Updated for today’s virtual learning: I just made a discovery. My glasses make me throw back my neck as I work. They are progressive bifocals and the portion of the lenses I use for the computer is low enough so that I lift my head when looking at the screen. Right now, that hurts my neck, thanks to a klutzy recent head bump.

I tried a pair of nonprescription +1.50 reading glasses and that solved the problem. I don’t lift my head with single vision lenses. I also increased the size of print on the screen slightly.

So here is a new tip for your home office: Check your glasses and see if you are moving your head into an awkward position. It doesn’t help that some administrations are effectively plunking teachers and students down for up to seven hours straight with minimal breaks, but watching how we use our body while remembering to stand up and move regularly can protect mental and physical health.

Teachers, I recommend https://www.eduhonesty.com/tip-1-sleep/ to start.

Then I recommend oodles of physical breaks and working on ergonomics.

Teachers ask, “Why am I so tired?” I am certain part of that tiredness results from sitting. I always loved the physical freedom of classroom teaching. I could sit, but mostly I stood or walked. I usually stood to review material or explain new concepts. If I was tired, maybe I sat on my tall stool. Then I walked around the room checking to make sure my students were on task and understood the day’s old and new ideas.

At this moment, I am sitting in a tall, blue office chair that was honestly built for Papa Bear. Baby Bear and I were never meant to occupy this chair. If I were going to be doing online learning indefinitely, the first thing I would do is replace this chair. Ergonomics is easy to ignore in a crisis — but this is exactly the wrong time to put up with uncomfortable furniture or office lay-outs. Even with a pillow behind me, this chair may be hard on my back if I sit here for hours straight.

My chair is rescued by my footrest.

The clunky piece of gray plastic above is maybe ten years old and was made by Rubbermaid. You can raise and lower the platform to three different settings, and the platform tilts forward and backward, letting me shift my feet up and down while working. I completely love this thing and I strongly recommend it to anyone who sits for much of the day. Try a search under Rubbermaid footrest. The price may seem a bit high, but I have had a steady decade of use from my footrest, under teaching desks and now under my home desk.

If a person were skilled at woodworking, I think it might be fun to try to make a footrest like this. It’s a platform that can be pushed forward and back, sitting on top of a sturdy base. If craft projects de-stress you, you might research designs or just study pics of the product above and make a trip to Lowes or Home Depot. The key will be getting the height right, unless you want to try to put in the three settings for height — which seems too far above my Home Depot skill set, but might not be outside yours, reader.

I also recommend lumbar pillows behind the back and, depending on your chair and sitting position, a possible neck pillow. These pillows can be expensive, but I would put the pillows in the category of necessary things — and you should be able to make them at home. Teachers have always been masters of the crafty repurposing of objects. You can make what you need with pillow cases, string, or ribbon, winter clothing, old sleeping bags, and other items that may be waiting inside your charitable donation bags.

Eduhonesty: Virtual teaching? Get up. Get up. Get or make one of those little devices that lift your computer so you can stand up and work. Strolling between desks is energizing. Sitting in front of a screen is the exact opposite. While it’s impossible to tease out all the sources of stress that may be contributing to teacher fatigue right now, I am certain long spells in chairs form a big part of our problem.

Teachers and other home workers, when you have a few minutes today, take a break to look at the ergonomics of your workspace. How is your regular sitting position as you work? How can you discourage slouching or excessive leaning? Where is your head? Where is your neck? Are you bending your neck forward or backward to look at a screen? The fix for unnatural neck positions is usually as simple as lowering or raising a laptop or monitor. Sometimes you might lower a chair or add a cushion.

I suggest you watch your usual wrist and hand positions too. Your keyboard’s location should not encourage you to bend or drop your wrist. Carpal tunnel is a real thing that teachers mostly avoid by doing so many different activities during the day, but keyboard minutes are soaring during virtual teaching. If your wrists hurt, consider splints. Splints come in left- and right-handed versions, so be careful not to buy two left-handed splints by mistake :-). You can also make splints in a pinch.

You don’t want a back, neck, or wrist ache right now. Going to the doctor in COVID times? Doctor visits are only slightly more fun than running away from giant, nuclear-enhanced reptiles that breathe fire. Since we don’t know how long these times will last, preventing injuries from sitting and repetitive motion will be key.

Hugs to the many teachers who have become home-office workers.

Inspiration for this posted on April 6, 2020 in biographyjar.com. Author Jocelyn the Plaid

Please forward to those teachers and friends creating their home offices.

P.S. Teachers, I hope students are joining your virtual classroom. Admins and teachers, the plans where students leave their cameras off? Umm… I can see possible good reasons, but I still vote no. How do you even know whose body is behind that black screen? Or that black and white picture of Godzilla? My feed defaults to Godzilla if I choose not to be seen. But if you are looking at Godzilla, I might be out making tea. And I chose to be in the Godzilla Zoom. If I were nine, I might choose not to be in any virtual classroom. Our kids can get all sorts of fun freebies at the app store. No camera? No camera = phone game for too many, I’m sure. With luck, a few of our kids are quietly reading while they ignore their laptop.

Incidentally, if I were not retired I would be flashing Godzilla into the classroom every so often. Perhaps you want your own spirit animal to wake up the crowd? Or a cheery Pooh Bear? Surprises will help you hold your audience.

I predict what I now see as an inevitable widening in the achievement gap. But this post is meant for the here and now. Many teachers are asking for help because they are exhausted.

