work on music lists. It’s also natural to look at our kids and decide not to interrupt their games or forays into social media. We don’t want the kids watching endless Hulu and Netflix. We intuitively sense how sick some are of hour after hour on their laptops, no matter how good their teacher may be. Even when the cobbled-together curriculum for remote learning seems relevant and useful, kids and adults have secret off-switches for electronics — that place where the zombie stare kicks in and a simple question nets a snarl rather than a helpful answer. Minecraft may engage the brain, but too much Minecraft can make Jayden a snarly kid.

Ironically, as electronic minutes accumulate, it’s easy to let the phones go right now. Who want to fight? Kids deprived of phone time push back in the best of times, as parents struggle to find the app or strategy that can rein in the monster. By a certain age, apps to restrain phone time often seem futile.

Eduhonesty: Stuck in the house? Kids and everyone else going stir crazy? Or at work and worrying about what’s happening at home as grandma or the sitter supervises — or does not supervise? Worried about your kids’ mental health, whether you are home or out in the world? When the schoolwork is out of the way, one strategy that will help children maintain balance is to get those kids off the phone.

Here is a starter site: 40 of the Best Art Projects for Kids – Left Brain Craft Brain

A search on craft projects will yield many sites. I’d ask my children what they wanted to do. Learn the guitar? This can be done in online classes, although you should consider masking up and venturing out early to buy the guitar. Purchasing first-time musical instruments requires a fitting process unlikely to work without making comparisons and holding the instrument.

I get together with a group of friends to sketch and paint throughout the week. We look through a series of pictures and decide on a favorite. Then everyone tries to create their own version of the octopus, door, tree, of whatever whim strikes at that moment.

If crafts are not catching on at home as you hope, I recommend exploring online learning. Online options abound. Some will stimulate conversation instead of inducing the zombie stare. Here’s a useful link:

Free online courses you can finish in a day | Coursera

The Coursera courses in this link might fascinate a high school student or academically-strong younger sister or brother. Yes, Coursera takes a student back online but “Feminism and Social Justice,” “Psychological First Aid” and “An Introduction to Consumer Neuroscience and Neuromarketing” might prove perfect for the right kid. These courses are guaranteed to engage the brain productively.

(Teachers, if you don’t know Coursera, please check this link out!)

Fight back, reader. Yes, the snows are falling. The children (and many adults) are sinking into lethargy as ice covers the sidewalks, and onscreen minutes proliferate.

Maybe your child needs a guitar or ukulele. Or you both do. Or a set of 24 watercolors and a starter pad of watercolor paper. You might melt some crayons to make the tried-and-true stained glass window. The whole family could participate in cooking lessons with the kids helping to plan the week’s menus. (I believe Coursera has a course on child nutrition 😋.)

Reader, start looking for those phones. They fade into the background, almost becoming invisible. The world mostly goes quiet when the phones come out and right now, with the stress of COVID, politics, and work, quiet may seem desirable. But life with children, whether parenting or teaching — that life was never meant to be quiet. Children should not be staring. They should be dancing. Or mixing flour with sugar. Or massacring chords over and over on their musical instrument of choice.

Hugs and Good Luck to All in the New Year.

P.S. Watch out for violins. They make amazingly awful sounds at the beginning of musical instruction. If you don’t have a basement or attic for practice, I recommend keyboards or guitars instead.

“There is no question that distance learning has challenges. That’s why the U.S. Department of Education has reminded schools that if distance learning isn’t providing a student with a fully appropriate IEP or 504 Plan, they should make a determination as to whether that student will require compensatory (make up) services when schools are fully open once again. It isn’t an ideal solution, but you should keep it in mind.”

I translated this paragraph to “honest people know that some U.S. students are being sent up the creek into the whitewater without any paddles or life preservers.”

From IEP or 504 Plan for Distance Learning: Accommodations for ADHD Students (additudemag.com)

Many classrooms are empty now and we all know that distance learning serves certain students better than others. This is true for all students. Distance learning mostly favors visual learners with longer attention spans. It heavily favors lucky students with parents who can make time to help during the learning process, especially in homes with more disposable cash. That cash translates to headphones that cancel outside noise, a cell phone or tablet holder, a printer, reliable internet, and, most critically, a calm, quiet and comfortable place to study.

