When the hysteria about recent math and reading scores kicks in, we must be ready to defend whole child education. We have a great deal to teach in the near future, only some of it academic in nature. Math facts and vocabulary are essential — but our emotionally buffeted students will need more from us. We have to prevent test score hysteria from preventing vital social/emotional learning.

Parents and teachers often end up discussing feelings with young children. How do you feel? Are you angry? Are you sad? Why did you throw your books on the floor? Feelings are naturally part of an early and sometimes later elementary curriculum, whether formally recognized or not. Here is a visual aid from the Gerard Aflague collection on Amazon, a poster adorning many classroom walls. Various feelings’ posters can be found to help young children link expressions to emotions to words.*

I stumbled into this post this morning, a stray thought in response to a Facebook comment. Yes, we talk about feelings with small children often. But I think it’s easy to fail to realize that sometimes kids don’t have the right emotion connected to the appropriate word when they are conversing with us. Our sad may be their lonely. Our angry may even be their sad, especially if mom says a behavior is making her sad when her face is conveying anger instead. Maybe mom is about to be late to work due to an unexpected kitchen mess, and she is verbally managing her anger but not quite keeping the exasperation out of her tone and expression. Sad can be very tricky.

Kids learn to connect the right words to matching emotions, but trial and error are part of the process. Making the right associations may take years. Kids often begin using words on the feelings poster before they have recognized and internalized true meanings. My take from this fact is simply that what a child said may not be what they mean or believe when a topic as complicated as emotions comes up.

That was my first morning thought. My second thought was that the masks will be making social/emotional learning harder. People are getting good at smiling with their eyes, creating that small crinkle that says, “I really do hope you like that latte and have a good day,” but masking up will slow emotional learning down, as kids try to associate partially-hidden expressions with feelings.

Readers of this blog know that eduhonesty.com is 100% pro-mask, with the understanding that rare exceptions must be made. Children with autism, for example, may be unable to manage a mask. Generally, though, classrooms must put student, family and employee safety first — and the most reputable research does show masks help.

My last thought was that students in 2021 have a great deal to process. The youngest kids may be the luckiest ones. Our kindergarten and first grade students have only known pandemic schools. Older kids are adapting to changes that mostly make their lives tougher, both intrinsically, because those COVID-19 protocols are demanding, and extrinsically, because once they socialized freely and they remember a time when germ-awareness was almost nonexistent in their lives.

So amid all the educational issues on the table right now, why post about teaching feelings? I am trying to get out front of the panic likely to come at us as educational leaders stare at their fallen test scores. As we plan remediation for COVID-related learning loss, social-emotional learning may easily get lost in the mix because of the sheer amount of catch-up to be done. I want to encourage parents and teachers to keep the spotlight on social-emotional intelligence. How do you think Woody feels? Why do you suppose Buzz did that? Is Mary Poppins really upset? What makes you think she is (or is not) upset?

The social-emotional work I am talking about is already being done by parents and teachers everywhere, but I thought I’d pull that work into the foreground right now. The tests are going to come back showing learning loss from the last two years — maybe a great deal of loss in our hardest-hit schools. I can easily see fear pushing districts to work on mathematics and English almost entirely, to the exclusion of other topics. That would be a huge mistake — another version of the same mistake we have been making since the inception of No Child Left Behind nearly twenty years ago.

Our children are children — not merely sources of data that must be prepared for an annual test. Yet year after year, we keep stealing children’s time as we replace instruction with testing and test-preparation, all while depriving children of helpful remediation because “that topic is not on the test.” See “Opting Out: Because Your Child’s Teacher May Get NO Useful Information from that Test | Notes from the Educational Trenches (eduhonesty.com)” for this blog’s recommendation on that testing.

Yes, the missing words and math facts from interrupted instruction matter a great deal. However, so do the direct and indirect emotional impacts from our broken instruction. These last two years have been the wildest, weirdest years many of us have ever seen, and ignoring that strangeness helps no one, especially children who desperately need us to help them understand and process what is happening in their lives.

Hugs and thanks to all my readers, Jocelyn Turner

*Not all feelings posters are sufficiently diverse, I’m afraid, but I trust my readers to look out for their classrooms.

The bus drivers are falling by the wayside. They are disappearing, walking off the job, and leaving behind crazy online posts about how “teachers should drive them.” Readers, I always take the aged 2004 Acura instead of the too-voluminous Toyota Sienna van if I have to drive downtown Chicago. I sense my limits.