Every year, I am supposed to complete a set of modules to requalify to be a substitute teacher. Yes, I am a licensed, retired teacher, but that doesn’t matter. The modules vary but this year I find twelve: Active Shooter, ADHD, AED, Anaphylaxis and Anaphylactic Shock, Asthma, Bloodborne Pathogens, Concussions in Schools: Prevention – Control – Treatment, DCFS – Mandated Reporter – Illinois, Diabetes Awareness, Domestic and Sexual Violence, Sexual Harassment and Suicide Prevention. For the record, I support these trainings. Teachers should know how to manage concussions, asthma and anaphylaxis. Education classes don’t always cover critical health and home life scenarios.

I will be listening attentively to a couple of these sessions. Active shooter has been changing over the years and is getting better. We used to be told to hide in a dark corner, crouch down out of sight, and wait silently with the windows covered and doors locked. We practiced this too — enough so that I am sure any young shooter who returned to his school knew exactly where everyone was located and what those locked doors meant. The new ALICE drills are much more sensible — if you can get out, GET OUT. Use your brains and don’t crouch like a bunch of waiting ducks in an amusement park arcade.

But, I confess, “Bloodborne Pathogens” bores me. I had this one down a decade ago. In fact, I suspect I could have passed the test when I was twelve, if I had been twelve in 2020. But I don’t mind bloodborne pathogens. It’s easy. I put it on. I turn the sound down. I turn the TV up. I let the slides unfurl. The words are spoken and written. I quickly scan the written. If something unexpected turns up, I’ll stop to pay attention. But for years, I’ve just been waiting until “Next Slide” highlights itself. I click on Next Slide. The detectives pile into their cars and drive down to the wharf.

I paused on a few slides this year just to review. But I also made my husband a cup of green tea, wrote this blog post and watched while Chicago P.D. took outrageous liberties with police procedure. Somewhat distracted, I accidentally clicked out once, but the module took me right back to my place. The PPE section seemed creepily prescient in COVID-19 times.

When taking the test at the end, I knew there was a vaccine for Hepatitis B but not one for Hepatitis C. If I had not known, though, I am sure I could have asked Siri for the answer to that question. Our kids are home with their phones. It’s easy to keep those phones off the screen and out of sight. (I checked. Siri gave me the answer.)

Next I started AED (Automatic External Defibrillators) and stopped. Too much useful, unfamiliar information to watch television. I’ll save that one. I am sure kids do their own version of that prioritization, deciding when it’s worth paying attention and when not.

I switched to Mandated Reporter — a very familiar course. Like bloodborne pathogens, I’ve done this PD over and over again. I took a picture of the DCFS hotline phone numbers. For fun, I did this at an angle from below my screen. I could easily snap shots of my screen without my teacher knowing with almost no practice. I could also just use the PrintScreen key or another utility, but maybe this new phone skill will be useful. I’m just playing. I will bet lots of kids are just playing — which may prove useful as they discover new skills. In the background, NOVA talks about cats. I learn DCFS in Illinois accepts about 70,000 abuse or neglect reports a year, impacting about 100,000 children. Those numbers are rather staggering. I also learn domestic cats arose about 10,000 years ago in the Middle East. I am half-learning bubbles of disconnected subject matter, as I am sure many students in remote-learning situations are doing.

Eduhonesty: I am an adult, flipping between tabs on this computer and channels on the television, while exercising my legs and feet on my sturdy Rubbermaid footrest. I rock the gray platform forward and backward. I sip my ginger iced tea. And I finish one more module.

This post helps capture why many teachers hate online learning. Do I have Ella’s attention? How am I to know? I am conspicuously short of clues. All I can see is Ella’s face and maybe a few details in the room behind her. I can’t necessarily see her hands. I don’t know where her phone is. If I were Ella, I might build a stand and move the phone around my Chromebook, maybe even use clips to attach the phone on top of my laptop. That way, I would always be looking toward the screen.

Remote learning is fraught with pitfalls. But I don’t believe the in-person alternative is a good move in any viral hotspots. This blog has been emphasizing the fact that we do not know the long-term effects of getting sick with this virus — and viruses can have effects that last forever. But Plan B where we put the kids online requires a great deal of care. Especially our kids with ADHD may suddenly be hit with scenarios where no one is available to easily say, “put the keys away, Josue, it’s time for science now.”

Teachers who are just getting started — you must work in checks throughout the lesson. Kids have to know they will be expected to give you feedback at the start, middle and end of the lesson. Don’t wait to call with concerns.

Parents — if possible, you can’t leave those kids on their own. Even the kids who have never been any trouble. I’ve told the story before of my youngest, who quit doing her homework one semester. I was student teaching and nonstop busy. Her dad was managing the household, and had been asking her if she had done her homework — but he didn’t check. The school ought to have been raising more flags, but that’s another issue. She took three grades down to D before she got caught. This kid had been an “A” student previously.

I understand some of us are just stuck. Rent and mortgages must be paid. What outside childcare, where? But if nothing else, I’d be texting to encourage my child to do the day’s work. Yes, I recognize the phone irony here, but I guarantee those phones are not mostly locked away for the day. Schools have trouble keeping phones out of classrooms. How are they going to keep them out of bedrooms?

This time calls for cheerleading, cheerleading and more cheerleading. “What did you do today? Show me! Oh, what a great job.” (If it’s not a great job, a “What a fine start. I bet you could find more detail on the platypus at Google” is perfectly OK, too.) “What about your other subjects?” I’d suggest even setting aside a regular time to have the kid(s) show you their day’s work.

Our kids are kids. They need us to lead them through the traps inherent in online learning. The days can be so crazy right now. Our kids need us to be the calm in the storm of 2020.

Here are a few ideas: Schedule a time during the day to go over the day’s lessons. If possible, bring in a cup of milk or cocoa (I was never exactly nutrition mom.) and a treat every so often throughout the day to keep spirits up. Print daily work to put on the refrigerator. Tell them you are proud of them when they work hard. Help them when they get stuck by explaining concepts they don’t understand. Model the math if you are able. If you don’t remember trigonometry, find a friend who does — or hire a tutor. Help kids to learn to pace themselves and sometimes get out ahead by starting upcoming work early.