Yes, many financially-disadvantaged parents are doing a heroic job of creating an at-home learning environment that works, but money makes this so much easier. I don’t want to diminish the efforts of struggling parents who are fighting to help educate their children while somehow also paying rent, car payments and grocery bills. But I also don’t want to pretend that extra $$$ isn’t hugely helpful during this school year. Many supplies provided by schools are being bought by parents right now– not all those schools went around handing out crayon caddies and glue sticks. Tech-savvy parents right now are more often able to stay home, in part simply because jobs that require significant tech knowledge tend to be jobs that can be done on a laptop with a cup of tea and cookies in a home office.

Still, a financially-disadvantaged student working at home on a school-issued Chromebook, using that less than optimal mouse and the school headphones that can only be heard in the right ear — that student may be doing fine. As always, the right instructor makes all the difference. Reliable software and a solid internet connection help, but back-up plans can rescue days when the Evil 64-G Nanites sent by Thanos somehow eat the day’s plans. Tenacity and grit can substitute for cooperative hardware and software.

But what about those kids with IEPs and 504 plans? The kids who don’t have the services they need to make use of that Chromebook?

Eduhonesty: Not all the grit in the world can substitute for the ability to read when no one is available to read for a kid who cannot decode words, especially not if that kid suffers from hearing loss too.

A partial list of the particular reasons why students receive special education services includes widely varying degrees of autism, Down syndrome, severe dyslexia, medical conditions requiring regular hospitalization, arthritis, autoimmune disorders, cerebral palsy, muscular dystrophy, schizophrenia, spina bifida, exceptionally low intellectual functioning, traumatic brain injuries, blindness and/or deafness, and other physical and psychological conditions that impair learning. These problems may be combined with hyperactivity or other disorders. Concerns for these students may include memory, recall, compliance with instructions, sustaining attention, concentration, impulsiveness, organizational skills and emotional vulnerability. Some of these students cannot read or can read only the simplest books. Some cannot speak and may require assistive technology to communicate.

REMOTE LEARNING SIMPLY WILL NOT WORK FOR SOME OF THESE STUDENTS. The best teachers and special education departments may be unable to make a shift to home technology a viable path to education. What does that mean in the big picture? Compensatory services designed to make up for lost time when schools are fully open once again will be crucial for many students.

It’s not too soon to start creating next year’s plans for “Megan” or “Robert.” Every lesson that Megan and Robert cannot follow should be recorded. THIS IS THE TIME to make notes showing what our special education students missed during remote learning. Plans for Megan and Robert will be much more robust if we plan now when we know exactly what they are missing, rather than waiting until next year and trying to figure retrospectively which ideas slipped away.

Our compensatory plans for Megan and Robert should be well underway and if these plans have gotten lost due to the overwhelming details that come with shifting to remote learning, then it’s time to put the plans back on top of the agenda. There will never be an easier time to track and record that lost learning than right now.

Parents — I’d call the schools and ask when and how schools intend to pivot back to those areas where your child could not follow. Where possible, keep track of specific topics that you believe will need to be addressed next year.

In the meantime, let’s all be as kind to each other as we can.

Hugs to all my readers as we move into 2021, with hopes for a better year.

December 2020.

In 1943, Hugh Martin, a composer and lyricist for musical theater, wrote a Christmas song reflecting on the sadness and disappointments of the past year. The tone of the work stood in sharp contrast to the normal, joyful tenor of Christmas songs. Written for “Meet Me in St. Louis,” starring Judy Garland, the Christmas song expressed the sentiments of the young women in a family that was leaving behind an idyllic life in St. Louis and relocating to an uncertain future in New York. The palpable sense of loss and trepidation about the future expressed in the song was so strong that the 21-year-old Judy Garland and the director of the movie, her future husband Vincent Minnelli, asked Martin to change his lyrics to make the song less depressing. Martin made several changes, including changing

“…it may be your last

Next year we may all be living in the past.”

to the less ominous

“Let your hearts be light

Next year all our troubles will be out of sight.”