Bus driving requires real skill. There’s a reason that US states regulate truckers and bus drivers, requiring regular health checks. Here are a few interesting particulars about bus drivers from “Licenses, Certifications, and Registrations” at Passenger Vehicle Drivers : Occupational Outlook Handbook: : U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (bls.gov):

“All bus drivers must have a CDL (Commercial drivers license) … Qualifications vary by state but generally include passing both knowledge and driving tests.

…”All bus drivers must have a passenger (P) endorsement, and school bus drivers must also have a school bus (S) endorsement. Getting the P and S endorsements requires additional knowledge, which is assessed through passing a driving test administered by a certified examiner…

“Federal regulations require interstate bus drivers to pass a physical exam every 2 years and to submit to random drug or alcohol testing. Most states impose similar regulations.”

Driving that bus doesn’t pay well. According to Hourly wage for School Bus Driver | Salary.com, the “average hourly wage for a School Bus Driver in the United States is $17 as of August 27, 2021, but the range typically falls between $14 and $21.” Restaurant and retail places around me don’t pay much less and some pay noticeably more once tips are included.

Near me, the Chicago Public School system has been hit hard by missing drivers. (Bus Driver Shortage Throws Wrench Into Start Of School Year For CPS After 73 Drivers Quit – CBS Chicago (cbslocal.com)) The numbers been climbing, too, and is said to be around 90 absentee drivers now — which is more than 10% 0f the total number of drivers for the district. CPS is offering money to parents to drive their own children. Other districts are doing the same.

Eduhonesty: I’ll skip the impact of vaccination demands except to say that personal evaluations of job risk may include that vaccination, whether accurately assessed or not. Some drivers don’t want to vaccinate. Conversely, some don’t want to be exposed to unvaccinated or unmasked kids. Controlling kids’ mask usage — well, kids who may take an hour to get dressed in the morning can strip off a mask in a millisecond.

The far-reaching question I want to take on today only peripherally relates to vaccinations and masks, however. That question affects much more than busses. We have been feeling the effects of my question since 2019.

THE RISK/REWARD RATIO FOR EVERY JOB ON THIS PLANET CHANGED RECENTLY. This has been traumatic for millions of people. But it’s also an opportunity, as the focus has recently shifted to the need for a higher minimum wage, as well as recognition that essential workers are … well, essential.

Working in public contact jobs has become so much less desirable that restaurants around me are even sometimes randomly closing during regular business hours because they can’t find anyone to work those hours. My Nextdoor app is filled with complaints about restaurant service, along with kinder responses trying to bring uncomfortable new truths home: Management doesn’t have enough people to cover all its tables so tables will sit empty while patrons wait. A waiter who used to cover 7 tables may now be covering 12 tables, and service will naturally falter, especially when the kitchen is short-staffed.

Eduhonesty: I don’t claim to fully understand what is happening in my world, but I do know that retired friends and I discuss sub pay and then buy yeast to make bread instead. I also know the forces of economics push up pay in times of scarcity, at least eventually. (For an interesting read on this topic, see Where Did All the Nurses Go? •  Nursing, History, and Health Care • Penn Nursing (upenn.edu) I am afraid that RN shortage may be coming at us again, as COVID fatigue drives increasing resignations.)

I’d like to suggest this may be a time to stand up and stand together. Bus drivers and paraprofessionals are not optional. I expect teacher shortages to boost teacher pay as well. In this time of increased risk for decreased reward — those bus drivers are likely to end up with more kids and more issues with kids than they had the year before. We should expect shortages. We should also understand that there’s power in deteriorating working conditions.

Teachers, bus drivers and others should seize this moment in time. Essential workers? The people holding up our beleaguered school districts have never been more essential. The achievement gap has grown another row of teeth; learning this year has already been deeply impacted by a sad lack of learning during the last year and the year before. That learning loss is hitting the kids hardest who had already fallen behind, too.

There’s no secret pipeline of qualified men and women waiting to step into those bus driving, aide and teaching positions, at least in most geographical locations.

There will never be a better time to seek economic fairness and justice for the workers holding up the US educational system.

In the background on the news, Arne Duncan is describing a new classroom model we could use, inspired by the pandemic. Instead of a large group of teachers with small classes, we take that “Albert Einstein” of a teacher and give that teacher 1,000-some students, taking advantage of the technology that allows us to stream lessons to huge groups. Then schools add tutorials to enforce that learning. Instead of the set-up below:

I will not say that this Einstein model cannot work. I am taking a neuroscience class right now that operates on a similar model — me, along with over 2,000 other people.

But my first thought as I listened was, “and THAT will sure widen the achievement gap.”