We can do this. But we can’t trust the kids to do it independently. Heck, we can’t trust retired adult teachers to do their modules without sneaking in a little Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D on the side. But I will be ready to manage bloodborne pathogens. And our students will be able to learn the order of operations for mathematics, plant parts and functions, or whatever their days’ lessons hold — as long as we keep redirecting them and ourselves toward the larger goal of knowledge.

To each and every one of us fighting to make remote learning work:

P.S. Some districts are having students turn off the camera and do their class via chat rooms. Ummm… no. Simply no. From my September 10th post:

Admins, the plans where you don’t make students turn on their cameras? That plan’s not working if my social media feeds can be trusted. How do you even know whose body is behind that black screen? Or that Godzilla screen? My feed defaults to Godzilla if I choose not to be seen. But if you are looking at Godzilla, I might be out making tea. And I chose to be in the Godzilla Zoom. If I were nine, I might choose not to be in any virtual classroom. How many of our kids have Fortnite on their phones? Even those who don’t can get all sorts of fun freebies at the app store. No camera? No camera = phone game for many, I’m sure. With luck, a few of our kids are quietly reading while they ignore their laptop.

If we want this to work even reasonably well — I am sure of one thing: you must keep the kids in view.

I talked with a former student a few days ago, covering life, health, politics and other random topics. Worth noting: She and her boyfriend are healthy young adults who caught COVID in March. They are still getting their wind back, still shorter of breath than before. But the snippet of conversation that caught my attention related to voting. She told me that she had discovered you did not have to vote for a democrat or republican. She revealed this information as if it had proved a true stunner.

I’d like to observe that this 25-year-old woman graduated high school with a 4.0 GPA. What happens when schools cut minutes from science, history and civics to add extra minutes to math and English, all to get kids ready for their annual state achievement test? Well, one thing that happens is that 25-year-olds who are at the top of their high school class “discover” 3rd parties.

I was so glad to be on the phone at that moment. “Carmen” needed me to connect dots for her — the dots that may have contributed to Donald Trump’s election last time. The Libertarian and Green parties siphoned off about 4.35 percent of the vote. Add in the other 3rd parties, the total edges toward 6%. Hilary Clinton won the popular vote (a thing that really confuses many recent graduates) while losing the election. What if she had gotten that 1.07% from the Green Party? Or a majority of the libertarian vote?

Clinton 48.18% (Democrat)

Trump 46.09% (Republican)

Johnson 3.28% (Libertarian)

Stein 1.07% (Green)

Others 1.38% (Wikipedia)

I view the libertarians as an unquantifiable force. I am sure many Libertarians favored Trump over Clinton, and the Libertarian vote might or might not have hurt Clinton. We can’t know. But I am damn sure that the Green Party took almost all of its votes away from Clinton. Any socialists also took votes from Clinton.

The politics of 3rd party votes is complicated. Here’s the thing our young people must understand: A vote for the Green Party is a vote for Trump. A vote for the Socialist Workers Party is a vote for Trump. A vote for Kanye West is probably a vote for Trump.

If this finish is tight — 49% to 51% — for example, those Green and Socialist votes can be expected to skew results away from the Democrats. I understand the function of a 3rd party vote as a protest vote and an expression of values. I’ve voted for 3rd party candidates. But in a close race, third-party votes can operate to swing an election.

Unfortunately, schools desperate to raise their annual test scores have been stealing time and learning opportunities away from social studies. We have an absurd number of high school graduates who don’t understand the Electoral College. These recent graduates might decide to write in Bernie Sanders because they love Bernie without understanding the implications.

I don’t want to tell anyone how to vote. I would rather tell them to explore the issues. Read about the candidates. Check out the many news sources available — British and other foreign sources help provide bits of objectivity in a charged and polarized time. Research is key here.

I do want to implore older readers to talk to young voters. Make sure younger voters understand how voting works — know how the electoral college functions and know that almost all of a 2% Green Party vote will be 2% taken from the democrats — which may matter in states with close votes. The Paris Accords pretty much assured that Green voters would NOT be Trump voters.

This year, more than any year in my retired teacher memory, we can’t afford to “waste” votes. I don’t believe we can trust the polls. I’m not sure if anyone knows what is going on — I am absolutely sure that Russia and probably China have their hands deep in the cookie jar at the moment — and I want to rescue new voters from casting votes they may later deeply regret.

The below link is stuffed with excellent information for teachers who want to stand up as a group against unsafe and objectionable working conditions.

“Ten actions you can take to help prevent an unsafe return to school in September” is only part of this MORE-UFT info packet.

Here’s a link to share: http://tinyurl.com/StopUnsafeReopening

Eduhonesty: I keep putting up the gray and green map that shows how powerless teachers have become. We have to take back our power. My social media feeds are filled with teachers who are quitting or thinking about quitting if they can figure out the insurance and finances. We ought never have reached this state of despair.

https://dc.medill.northwestern.edu/blog/2018/03/08/67017/#sthash.VS6OyZ4L.Skez6APe.dpbs The article’s title: Teacher strikes are illegal in West Virginia…so how did they strike?

Let’s #RebuildOurUnions and #ReclaimOurVoices — for the sake of our kids.

Retiring was the smartest move I’d made in a very long while — but in some alternative universes, I imagine there’s an alternative high school or bilingual middle school version of me who is still working. That woman is a dedicated, loving teacher who knows her content and her students. I miss that woman sometimes, because I know I retired early to avoid spending more time in a slow-motion train wreck that never needed to happen.