In 1957, to further expunge the downbeat sentiments of the original song, on the request of Frank Sinatra, Hugh Martin changed the line “Until then we’ll have to muddle through somehow” to “Hang a shining star upon the highest bough. “

And so with additional changes over the years, we have the present version:

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
From now on
Our troubles will be out of sight

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the Yule-tide gay
From now on
Our troubles will be miles away

Here we are as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who are dear to us
Gather near to us once more

Through the years we all will be together
If the fates allow
Hang a shining star upon the highest bough
And have yourself a merry little Christmas now

Even with those changes, the poignancy of the song, with its emphasis on a diminished holiday in an uncertain and perilous world, remains. Those sentiments perfectly captured Christmas in the middle of World War II, with the whole country on a war footing and several million men serving abroad; the song became an instant hit and has been a standard ever since. When Judy Garland performed the song in 1944 before an audience of service men returning from combat or about to be deployed, soldiers wept.

And so this song seems also to capture the moment for us in 2020, as we approach Christmas during a worldwide pandemic, beset by profound political divisions and economic turmoil. As we muse about 2021, we can only hope and pray that we all will be together and that our troubles will indeed be far away. We may also reflect on the year receding and lament the faithful friends who will gather near to us no more. Until those troubles are far away, we will try to make our little Christmas as merry as we can. We hope that you are able to do the same.

Nearly half of all homeless men suffered brain injury before losing homes
By Eric Pfeiffer (Yahoo News)

From Dr. Jane Topolovec-Vranic (St. Michael’s Hospital):

“A new study is shining light on the origins of homelessness, finding that nearly half of homeless men have suffered a traumatic brain injury and that nearly all of those injuries occurred before the men became homeless.

The St. Michael’s Hospital study found that 45 percent of the homeless men who participated in the research had suffered some form of traumatic brain injury (TBI). And amongst them, 87 percent of their brain injuries had occurred before the men became homeless.

‘You could see how it would happen,’ said Dr. Jane Topolovec-Vranic, who led the study. ‘You have a concussion, and you can’t concentrate or focus. Their thinking abilities and personalities change. They can’t manage at work, and they may lose their job, and eventually lose their families. And then it’s a negative spiral.’”

As I read this, my first thought was that many of these homeless men were once students in our public schools. I’d like to highlight one line from further down the article that reads: “Injury commonly predated the onset of homelessness, with most participants experiencing their first injury in childhood.”

If an injury proves severe enough, students will rapidly be funneled into special education, their problems with impulse control and information retention too obvious to miss in screenings. Lucky kids get tracked for interventions. The machinery kicks in to help them.

Brain injuries result in spectrum disorders, however, and not every child gets thrown a life preserver. How hyperactive is too hyperactive? How aggressive is too aggressive? At what point does short-term memory difficulty shine out clearly enough to be noticed for what it is, instead of being attributed to lack of studying or effort?

I might be able to predict periods of homelessness for a number of my students. Not all of these students were or are receiving services. Some are clinging to the edge of functionality. Some have been tested for special education and “passed,” supposedly needing no extra help. “This is a classroom management issue,” a dean wrote on one referral from last year. Classroom talking IS a classroom management issue. Classroom blurting of off-topic, irrelevant information unrelated to the day’s topic may point toward greater needs than a new seating chart, however. Random blurting can indicate generalized anxiety, or a brain that cannot pull itself into and stay with the material at hand.

A sad truth of our time: many children start life with drugs in their system or drugs in the air they breathe. The research on cocaine babies has become murky, since more fortunate babies grow up without apparent residual difficulties from that post-natal drug withdrawal, while others are documented to suffer long-term attention and impulse-management problems.

Here’s the point I most want to make: Children are not mass-produced Blank Slates. Not all children can learn exactly the same things at the same time according to some preordained curricular schedule. Some children require extra help and time to hit targets — and here in 2020, we may be about to increase the population of those children, possibly dramatically. That COVID brain fog is real. 

The first part of this post was written in 2014, and is about to be moved up into the year 2020. An M.D. friend of mine caught COVID nearly two months ago and has been struggling with its aftereffects. My exhausted friend is fighting that brain fog and has other problems. Her sense of smell has gone sideways and food does not smell delicious, if it smells at all. She has dropped a few things, including a heavy soup pot, for no reason she understands. Her muscles feel weak. I can hear her fighting for air sometimes. And there are no openings for appointments at the long-haul COVID clinic until March. 

