“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.”
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.
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.
Chicago is part of Cook County. From December 7th.
Map on December 18th
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.
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.
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:
“More than 1 million US kids have had COVID-19 – with numbers rising” according to Kate Sheehy in the November 16, 2020 of the New York Post. (More than 1 million US kids have had COVID-19)
Yes, kids tend to bounce back from this quickly, but that craziness about them not being infectious? That idea never made sense. It quickly proved not to be true. Kids don’t deactivate germs, even if they don’t always get as sick as adults.
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!
This post is for the parents on social media who are demanding teachers return to the classroom: “You chose to be teacher,” they say. Well, yes, but no one in those past education classes foresaw 2020. No one foresaw a pandemic.
This post is for the teachers on social media who reply when parents insist they cannot manage online learning in their homes: “You chose to be parents.” The parents of today’s young children lived in a certain world when they made their parenting choice, and that world does not look anything like today.
Let’s try to be as kind as we can. Parents, there’s an excellent chance that your teacher is scared. He or she has been buying classroom supplies for school every year, laying in hand sanitizer before hand sanitizer was cool because, in some schools, those bathrooms always seem to run out of soap. In an educational system where teachers in poor districts have been buying their own paper and spring ink cartridges for years, parents please understand that some teachers have spent their working lives short of supplies. They don’t trust the “authorities” to keep them safe if we all re-enter the classroom. After all, those authorities have been doing a bang up job so far, yes? Where was the soap? Where are the N-95 masks and germicidal wipes? Even in districts that can afford all the basic supplies, the purchasing process can take weeks or even months. That assumes those supplies exist, too.
And teachers? Not many households can get by on one income today. In many regions, the cheapest, smallest lodging still costs over four figures. Vehicles must be run and maintained in a time when people are afraid of mass transit. Mass transit’s not an option anyway in much of the country. Grocery budgets, health care costs, clothes, shoes, supplies for school, party supplies, presents for birthday parties, baseball bats, phones, light bulbs, cleaning products, flowers in spring, batteries, burgers and fries — in big chunks, and little dribs and drabs, the money gets sucked away.
Schools provide childcare when parents must work. That single-mother nurse may not have anyone else to reliably watch her children all day while she earns the money her kids and she use to survive. While it’s not too tough to find someone to cover for an hour or two in the afternoon, all day is an entirely different and much less affordable option. Yes, she chose to have kids. She could not have foreseen this future, however. Maybe she did not realize just how much trouble “Bob’s” heavy drinking might become. Or she did not realize her folks would move to Florida. She almost certainly did not plan for a pandemic.
Eduhonesty: Readers, do what you can to support the scared teachers and worried parents right now. Support each other. Teachers, please keep in mind that the demanding parent who insists we open schools may be afraid for his or her livelihood and simultaneously afraid of going to work. Parents, please understand that your teachers may be worried about themselves and your children for good reason. Visualize passing periods during your school years. How wide were those hallways? How many kids did you accidentally bump when changing classes? In many areas, schools should be closed.
Sometimes NO good solution to a problem exists. We can’t make the world the way we want it. We can’t go back in time and put the microbe back in the box.,
We can make our own world kinder, however. We can use virtual and real classrooms to share information, support each other, and provide pep talks and supplies, doing our best to make this school year work. Let’s give each other virtual hugs and let any pent up animosity go.
Instead of sniping at each other — I suggest we snipe at whoever we decide is responsible for the appalling surge of COVID in the recent past.
As I predicted, the decisions have been made and unmade, as schools have opened, closed, planned new openings, backtracked, planned virtual instruction, at first for a few weeks and then for the semester. Many teachers and parents are getting psychological whiplash from managing rapid changes.
Cases in children are exploding. Children now make up at least 1 in 11 of reported U.S. coronavirus cases. (NPR: Children now make up at least 1 in 11 of all reported U.S. coronavirus cases.) That nonsense about how children didn’t get COVID-19 and didn’t spread it? Over one million children have tested positive by now. And my now-sick vet is home with his sick teen-age children and wife, the virus having travelled home with an elementary school child. Of course, sick kids spread the virus. Sick kids give us colds, pink-eye, the flu, strep throat, and even the occasional parasite. In what universe did the idea that COVID-19 would not be spread by children somehow arise? That level of craziness crosses the bridge from wishful thinking straight into delusional psychopathy.