Again: http://tinyurl.com/StopUnsafeReopening

Black Panther remains one of my favorite Marvel superhero movies. Despite a few logical plot holes and a few CGI scenes that might have benefited from editing, I remember sitting in the darkened theater being quietly blown away. They had made a movie for little girls. Not a movie where she won the prince. Not even a movie where she realized she did not need the prince. But a movie more like Matilda — except this movie was not white. I adore Matilda, but Lavender notwithstanding, Matilda’s an extremely white movie. This was a movie for little African-American girls.

The absences we do not know are there… The blank spots that we do not see… The empty spaces that don’t get filled because somehow people don’t seem to recognize those spaces are out there.

But underneath the various subplots, I saw something I had been desperate to see. I saw young women regularly saving the men in the film, women standing up for their vision of a better world. Nakia begins the film fighting to rescue enslaved women in Nigeria. Okoye serves as head of Wakanda’s all-female special forces, and acts as bodyguard for the king. And Shuri — the beloved little sister who designed never-before-seen technology and healthcare — simply slayed me. She turned Vibranium into indestructible cars — cars that could be remotely controlled from HER lab. Shuri made the Black Panther’s suit, endowing it with kinetic absorption that could turn attacks back on the attacker. She built sonic cannons and underground railways based on magnetic levitation.

Most importantly, Shuri was pretty AND she was fun. In Scooby terms, she was a fine mix of Velma and Daphne. You didn’t have to take off her glasses to know she was beautiful. No one had to TELL you she was brilliant — that brilliance dripped from almost every one of her scenes.

I’ve retired now, but if I hadn’t, I’d be trying to work this film into my year’s curriculum. Because that big hole that Black Panther filled? That hole’s been there for far too long. That hole’s the reason why I recommend the book, Invisible Women by Caroline Criado Perez.

Where are the girls in our transformative films and books? Where are the African-American girls? Yes, I know we are getting better about finding book choices that don’t revolve around boys and men. The Hunger Games and Bridge to Terabithia come to mind quickly, and I can find many others. But let’s not console ourselves because somehow we finally worked girls into the curriculum — almost all of the time white girls.

Here’s a sobering quote from Invisible Women: “Although a 2015 Pew Research Center report found that equal numbers of American men and women play video games, only 3.3% of the games spotlighted at press conferences during 2016’s E# (the world’s largest annual gaming expo) starred female protagonists.” Do the girls and young women playing games notice? Why would we think they would NOT notice?

Readers, as you watch television and pick up books and games in the next few months, please look for the girls. Look for the women who are not props, but fully-fleshed out characters. A favorite quote by Maya Angelou: “I love to see a young girl go out and grab the world by the lapels. Life’s a bitch. You’ve got to go out and kick ass.” As you read and watch media, do you find those girls who are kicking ass? Are those girls in your school’s curriculum?

The absences we do not know are there… The blank spots that we do not see… The empty spaces that don’t get filled because somehow people don’t seem to recognize those spaces are out there…

Until we sit in the dark and start to hurt, because we know that so many little girls deserve a chance to see themselves as heroes. As I sat in Black Panther, I did tear up. Because I wanted my girls, all my girls from all those classrooms through the years, to have the chance to see this movie — this rare, so rare, movie that got it right.

Eduhonesty: Now I’d like to see more of those movies — and not all of them in the Marvel universe. Real women can be real heroes. Real women are real heroes, across the world, every day. They deserve to see themselves. Black Panther blasted into the box office, and the world will miss Chadwick Boseman terribly. I’d like the world to also miss the silent voices of the women and girls who ought to be dominating more screens and building more levitating trains.

Is anyone in your class Godzilla? I disturbed a Zoom Chat recently. I had entered late and accidentally hit the button for no video. My back-up shot of a fire-breathing Godzilla popped up instead of me. Oops. I could see from their expressions that the presenters of the autism session were a bit spooked.

I was a present version of that absent 5th grade student who had posted a picture of himself on the screen and gone off to play video games. Virtual humans can look awfully real. Unless they are Godzilla, of course.

What does this mean for teachers? Openers that must be turned in. Exit tickets that must be turned in. And addressing Fred or someone near him during the class session with a question — not a gotcha question, possibly not even a critical thinking question – but a quick query that shows Fred actually saw the last slide or two on the screen. If we are interactive enough, we can make sure our “classroom” is filled with real people who are listening. This requires switching in and out of presentations potentially — a skill that must be practiced by some. Is there a bored grandparent or another adult you can use for practice sessions? During the first few weeks of school, I suggest practicing on people who can give you tips. You might even ask adolescents of your acquaintance how to hold on to their audience.

This is new. We are all still learning. Even taking attendance can pose challenges. Social media platforms are definitely your friends, right now reader.

Eduhonesty: Frustrated by your technology? I hate to make suggestions that cost money but… You might benefit from an extra monitor to extend your Zoom or Google view of the class and your material. Ask friends at school or online for help making this work. Donations might rescue you. A surprising number of people have extra monitors sitting around in their attics or basement.

Right now, I know many teachers who are finding their laptops inadequate or problematic. Some are thinking of going shopping. For those who are thinking about buying new technology because current, district tech is not working — and let’s be honest, your district’s tech may not be the best tool for the job — I want to make a strong recommendation. GO BIG! A big screen and big processing power will cost more, but I have never regretted buying more. I have regretted buying less. You may be teaching remotely all year, or off and on throughout the year. There will be enough frustration without having to look at pictures that are tinier than they have to be. You definitely don’t want processing delays. We all know how quickly kids stray off task.

Yes, this may seem like a VERY EXPENSIVE version of buying your own markers, pencil sharpeners, staplers, paper and tape. I’m sorry about that. But these are the minutes of your life. If ever there was a time to treat yourself, I’d say the 2020-2021 school qualifies. Just focus on the fact that this new toy will be in your house or empty classroom. This is not a pencil sharpener to be worn out within the year. This machine is a present you are giving yourself.