Research strongly suggests COVID-19 virus enters the brain (medicalxpress.com). To quote William A. Banks, a professor of medicine at the University of Washington School of Medicine:  “Many of the effects that the COVID virus has could be accentuated or perpetuated or even caused by virus getting in the brain and those effects could last for a very long time.”

The World Health Organization (WHO) recently released data showing that lingering symptoms such as fatigue, cough, headache, loss of taste and smell, and confusion were common among 18 to 34 year-olds two to three weeks after they tested positive. (91 Percent of COVID Survivors Have This in Common, Study Says (msn.com)). There’s growing reason to believe that many adolescents will experience long-term effects. 

Yes, most little kids appear to be safe from severe COVID-19. Brain inflammation and other inflammatory responses happen to our smallest kids, but those complications remain quite rare. As children move on to middle school and high school, though, the rate of infection climbs. And children don’t have magic immunity to COVID’s inflammatory aftermath. We have vaccines now, but no magic bullets. 

Across America, children and adolescents are struggling with multisystem inflammatory syndrome, or MIS-C. According to the Mayo Clinic, “in children with MIS-C, organs and tissues such as the heart, lungs, digestive system, and brain can become severely inflamed.” Children Are Covid-19 Long-Haulers, Too | by Ashley Zlatopolsky | Nov, 2020 | Elemental (medium.com) Healthy young people can even keel over, like Keyontae Johnson, the college basketball player who collapsed and fell face-first onto the court during a Florida State game on December 12th. He ended up being placed in a medically-induced coma. Slightly less than two weeks later, Keyontae left the hospital yesterday. 

Some of America’s students are getting sick, and some of those sick students are not bouncing back in a few days, or a week or two. Those students are taking time to recover, and may not recover fully — not in the sense of returning to the health they enjoyed before falling ill. My 2014 post dealt with brain injuries. All across this country right now, young people are sustaining brain injuries, even if those injuries are caused by a microbe, rather than drugs or accidents. 

To anyone demanding that we open schools, I’d like to suggest reflecting on this post for a bit. Will Keyontae play in the NBA? I fervently hope so, but I don’t know that we can be sure he will even be back on the court again. This virus can hammer a person — any person, even one in excellent health. Yes, 80% of those who die of COVID are 65 years or older, but the flipside of that statistic tells us 20% who die are under 65.

And kids are getting sick all over the place. By mid-November, more than 1,000,000 U.S. children had had COVID. Given the many open schools and lack of responsible leadership in some areas, that pediatric explosion should hardly come as a surprise. Some of those kids will be long haulers. 

Eduhonesty: Why should we keep schools closed? The fact is that this disease can be the source of traumatic brain injuries — inflammation of the brain is now a well-known complication — my friend hallucinated — and medical science cannot yet tell when or even if that inflammation will fully pass. Nor can it tell what complications inflammation may leave behind. The extent of recoveries can be expected to vary widely. A previous post talks about a young woman in a wheelchair 6 months out. 

To those bureaucrats and others who want to say, “eventually the sick people will get better,” I’d like to say, “You can’t and shouldn’t count on that.” Spinal cord and brain injuries in humans often leave permanent aftereffects. That’s one reason why we are so scared of strokes, one known complication of COVID infection. That’s part of the reason why assisted living facilities were so full when COVID swept through them — the many men and women receiving therapy to get back on their feet, or simply to learn how to manage the transfer board that would help them get from their wheelchair into the shower seat in their home bathroom. Hell, that’s the reason my husband’s in a wheelchair. 

In viral hotspots today, opening schools is akin to stepping directly into the path of the bus or high-diving into the shallow pond. 

I am writing again today to encourage people not to walk in front of the bus. I am also predicting a swelling of the special education rolls in the next few years. The studies are in and they are showing long-term effects, even in children. A push for open schools this year has the potential to lead to physiological damage that may linger for years or even decades. And, of course, a few children and more adults will die from those hallway passing periods and other grouping risks. 

I want to close this post by taking us full circle back to the beginning of its 2014 inspiration:

From Dr. Jane Topolovec-Vranic (St. Michael’s Hospital):

“A new study is shining light on the origins of homelessness, finding that nearly half of homeless men have suffered a traumatic brain injury and that nearly all of those injuries occurred before the men became homeless.