People are getting sick from our open schools. People’s family and then sometimes extended family, neighbors and coworkers are getting sick. The unluckiest people are dying. See https://www.edweek.org/ew/section/multimedia/educators-weve-lost-to-the-coronavirus.html. Viruses exist to cross from one person to another, and every high school and middle school passing period is a potential superspreader event. Elementary schools may be more manageable, but parent-readers will remember the many hygiene struggles from those times. French fry that fell in the dog’s water anyone? Why not? Teacher-readers have cleaned the boogers off from inside and under those desks.
This disease does not always pass in a few days or even weeks. Many long haulers had mild cases, too, and were never hospitalized or, in some cases, even tested. These people are still struggling as much as eight months after their illness. Extreme fatigue is common, along with breathlessness, memory problems and unusual heartbeats. Autoimmune, kidney and blood sugar problems are also seen. COVID-19 has disabled many long haulers. It has made many who recovered sicker than they have ever been in their lives.
Yet somehow a significant portion of the population is still debating masks. Who are these people? Research by medical experts suggests masks are helpful. There’s NO reputable research to the contrary. For advice on masks: https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prevent-getting-sick/cloth-face-cover-guidance.html is one place to start. The CDC recommends that everyone in public should wear a mask. The WHO now suggests the same.
Mask confusion is understandable. In the beginning, the U.S. government, the CDC and the WHO did not immediately tell the public to put on masks. It’s necessary to understand that we had a potentially lethal shortage of masks at that time. As the toilet paper, sanitary wipes and other daily essential products flew off the shelves, these groups were afraid of a run on masks that could leave health care workers without essential supplies. In a number of regions, those fears came true. Masks were being rationed, worn long past established safe times, and sprayed with germ-killing chemicals. We did run out of masks. The WHO only advised masks for all in early June. But the research is in now — and it supports putting a barrier over our mouths and noses.
Masks are not leg shackles. They are not 50 pound backpacks. They should never have become political statements. They are face coverings made of cloth, a melt-blown polymer such as polypropylene, or other synthetic plastic fibers. They often contain additional filter materials. If the first mask doesn’t work, there’s another, better mask out there, I promise any anti-mask readers.
Let’s totally forget the research for a moment. We can bypass that research. Here are stats from the world coronavirus cases and death totals. Yes, these totals will not be entirely accurate – just as more than 150,000,000 votes cannot be cast without occasional pockmarks and errors. Let’s assume the totals are reasonably accurate, while not flawless. We can still take in the big picture.
Let’s compare the United States to Japan. The United States has 254,413 deaths to Japans 1,930. That’s no typo. Yes the U.S. is bigger, so let’s factor that in: The total U.S. population is 331,648,064. The current population of Japan is 126,327,379. Japan’s total population then is 38% of the population of the United States – Japan has slightly more than 1/3 the people that the U.S. does. So let’s say Japan should have only 38% of the death total that the U.S. has, since it has 38% of the people. What is 38% of the U.S. death total? That would be a total of 96,908 deaths — not remotely in the same league as that 1,903. Except that number of fatalities is just silly because the caseloads are so different. Forget deaths. Let’s look at cases: 11,910,858 for the U.S. versus 128,285 for Japan. The number of Japanese CASES is 1% of the number of U.S. cases — when, if all factors were equal, we would assume that number would be nearly 40% of the U.S. cases. Thirty-eight percent of U.S. cases would be 4,526,126. That’ so far from the actual 128,285 cases that the mind boggles. Either we did something gruesomely wrong, they did something spectacularly right, or some combination of the two.
It’s not like Tokyo doesn’t have international flights. It’s not like Japan lacks population density. On the contrary, one glance at Japan’s tiny landmass and its total population tells us that population density — a risk factor for COVID-19 — is much higher in Japan than in the United States.
So how has Japan ducked this many bullets?
When news of COVID started to trickle out, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, China and Taiwan masked up immediately. Fortunately for these areas, the custom of wearing a mask while ill and going out in a public has a long history. ”That’s because Asians, especially in Japan, China and Taiwan, have worn masks for a host of cultural and environmental reasons, including non-medical ones, since at least the 1950s.” (https://www.voanews.com/science-health/coronavirus-outbreak/not-just-coronavirus-asians-have-worn-face-masks-decades) My father visited Japan in the seventies and one memory he carries still was the masked faces on the bullet trains and streets of Tokyo.
The Japanese consider it rude to be sneezing and exposing others to contagions. They also understand the science that explains why masks protect others, They don’t seem to suffer from widespread science denial. Most importantly, Japanese culture doesn’t exalt the idea that one individual’s feelings supersede the rights of just about everyone else around them.