If you do decide to buy the technology you want, I have a recommendation: When communicating with the salesperson, tell that person you are looking for a machine that will enable you to play any game on the planet. That move can be counted on to result in scary prices, but we are not talking about a short-term purchase. You may notch your expectations down from the first few suggestions, but I’d start at the top and work down.

You may discover a whole new love of gaming that you never had.

Hugs and good luck to all the short-term and long-term virtual teachers!

P.S. I expect I am preaching to a fully informed choir, teacher readers, but don’t believe anyone who tells you they are planning to open… in a few weeks, in October, or when the numbers come down in the next month or two. Maybe they will and maybe they won’t. That aggravating district laptop might be doing virtual duty for awhile.

Voices are already rising, speaking up to warn us that virtual learning will widen the U.S. achievement gap. In a fractured year, beset by learning losses, the risks from online instruction must not be slighted. Our property-tax-based funding system has long ensured that wealthier students have more access to academic resources than less lucky counterparts. When those differences were merely battered versus new textbooks, and occasional shortages of markers or #2 pencils, funding differences could be (mostly) ignored. Teachers in poor schools simply spent much more of their own money on markers and pencils, among many other supplies. But students everywhere (mostly) had the tools for learning.

Online-learning is a game changer though. We can’t let COVID-19 distract us from the technology gap. As distance learning becomes the norm in some areas, we must put our gaps — both technology and achievement — into the spotlight.

Remote learning won’t be easy. The technological piece has been a hidden flaw in our property-tax-based funding system ever since the first school computer labs arrived. Socioeconomically advantaged areas are heading into 2020 with ridiculously more ammunition in their learning arsenals. After I retired, I subbed in wealthy and economically-disadvantaged areas — working where I lived and where I had once taught. Technological ironies did not escape me. In neighborhoods where each child already has an iPad or MacBook at home, schools issued 1:1 devices to take home. In areas where the only internet connection may be on phones, schools passed out devices from computer carts and then collected them at the end of the school day.

Schools are working frantically to get those devices into homes now in areas where education has left the building. But all those years of growing up with technology in the home still leave groups of students at a technological advantage. Even typing speed matters. Students who have been keyboarding since youth can get a great deal more work done sometimes simply because, in a fixed amount of time, 60 words per minute produces a great deal more output than 20 words per minute.

We must shine the spotlight on the achievement gap this year — as often as possible. The fight to keep COVID from widening that gap will be a real one — and let’s hope for funding help sooner rather than later. No child should have to go online on a phone in a parking lot to find out that day’s assignments.

Many children with no internet connection at home have been doing their homework in fast food restaurants and coffee shops. In too much of the country, though, that option is no longer available right now. Restaurants are closed or family members don’t want children sitting for hours in public locations. Those students may in fact be working in parking lots.

Eduhonesty: I view this as a COVID-19 opportunity. In parts of the country, school is appropriately being offered online. Let’s get the information out there now: Does your school have adequate technology for 1:1 learning, the tech power to send home a functional device so every student can access the internet? Do students have internet connections? How many students are out of luck because their Chromebook or device is broken? Or because something has gone wrong with a charger? How much technical support is available to students?

Due to differences in school funding, the tech gap has been taken as a given, a strange version of “we will always have the poor among us.” But that technology gap will factor hugely in the achievement gap over the next year or two. “Maria” in the house with computers in her mom’s office, her dad’s office and her own bedroom can pretty much ignore technology. Some desktop, laptop, or iPad will deliver the information her teacher provided in her virtual classroom. But what about “Ramon,” who has been relying on mom’s phone and who now needs to figure out this new hunk of metal that he has been issued? How will we keep Ramon in the game?

My suggestion to teachers and others: Share. When you see your students or your child at a disadvantage technologically, when you see the tech gap interfering with learning, go online. Share that missing internet connection. Write what you see on Facebook or other platforms. Tweet what you see. Find me at

#eduhonesty@ShastathePlaid

and I will be happy to share for you. The technology gap has been pervasive, long-standing, misunderstood and underreported. Let’s seize this time to try to fix that gap.

————————————————————————————————————————-

The right direction: https://oklahoman.com/article/5669779/covid-relief-funding-helping-okc-schools-fill-technology-gap

“While more affluent districts implemented 1:1 technology long ago, low income urban districts have faced many challenges in making it happen. Funding issues and connectivity voids for families have been major hurdles to overcome, both of which have been tackled by Oklahoma City Public Schools in the time since schools closed last spring. Utilizing federal and state CARES Act funding has allowed OKCPS to purchase devices for all students, and WiFi hot spots for families without connectivity.”

A quick numerical snapshot of the problem: https://truthout.org/articles/technology-access-gap-leaves-millions-of-students-struggling-to-keep-up/

“A 2017 survey of more than 400,000 K-12 students, teachers, librarians and school administrators conducted by Project Tomorrow, a California nonprofit dedicated to educational equity, found that lack of in-home internet access is an enormous problem for students in all 50 states. This has been corroborated by researchers at Pew Research who discovered that 17.5 percent of school children in grades 6 to 12 have ongoing difficulties completing school work due to a lack of internet access.”

https://www.cps.edu/strategic-initiatives/chicago-connected/eligibility/ Credit to Chicago which is working to make sure all its students are connected.

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Hugs to my fellow teachers who are sometime reeling from reading silly comments. One especially aggravating comment criticizes teachers, claiming that they have had six months off already and should get back to work. That comment is absurd. So is the comment that suggests teachers should not get paid unless they are inside a classroom teaching live students. Is the idea that America should stop paying people for working remotely? Well, I guess that’s one possible plan — a spectacularly bad one at the moment.