The St. Michael’s Hospital study found that 45 percent of the homeless men who participated in the research had suffered some form of traumatic brain injury (TBI). And amongst them, 87 percent of their brain injuries had occurred before the men became homeless.

‘You could see how it would happen,’ said Dr. Jane Topolovec-Vranic, who led the study. ‘You have a concussion, and you can’t concentrate or focus. Their thinking abilities and personalities change. They can’t manage at work, and they may lose their job, and eventually lose their families. And then it’s a negative spiral.’”

We owe it to America’s children and the adults who work in our schools to prevent that spiral from ever starting. Because COVID will end. But it won’t be over. 

As with all advice, this post will not fit all groups of adolescents. In specialized areas, a 4-year school may be the best starting choice. That would-be physicist may be unable to find a community college that offers the right courses. Even some 4-year schools may not offer a sufficiently robust curriculum. That’s why a teacher or adult who KNOWS a child should be helping with virtual college fairs and the college selection process.

The counselors are out of the building in many locations. The buildings are empty. But seventeen- and eighteen-year-olds are still making plans for their futures. I just read about fraudulent colleges and my memory took me back to a math student I had in an alternative high school.

I tried so hard to talk that kid out of the now-defunct Westwood Colleges. I couldn’t do it. The recruiter had waved a $500 scholarship in front of him and I could not get past that “scholarship.” I explained the numbers. I pointed out that the recruiter’s offer to help him obtain loans worked for Westwood, not him — they got the money, he got the debt. I tried to suggest alternatives that were less expensive and more highly regarded — such as his local community college. But I could not get past that $500. The recruiter had sold that boy.

Maybe America’s student loans will be forgiven someday, but I wouldn’t bet any lives on that forgiveness. College debt currently leads to so many life postponements — in particular, housing purchases put off for later despite the fact that home ownership is the primary tool for building wealth in our economy. Many, many young (and older) people can’t afford both those college loans and a mortgage payment with accompanying upkeep and insurance costs.

Eduhonesty: The college fairs have gone virtual. The counselors and social workers are out of the building in many areas, along with their students. While schools are still trying to provide the services that historically have come with high school education, the fact is that 2020 is a time of disconnects.

I helped some students as I walked back from obligatory college fairs. Conversation allows adults to catch misconceptions and impractical plans.

“Oh, no, Ms. T. College is not going to cost me anything. I am going to get financial aid,” a wonderful young man once said to me. He had no idea how the system actually worked.

A sharp young woman explained that she had thought, “Interest is what you pay when you are late making your loan payment.” She already had the loans, too. That huge misconception was about to take a chunk out of her every future paycheck for years, maybe decades.

Some families can easily fill in all the information required to make the college application process work. When parents attended college and once took out their own loans, they know the system. But lots of parents in the U.S. never attended college, while their kids have been told every year since kindergarten that they eventually had to matriculate into a college or university.*

Some of those high school students are navigating the college application process right now. I suggest high school teachers and other concerned adults check in on where their students are at in this process. What are they thinking? What have college recruiters told them? Have they stumbled on any “$500 scholarships”?

I also suggest trying to sell the local community college.

I picked up a bunch of dorm overflow from a student at the Illinois Institute of Technology last week. I have soldering equipment, a humidifier, mysterious plastic tubes and I-don’t-know-what-stuff in my garage, all too tough to get back to Alaska. He won’t be at school this spring, although he’s planning to come back for summer. Many kids will be at home next semester. Going home makes perfect sense, too. We could not eat in the student union. You have to get your hopefully germ free box and take it out of the student union into the midwestern winter or your dorm room. No hanging out with buddies in the traditional college sense is allowed. My youngest is currently living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania while attending college in Ithaca, New York.

Why spend 4-year money for virtual instruction? Especially starting students should be considering community colleges. Tuition is a fraction of what the state university costs, and often a tiny fraction of private university tuition. Community colleges offer many practical alternatives, such as courses in auto repair, CAD/CAM operation and nursing. For those looking at a four-year degree, that English, Biology or Chemistry 101 class has to be gotten out of the way sometime. I learned a great deal of French in community college, and I loved the math labs, the one I used as a student and the one that later offered me a tutoring position.