This pandemic never had to be such a debacle. My phone blasted me and the rest of Illinois a couple of days ago to tell us that state activities had been restricted further. That sudden text was a bit wild, but perfectly understandable. Friends all across the country report similar new restrictions. Some areas are even beginning to report toilet paper shortages again.
Unsurprisingly, schools are closing all over the place. Or delaying openings. Or at least shutting down sports.
Because the hospitals are sending out warnings and the tracking numbers don’t look good. North Dakota is now at 100% of hospital capacity and the North Dakota government has issued an order allowing nurses who have tested positive for the virus to continue working as long as they appear asymptomatic. One week ago Friday, there were only nine staffed intensive care beds and 160 staffed inpatient beds available in the entire state. North Dakota Governor Doug Burgum finally issued a mask mandate that Friday. In November.
Republican Governor Kim Reynolds of Iowa just instituted a mask mandate in her state as well, finally responding to overflowing case numbers and limited hospital beds. The article begins, “’I don’t want to do this,’ Gov. Kim Reynolds said, joining a wave of Republican governors issuing new mask orders as her state faces a spiraling hospital crisis.” But she bellied up to the plate, some nine months after the coronavirus began hitting the news, ten or eleven months after it first arrived in the United States — in November.
See: “How Iowa’s Governor Went From Dismissing Mask Mandates to Ordering One Herself” at https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/18/us/coronavirus-mask-mandate-iowa-reynolds.html.
With all due respect to Governors Reynolds and Burgum, this horse is not only out of the barn in Iowa and North Dakota, it has trotted all the way across the country and back again by now. That horse has circumnavigated the globe while those governors and others stood up for the right of people not to take precautions to protect others. But criminally late is better than never, I suppose. I try very hard not to think about all those grandpas, grandmas and other people who accidentally stepped into that horse’s path.
Eduhonesty: We have lost control of the coronavirus across growing swaths of this country. For those who would say nothing could have been done, I point to Japan and my chart above. I don’t believe we could have entirely avoided this latest wave — viruses spread and multiply. That’s what they do. But whether or not a person infects 1 other person, 2 other people or 5 other people — that matters, especially since the 5 then go out to create the next group of new cases. That’s the detail the anti-mask people ignored.
The coronavirus map has become a sea of red covering most of the country now with no near end in sight: https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/us-map. So what’s to be done?
WEAR MASKS. Masks don’t protect anyone 100% — but they do provide protection along with other precautions such as social distancing and hand washing. The CDC makes it clear that masks do not substitute for social distancing. I suggest we keep reading the latest official recommendations. And I hate to add this next recommendation, but…
The Mazziotta article observes that at least 103 children died from COVID-19 during that time — a tiny, so tiny percentage of the total, but all of them somebody’s baby, all of them children, grandchildren, friends, boyfriends, girlfriends, and playmates of grieving people.
I am excruciatingly aware of the educational costs involved in closing schools and going online, but I reason it this way: Charles can 100% recover from not learning his Common Core math on schedule, especially if educational leaders adapt the schedule to account for gaps in learning caused by this crisis. He may never recover from the death of his grandfather — especially if he believes he caused his grandfather’s death.
This is a message for teachers wondering how to manage their angry students. How are you doing? Are you struggling with an unusual number of behavioral issues on top of technology and COVID issues? Maybe you have gotten parent emails with that classic “he’s not like this at home!” Or worse, parents are asking you how YOU created the problem of their child’s regular, angry outbursts. Or perhaps parents are not responding at all. Maybe you are writing referrals that seem to be vanishing into cyberspace or wastepaper baskets. COVID has too many administrators running around like the proverbial headless chickens, and headless chickens hardly ever manage small details well. Or big details. Or much of anything else.
Too many people are operating on overload at the moment.
Eduhonesty: Here’s an observation that may help you a little as you try to calm the angry voices in your classroom. You are a safe place. Why does “Martin” blow up in your class? At least sometimes, it’s because Martin thinks that he will be able to vent without the sky falling down on top of him if he does. You are a safe place.
Those venting students may be taken as a sign of poor classroom management — and if they interfere much with daily learning then work on management is possibly indicated — but a truth too often ignored is that Martin feels secure enough to express his stress in your classroom. Martin may desperately need to be heard. He is trusting you enough to give you the chance to be the one who hears him.
The stress on many kids right now breaches extraordinary. That stress permeates even the smallest details of life. Holidays are coming up and maybe Martin is not going to see grandma this winter for the first time ever in his life. He may be terrified grandma will get sick — or worse. All across America, those 246,526 souls who passed away (as of this morning), leave behind their own Martins, their brothers, sisters, aunts, uncles, children and grandchildren, lost and mourning as they maybe sit in isolated houses.