Those posted and tweeted complaints may be contributing to demands that teachers go into empty schools to teach online classes. Big Brother has to watch us all, I guess. But couldn’t we just leave it up to parents to tell Big Brother if “Ms. Jones” has been watching Steve Wilkos instead of teaching? I think that would work fine, while saving teachers gas, time and aggravation.

A little more faith in teachers would help teachers right now. Non-teacher readers? You have no idea how many teachers are crying every day — either because they have to go into a live classroom and they are scared, or because they don’t have that live classroom and miss their students and the starting rituals of the year.

Many people outside teaching have no idea how much work has gone into remote learning. How many times did friends of mine call their missing students in the spring? Some nights, middle school and high school teachers called their entire classes. Those nightly calls went on repeatedly while those same teachers kept trying, trying, trying to create lessons that would get students to log in. Especially bad above the elementary level, noncompliance with school expectations has been rampant. I suspect parents put at least some of these kids on the honor system, and, ummm… not all kids behaved honorably.*

Yes, remote learning may be a tremendous pain to implement. But it’s still the best of bad options in certain geographic locations. Some areas remain unsafe — and more unsafe for parents, grandparents and older siblings than kids.

Parents, do you have a few free moments? Why not email your children’s teachers to say thanks? Due to some pretty nasty online presences, combined with a seismic shift in teaching strategies and expectations, those teachers may need all the virtual hugs and words of encouragement that they can get right now.

And if you know anyone posting those inflammatory tweets and posts? Let them know how underinformed, self-entitled and simply ugly their words and sentiments appear.

See: https://www.eduhonesty.com/when-avas-teacher-passes-away/ and https://www.eduhonesty.com/better-to-be-too-scared-of-those-classrooms-than-not-scared-enough/

*I’m sympathetic to parents who thought their children were doing their work because I’ve been there. My youngest just quit doing homework one middle-school semester and it took us awhile to dig out of that hole. Parent-reader, my spouse and I learned that year that asking, “Have you done your homework?” is not always enough. I recommend asking to see the actual work, too. Email teachers when you have questions.

“Strange how paranoia can link up with reality now and then.”
― Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly

The decisions are mostly made now, but circumstances are likely to unmake some of our school openings. I have never seen a version of what I wrote below and I think it’s critically important. Death is far from the only factor to reckon with in opening schools. Below: About the scariest post I have ever written, and the reason why I favor virtual learning for many geographic areas.

Update October 16, 2020: https://www.msn.com/en-us/health/medical/a-rare-covid-19-complication-was-reported-in-children-now-it-s-showing-up-in-adults/ar-BB1a5H2v?ocid=msedgntp: “We were seeing patients who admitted to the ICU with organ failure,” Dr. Hugh Cassiere of North Shore University Hospital on Long Island said. “They would test negative for Covid-19, but test positive for Covid-19 antibodies, suggesting they’d been infected previously.

“You look back, and they probably had this multi-system inflammatory syndrome,” Cassiere said. “We didn’t have all the pieces to put together.”

The multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children is well-known now. What’s becoming more clear is that this syndrome is not limited to children. Look up MIS-A.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/robertglatter/2020/07/09/can-covid-19-trigger-the-onset-of-diabetes/#37e3b7017a08 In addition to pneumonia, clots, kidney failure, arrhythmias, and heart attacks — there’s growing fear that COVID not only aggravates diabetes: In a subset of people, it may cause the onset of Type 1 diabetes.

Update September 3, 2020: Penn State’s Director of Athletic Medicine just said cardiac MRI scans revealed that approximately1/3 of Big Ten athletes who tested positive for COVID-19 appeared to have myocarditis, an inflammation of the heart muscle that can be fatal. It’s a major cause of death in the young and “healthy.” (Since this article, that 1/3 has apparently been amended to 15% — but that’s still 3 out of 20, and helps emphasize how little we know.)

This is not an either/or, well/sick disease.

A young, former Starbucks employee who has currently left college is at the center of the following article: https://www.huffpost.com/entry/kids-long-haul-covid-parents_l_5f5b81cec5b6b48507ff886d :

“In mid-March, Amy Thompson’s daughter, Amber, called her from a shift at Starbucks and told her mom she felt a tickle in her throat she couldn’t get rid of. Within hours, the college freshman had a fever and a nonstop cough. After some struggle to find a site that would take her, Amber tested positive for COVID-19…”

Amber has spent the last six months in bed. She’s still sick — too sick to work, and sick enough to be in a wheelchair some of the time due to extreme pain in her hands and feet. What happened to Amber is rare — but rare or not, Amber’s struggle is real, and she is not alone.

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The long haulers are real. The inflammatory syndrome being seen in children is real. Inflammation follows this virus on little cat feet in some cases. In others, it moves in like the proverbial 400-pound gorilla. People get sick. An unknown percentage of those people stay sick. The current estimate is that there are tens of thousands of long haulers, people who have recovered from the initial virus attack but who have lingering symptoms. These people are “over” COVID and can be expected to pass their COVID test – but they are not well.

“Few formal studies have hinted at the lingering damage that COVID-19 can inflict. In an Italian study, 87 percent of hospitalized patients still had symptoms after two months; a British study found similar trends. A German study that included many patients who recovered at home found that 78 percent had heart abnormalities after two or three months.” (https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haulers-covid-19-recognition-support-groups-symptoms/615382/)

See also: https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists

I suggest reading the above articles. We may end up with hundreds of thousands of people suffering from this post-COVID condition. One intimidating fact: Many long haulers had mild cases. They were never hospitalized or, in some cases, even tested.* These people are still struggling six months after their illness. Symptoms are variable. Extreme fatigue is common. Brain fogginess and unusual heartbeats combine with breathing difficulties and other simply miserable, lingering symptoms. This condition can be disabling.