Virtual college fairs scare me. Zoom chats are a pale substitute for actual conversation. Yes, you can ask questions and get answers. But where are the listeners to step in afterward and tell students vital facts that may be omitted? Here’s an example:

“That’s right — students at Pratt Institute pay nearly $20,000 in fees ON TOP of their tuition. That’s twice the cost of tuition at some state schools. With the cost of fees and tuition combined, the average net cost of attending art school is $42,000. It’s critical that students take these additional fees into consideration when they think about how they’re going to finance an art education.”

The college isn’t going to share information like the fact that “Fine arts degrees are some of the lowest-paying degrees available today with an average starting salary of just $35,600.” (Same source.) It’s not going to talk about costs at all if possible. After all, the college gets the money. The student carries the debt.

Reader, if you know young adults at this vulnerable age, please check in with them. Don’t let the college search be managed online from a bedroom somewhere without objective guidance from outside. High school teachers, if you can work college finances into your lessons, you truly could rescue a kid, making it possible for him, her or they to buy a house later, rather than struggling with rent and car payments.

Life will go back to normal. Until it does, our children should not pay private university tuition to complete breadth requirements, especially if those requirements are going to be batted out online. Young adults who are remote learners are especially vulnerable to $500 scholarships right now, I’m sure. Let’s make sure they understand how to effectively spend tuition dollars.

*We desperately need to restore vocational/technical education — the new “CTE or career and technical education” label sticks in my throat somehow — to a place of prominence in our high schools.

About 1,000 more people died of COVID-19 yesterday than died at Pearl Harbor. Yesterday and the day before, the death toll rang in with hundreds more lost to the virus than died in the 9/11 attacks. Southern California available ICU beds now stand at ZERO percent! We could have done so much better. We should have done so much better. 

“Virtually every health professional I know believes that the pandemic in
the US could and should have been better controlled than it has been. Bad
mistakes rarely lead to only temporary damage.” (The tragedy of the post-COVID “long haulers” – Harvard Health Blog – Harvard Health Publishing)

But “I shouldn’t have fallen off the horse” is a useless sentence. You can’t unride past horses. You can’t undo past mistakes. You can work fiercely, and with some success, to mitigate damage, though — which is what we must do now. 

I retired from a Title One school in an area with poverty rates that always
ran near 90% or above. That school population was nearly 100% children of
color. So I am terrified of what’s happening with the achievement gap this year
— because online and hybrid schooling tend to work much better in wealthy
areas with ample experience with technology and parents who can work at home.

Nevertheless, UNTIL THIS LATEST WAVE PASSES, WE SHOULD CLOSE MANY SCHOOL DOORS. No child should go to school where the ICU bed situation has spiraled out of control. Readers, see San Francisco on verge of “catastrophic situation” as COVID-19 cases increase and ICU beds run low – CBS News and try the search “ICU bed shortage.” Swaths of this country are running near the edge now. 

I guarantee readers, those open schools are part of the COVID surge. I have already shared information about my vet, whose elementary age son brought the virus home. He made a quick recovery. His parents and older siblings did not.  Medical friends of mine have been knocked down for weeks at a time. One is waiting to get into a clinic for people who have long-term symptoms, but the first available appointment is in MARCH. She’s a doctor, too. The vet’s story is admittedly one small slice of personal experience, but nonetheless reflection should make the connection clear: It takes one infectious person to get everyone in a household sick. As of weeks ago: 

Eduhonesty: Advocates for open schools have pointed out to me that the cops, firefighters, electricians, road construction crews, airline pilots, car mechanics, and plumbers are mostly working. They argue teachers should therefore be in the classroom. But that argument ignores one potent factor: The cops, firefighters etc. CANNOT work from home. You can’t interview a witness, put out a fire, fix someone else’s car, faucet or wiring, or fly a plane from a home office. But you can teach children from that office. 

We have been teaching remotely for months now. We are getting steadily better, too. This is a new skill and teachers are asking for help and sharing what works online. The learning curve has been steep and we are all concerned about those areas that have been running tech-light. I don'[t have the data yet but I am 100% certain that we will eventually document that wealthier districts produced better results from online learning. (The bright side: Hidden costs of the U.S. system of funding schools are being highlighted as never before. That lack of technology can no longer be shrugged off.)  

But I am going to repeat myself: A kid can recover from not learning metaphors or similes “on time.” That kid will not recover from bringing home the virus that kills Grandma Velma. In our economically disadvantaged areas, multigenerational homes are common — one more way to manage financially in areas of high housing costs especially. 