We don’t know exactly what kind of a year any of our Martins are having. But this post is a shout-out to the many teachers who are helping and listening as kids unburden themselves. It’s a shout-out to the men and women who are trying to manage rages that are perfectly natural in children who feel helpless, unheard and out-of-control. Teachers are approaching these children with love and support despite the effect of emotional melt-downs on already edgy classes. Sometimes the only calm and safe place our children have is their classroom, and this has never been more true than in 2020.
In dark moments, the greatest gift we offer may be the gift of acknowledgement, the act of making a child feel able to cry out and be heard.
I’ve never held it together well when I cut sleep. Crash! I am staring down at hundreds of shards of glass that were once a plate I was trying to wash. Owww! A few choice expletives later, I sit down to look at the little toe I just rammed into the chair. Is it broken? Bump! I leap out of the car to pick up my big green plastic garbage can and stare in dismay at the coffee grounds on the driveway. Then I pick up the big items before driving over the coffee grounds because I have to get to work. The grounds will be easier to sweep up if I let them dry anyway. I pay careful attention to the road because I sense how tired I am, understanding that if the stoplights are with me, I should whip into that drive-thru line at McDonalds or Dunkin Donuts for more coffee.
Feeling exhausted right now is not a good plan. Ducking haphazard attacks by a new microbe requires alertness. Your goal should be to feel rested. This is no grandiose goal, not a New Year’s resolution to lose 50 pounds and run a marathon. Just make sure to get your rest. Take brain breaks. Eat when you are hungry. Most importantly, stop when you are tired.
If you are not done preparing the dinosaur webquest or the latest spreadsheet for Dr. X, put the world down anyway. Try to make a reasonable bedtime stick. When the phone alarm goes off, put the work away and go brush and floss. Sleep defogs the brain.
Every champion spends a lot of time in the bedroom.
What people do when they are zonked can make all the difference to their health and emotional equilibrium. Some absolutely crazy demands are falling on teachers right now, as misguided administrators and frantic parents try to emulate school years of the past. This year is in its own category, but not everyone can accept that fact. If others can’t let go, though, teacher reader, you MUST. Driving while exhausted is acknowledged to be dangerous. Right now, living while exhausted can be dangerous.
Drowsy people make mistakes. Teachers are already at risk of catching COVID-19 simply by going to work. Evidence now suggests droplets can linger, suspended in the air, and may travel beyond that six feet set as the “safe” distance. Poor ventilation increases the risk of transmission and while many districts have worked fiercely on the problem of ventilation, not all classrooms are well-vented yet. See https://fsl.yzp.mybluehost.me/website_5ad3d54d/safety-before-political-expediency/ for more on ventilation. And if you can open classroom windows, keep those windows open as much as possible.
The usual instructions for managing risk are well-known by now. For teachers, those instructions are often much more easily said than done:
Wash your hands regularly with soap and water for 20 seconds or more, or clean them with alcohol-based hand sanitizer. Mostly the sanitizer supply is holding up. Getting kids to use it — and not waste it or play with it — is not exactly a slam dunk though.
Cover your mouth and nose with a mask when in public settings or around others. Yes, eating complicates this greatly in some set-ups.
Maintain at least six feet distance between you and people coughing or sneezing. Ummm… we are talking about classrooms. Mostly the only teachers who can count on doing this are virtual or hybrid and at home.
Avoid touching your face.
Stay home if you feel unwell.
The CDC or someone should probably add this one for teachers: Make people clean the snot off their own faces.
Those instructions demand alertness, but little details slip when fatigue takes over. Hand washing or sanitizer may be neglected. Teachers are often nonstop busy going from student to student. And it’s so natural to bring your hands up to your face to brush back strands of hair, adjust slipping glasses, shift a mask, or just scratch an itch. Maybe you forgot your personal hand sanitizer and your hand travels to your face while driving home after pumping gas. Or you let social distancing go a little while shopping because it doesn’t seem worth the time to wait for an aisle to clear, and after all, it’s not for long and only once.
Eduhonesty: Planet Earth is a wild and crazy place right now, and many of us are tiptoeing on cliff edges. Today’s advice: If you can’t decide if you need a hug, one of those monster cups of Dunkin Donuts coffee, 6 shots of vodka or 2 weeks of sleep — pick sleep.Hugs to my readers.
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