In pediatrics, doctors are seeing a “multi-system inflammatory syndrome in children, which appears to occur not typically with acute infection, but following the acute infection by a short period of a few weeks… multiple systems are involved with inflammation, including skin, joints, kidneys, lungs and heart. And some of these kids can be very sick, with rare deaths.” (https://news.berkeley.edu/2020/07/08/from-lung-scarring-to-heart-damage-covid-19-may-leave-lingering-marks/) As CDC statistics indicate, these unlucky kids are unlikely to die – but death is not the only risk from COVID-19.

Risks to long-term health should not be ignored because we don’t yet have a number to pin on this phenomenon. The data is still flowing in, data corrupted by testing problems. False negatives can range from 20 – 30% according to healthline.com, and tests may also come back negative if a person tests too late into their recovery. More importantly, children often don’t get very ill and frequently end up never being tested.

In fact, in the absence of a hard numbers on long haulers and pediatric inflammation, we should be extremely careful right now.  What are the long-term effects of inflamed hearts, kidneys and lungs? As of July 29, there had been a total of 570 U.S. cases of multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children (MIS-C), according to research published in the Aug. 7 early-release issue of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report — a very tiny percentage of the 338,000 kids estimated to have gotten sick. I’m sure there have been more MIS-C cases since, still representing a tiny, tiny percentage of total cases. But what about milder cases of inflammation? Milder cases of fatigue or shortness of breath that never make it into the pediatrician’s office? Or don’t get flagged because fatigue is not rare in children, and that gastrointestinal illness that was COVID never got diagnosed?

Children do tend to recover well from illness, but it’s worth taking a brief visit into the past as I write about this topic. In the early and mid-1900s, the U.S. was full of adults and children who limped or even needed wheelchairs or iron lungs (respirators) after contracting polio. Others made apparent recoveries. I hate to travel down dark alleys, but I’d like to point out that those recoveries did not always last a lifetime. My grandmother had a rough time in her fifties and sixties. She leaned on that cane often. Post-polio syndrome sometimes appeared “decades — an average of 30 to 40 years — after the initial polio illness.” (https://www.mayoclinic.org/diseases-conditions/post-polio-syndrome/symptoms-causes/syc-20355669) Grandmothers and grandfathers began experiencing pain and weakness in muscles and joints, fatigue, muscle atrophy, breathing problems, and sleep apnea, among other concerns.

Decades later, a seeming complete recovery can go sideways. What if COVID lungs that recover at sixteen years of age only make a 95% recovery?  A young adult could recover well enough to function absolutely fine in everyday life – until he or she is not fine. Maybe “not fine” doesn’t arrive until the vaping catches up at 60 years of age instead of 70 years of age. Maybe “not fine” doesn’t arrive until diabetes and high blood pressure finally do enough damage on top of earlier, COVID kidney damage to start dialysis at 50 years of age instead of 70 years of age. Maybe without COVID, that dialysis would never have been required.

Eduhonesty: Those long haulers ought to be spooking us all. The word inflammation ought to be raising huge red flags where opening schools is concerned. The children won’t get “very” sick? How sick is very sick? What will the long-term consequences of post-COVID inflammation become? What will that short elementary school illness mean when they are fifty? Or sixty or older? What will it mean if they become regular drinkers or smokers?

I would bet that the vast majority of kids who get ill will be absolutely fine. Children have remarkable powers of recovery. I can’t say the same for their parents and older family members, but I know I am not talking about anything like bodies in the street here.

I also can’t provide a wealth of data to support my case. We are just discovering the long haulers now because we are reaching the half-year mark from when the pandemic took off. Doctors and others are beginning to realize that many voices are asking sobering questions: When will my energy return? Will the scar tissue in my lungs heal? When will my thinking clear up? Why does my heart race? Why does it skip beats? When will the fevers stop? We are in uncharted territory with the long haulers.

Yes, kids don’t seem to get very sick – but they get others sick. The data now fully supports the idea that – duhhh – you can catch this disease from your child. And those kids who do get sick? An extremely small percentage ends up with a vicious complication afterwards. But we still don’t know how many might end up with a milder version of that complication. How many might spend a year or two tired and achy, not so tired that they shut down, just tired enough so they come home from school and fall into bed regularly while taking Tylenol on bad days? “Mommy, my back hurts again…”

Because we don’t know exactly what we are up against, we should tread as lightly as possible. Schools should not be opened based on wishful thinking. We truly are balancing health against knowledge. Healthy people can always regain knowledge. The libraries of the world can be tapped from our phones today. But those kids forced into classrooms to gain a few extra mathematical processes, scientific facts and new vocabulary words? Will they – or more likely their parents and grandparents — be able to regain their health when our re-openings go wrong?

In regions with high infection rates, the schools should stay closed.

See: https://www.eduhonesty.com/when-avas-teacher-passes-away/

Coming soon: Tips for teaching remotely. Teachers are working furiously to make online learning work.

*Today’s big piece of advice: THINK YOU HAVE COVID? GET TESTED. IF YOU THINK THE LAST TEST WAS WRONG, GET TESTED AGAIN. Because if you are right and you do end up as a long hauler, a positive test will help you qualify for medical support and benefits.

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https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists

https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2020/08/long-haulers-covid-19-recognition-support-groups-symptoms/615382/.