I’d also like to observe that classrooms are not police stations, firehouses, airports, construction sites, or other people’s homes. Schools are their own unique category of crazy. Little kids don’t understand masks or germ theory. Adolescents have always made the mistake of believing themselves immortal. And kids are sometimes jammed into those classrooms and hallways like sardines auditioning to be canned. A classroom is so different from the adult world. Teachers in pre-K and early grades have to worry about kids drinking the hand sanitizer.  (More children ingesting hand sanitizers due to manufacturing lapses: FDA – ABC News (go.com))

Please, reader, look at the map above. Do we want to open Chicago schools at this time? The same dark red blotches can be seen along much of the East Coast. COVID-19 is now the number one cause of death in the United States. WE MUST SHUT SCHOOLS WHERE THE SYSTEMS ARE BEING OVERWHELMED. Any teacher knows classrooms are germ factories, giant petri dishes filled with coughs and snot and even occasional vomit. 

People and CHILDREN who can be home right now SHOULD be home — and districts should be working nonstop to make sure that students have all the technology they require to succeed in remote learning.

“Where was Gondor when the Westfold fell?” King Theoden asks Aragorn in one of my favorite movies. Where was Gondor? Middle Earth was falling into chaos. Gondor was fighting for its own survival and, in fairness to Gondor, allies provide little help during unforeseen Blitzkrieg attacks.

So here is today’s question for those of us in the plague-ridden lands of the United States: Where were the democrats when the orcs beheaded the unions? I don’t think I can make many excuses for the democratic party. Democratic states held up better under the onslaught, but law after law has cut into collective bargaining rights across this nation. Here is the situation for teachers:

Right now, many democrats and others are sending suggestions, directly and indirectly, to the new Biden administration. I’d like to suggest we push unions to the forefront. While decades late, we must protect, support and encourage unionization. The alternative is what we have today in many right-to-work locations — and that alternative is not pretty.

A big debate is underway at the moment about a $15 minimum wage, but let’s be clear: the federal minimum is only $7.25 — not even half that $15 amount — and the objective situation is worse because of tip credits. Over 40 states allow tips to be applied to wages. This neat trick results in people paying themselves while their actual cash wage from their employer frequently comes in under THREE DOLLARS PER HOUR. Minimums vary but most are under $10.00 per hour.

That $7.25 may innocuously be called a minimum wage, but it’s also a perfect operational definition of POVERTY. Look at the numbers above. Add in the fact that many employers limit hours in order to avoid having to pay for health insurance. So many of my students’ parents worked two or more jobs — maybe 28 hours in fast food and 23 hours on an assembly line; one diligent dad had a paper route on top of his two jobs. To pull the numbers together into a coherent picture, 23 + 28 hours = 51 hours total. Multiply 51 times $7.25 to get $369.75 dollar per week. Multiply 369.75 times 52 weeks = $19,227 per year. In many parts of the nation, that amount barely covers an apartment and may not cover both an apartment and food.

What is a union? It’s a voice for those who are otherwise powerless — the fast food, factory-working, paper route guy who knows that if he protests his working conditions, he will quickly be replaced. Unions offer workers a chance to be paid fairly, without regard to gender, color or other irrelevant characteristics that have nothing to do with job qualifications. My union got me good health and dental insurance through the years, as well as a solid retirement plan that included medical. I would have had a voice to stand by me if I had been forced to protest injustice at work, too.

Eduhonesty: When contacting government officials readers, I’d like to ask readers to bump unions up to the top of your wish list. If we return the unions to a position of strength, other hoped-for improvements such as better working conditions, better healthcare and more economic security will come naturally.

Once in Middle Earth, Rohan and Gondor stood up to the massed legions of Sauron’s orcs. They survived because they stood together even when the odds seemed insurmountable, the forces against them overwhelming. They survived because they marched together 10,000 strong on the Black Gate to distract Sauron so the Ring of Power could be destroyed.*

Let’s stand together. Let’s stand for a living wage, health insurance, dental and life insurance, fair working conditions, job security, and, yes, a pension. Early in this new administration, let’s push unions to the front of the agenda. We can do this.

*If this makes no sense, reader, time to stream The Lord of the Rings trilogy!