(https://www.healthline.com/health-news/how-accurate-are-covid-19-diagnostic-and-antibody-tests#Two-tests-that-diagnose-an-infection)

(https://medicalxpress.com/news/2020-08-cdc-info-multisystem-inflammatory-syndrome.html )

https://www.sfchronicle.com/health/article/More-children-stricken-with-COVID-19-inflammatory-15468682.php

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/parents-say-children-can-be-covid-19-long-haulers-too-after-months-of-symptoms-1.5055547

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/10/health/children-long-covid-symptoms-intl-gbr/index.html

https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2020/07/brain-fog-heart-damage-covid-19-s-lingering-problems-alarm-scientists

P.S. Food for thought:

“Dr. Nathalie MacDermott, a National Institute for Health Research academic clinical lecturer at King’s College London and London hospital physician, told CNN she had seen more cases of children affected by MIS-C(multisystem inflammatory syndrome in children) than acute Covid respiratory illness.

‘At the moment there’s no concrete data that’s been published in relation to children and long-term problems, but that’s because we are still fairly early on and children haven’t been so badly affected,’ MacDermott said.

‘It’s certainly possible that children may experience the kind of problems we are hearing about in adults such as long-term fatigue,’ she said.

‘From a clinical perspective we are only really seeing those children who were admitted to hospital so it’s very hard to know what’s going on in the community.’”

When Children’s Covid-19 Symptoms Won’t Go Away

https://news.yahoo.com/coronavirus-attacks-brain-121608034.html

The above article is from Apoorva Mandavilli in The New York Times • September 10, 2020

I’m not exactly ashamed. I tell myself I was busy — and I was nonstop busy, with small children, adolescent children, work, evening school to get a teaching degree, and finally classroom responsibilities loaded on top of family life. My union was merely a fee deducted from my paycheck. I came close to needing help once or twice, but the union existed mostly at the far periphery of my life. Versions of me abound in the teaching world. We buy the union like we buy insurance. Then we stick our card in the glovebox and forget about it.

But now it’s 2020. If I go to Twitter and other online sources, I find those unions speaking out for teachers. I find the voices demanding safe working conditions, many of them union voices. I also find panicked teachers, trying to avoid being forced into classrooms that don’t feel safe.

Who speaks for the teachers? The saddest part of my card-in-the-glovebox approach can be seen in areas where individual teachers are speaking for themselves in a cacophony of social media posts scattered across platforms — because no central voice exists to speak for them now, no voice with numbers behind it, no voice that brings power into a discussion that’s all about power.

We let our unions slip away. I’d venture to guess that some teachers were even relieved when the laws passed that stripped them of their collective bargaining rights. I’m sure a few who no longer had to pay dues felt happy to see the extra money for Starbucks and classroom supplies. Flood insurance is a nuisance until the flood.

That flood’s here, murky water climbing the steps and beginning to pour under the front door. The right to strike was the one real power teachers possessed in the past. Strikes remained uncommon because strikes were often avoided by negotiations. But it’s tough to negotiate if you cannot bring leverage to the table. Without an organization behind them, teachers’ words become garbled and disconnected sounds, lost right now in the sheer deluge of COVID-19 craziness.

Eduhonesty: So what next? Now I guess we just keep shouting. We keep posting pictures of unsafe conditions — except many teachers are afraid to post those pictures for fear of losing the positions that pay for the groceries and roof over their heads. In some geographic regions, teachers are left to hope that adolescents with cell phones will speak for them.

Years ago, I should have been taking a long, hard look at this map. Instead, I bought school supplies and decorated classrooms, while teachers in state after state watched as legislators stripped teachers of their limited privileges. Those politicians did not understand why people serving on the front-lines of education might need a voice in charting education’s path.

No Child Left Behind (NCLB) came at us. We worked on, despite the fact that teachers in academically-struggling areas understood quickly that ensuing attempts to teach to standardized tests were leaving many students behind — the very students the program had intended to help. Response to Intervention and Race to the Top came at us. We worked harder, knowing that RtI, especially, favored wealthier districts. Poor districts ended up diverting staff from classrooms to do mandatory small group tutoring, often resulting in decreased instructional time for the overall student body. The Common Core came at us. Math teachers went off to learn how to teach a new mathematics, a math parents did not understand. Parents could no longer help with even elementary math homework unless they received tutoring themselves. Classics of literature were replaced with nonfiction how-to books. And still we worked on.

Oh, articles were published in education magazines and websites. Books were written, some sitting today on nonfiction shelves of libraries. Teachers blogged and went to school board meetings to try to explain what they saw unfolding around them.

But again, too often, without the force of an organization behind them, without the job security they had once had, teachers mostly did not speak too loudly, not in those gray areas on the map above. They had families to feed. They had school supplies to buy for their classrooms and for their own children, and a dream to hold on to — that dream of being a teacher. Brainstorms from Washington, D.C., kept descending and when teachers saw those brainstorms were hurting students, not helping them, not enough people listened as the nation’s teachers said: in disadvantaged areas especially, these plans are not working. When the country’s beleaguered teachers tried to speak up, without unions, without organization, without power — other people who had no classroom experience managed to explain their remarks away. Other people mansplained their remarks away.

(See https://www.eduhonesty.com/covid-19-highlighting-decades-of-a-funding-crisis-in-a-time-of-union-busting/, which points out that 87 percent of American teachers are female today and those numbers continue to increase annually.)

The very fact that the Common Core got as far as it did should tell us one thing: Teachers, we must take back our right to organize. We must release our muted voices. How do we do this? First I suggest we vote for any and every plausible PRO-UNION candidate. I suspect those candidates will almost all be Democrats. Then we must reclaim the gray areas on the map.

How can we do this?

Pull the card out of the glovebox. FIND each other. As I said in a previous post, if the #MeToo women found each other, then the #RebuildOurUnions teachers can find each other. Obviously, August will be too chaotic to launch that rebuilding this year. Too many of us are merely hoping to survive August as #schoolmageddon2020 takes off.

But for the sake of the kids, we have to #RebuildOurUnions and #ReclaimOurVoices.

Can we put that on the calendar for the first real lull in 2020’s COVID storm?