I’ve expressed this idea before: I can easily teach algebra to a group of 60 students who are all (or almost all) certain they intend to go to college. Those students believe they require a good grade from me for their college applications. They may even believe they need to learn algebra. In that class, behavioral problems are likely to be minimal and class participation high. Conversely, if I have a class of 22 students, 10 of whom intend to drop out, I may be in for the pedagogical ride of my life. Reader, just try to get an aspiring drop-out off his phone when he WANTS to be thrown out of class. Or try to get Tom to quit talking to Iliana when Iliana is the only reason Tom came to class in the first place.

Who we have in our classes should determine how we teach. Huge, online classes like the one described require a great deal of personal motivation. It’s easy to drift off. If a student doesn’t have to be on screen, that student can play phone games the whole hour, just drifting in for long enough to document he or she logged in, even if the closing activity shows a spectacular lack of understanding of the day’s content. The lack of any real relationship with “Albert Einstein” factors in, too. I have taught many students who did their work for ME, not for themselves. That’s not what teachers want, but I’ll take that algebra homework any way I can get it.

As to the supporting tutorials, the student who never listens to the lecture in the first place won’t have many questions. That student may even try to duck most of the tutorial to avoid revealing how little he or she absorbed from Super Lecturer’s stream of thought. First, a student has to listen. If tutorials are done remotely, lack of student engagement can ensure that students who did not listen to Round 1 manage to miss most or all of the benefits from Round 2.

As I listened to Arne, I found myself having one of those tear-my-hair-out, it’s-definitely-time-to-quit moments. So many people planning educational policy seem to start with the assumption that eager, willing students will be sitting at their laptops just waiting to be let into their virtual classroom so they can begin an exciting day of learning. So many of those planners want to “innovate,” despite the fact that NCLB, Race to the Top and the Common core worked about as well as the average concrete life jacket.

Those eager, waiting students are out there. But we have to figure out how to teach their less enthusiastic counterparts too. A less personal approach seems highly unlikely to work. I wish people generating ideas like this latest one would take a few minutes to visualize a real student. I understand something that Arne has often seemed to miss through the years: Many kids are only barely hanging on in school, often thanks to a teacher or paraprofessional in the classroom who is providing a listening, caring ear along with emotional support and praise.

If we want proof that some students don’t want to be in our Einsteinian classroom we might consider the fact that the “U.S. Department of Education says enrollment in public schools during the pandemic has dropped by more than 1.5 million students. Some have switched to private schools or at-home learning. Others have just vanished from the system.” (Public schools have seen a massive drop in enrollment since the start of the pandemic – CBS News.)

The problem with remote learning is that it is… remote. Being remote, that learning becomes avoidable. I could completely duck my neuroscience course and learn nothing if I chose. I’m sure a lot of informal, haphazard home schooling is taking place in America right now, unsupported by any overarching curriculum. All across the country, parents obviously signed off on children not signing in.

If Einstein says, “the Occipital temporal gyrus and the parahippocampal gyrus extend down into the occipital lobe, and at some point in the occipital lobe, we define a region that is a boundary between the lingual gyrus near the midline, and what remains here of the occipital temporal gyrus,” I can bail. I can decide to listen to a mystery novel or play Words with Friends instead of making my way through that sentence. Many of our students are in the same position. With 1.5 million students who simply left the US educational system, we should be asking one question: How do we get our students back?

We are going into our third pandemic school year and that year has begun with a disquieting number of closures, quarantines and reverses to remote instruction for unlucky students. We can’t afford to add any educational experiments to a mix so explosive that it has already taken a million and a half students out of the theater.

“Masks are too hard for little kids to manage.” My last post with the snorkel snark inspired more than one person to “agree” with me that masks are just too hard for the littlest ones in our schools. Oops. That’s definitely not what I intended to say.

Small children often struggle with masks. They also struggle with pants, shirts, backpacks, hats, coats and gloves. In early elementary grades, winter gloves can come at teachers in a tiny foretaste of the zombie apocalypse, a nightmarish agglomeration of confused, waving, tiny fingers. Then, while the classroom teacher holds the glove out, those children stick two or more fingers in one hole and she has to pull the glove away and start all over again.

My first winter subbing day in a kindergarten classroom, I ended up alone with 20-some kids at day’s end. A number struggled into their own coats and a few even managed gloves. But the majority expected me to get them ready for the snowy winter in Illinois. I had not left close to enough time. Hands, hands everywhere, a sea of hands, gloves, hats, boots and zippers galore! The crowd was a little loose on the concept of taking turns, too.

I’ll frankly confess I ended up with a small pile of random winter clothing that I simply left on the regular teacher’s desk. I looked at the clock, looked at my group, realized they all had their coats on at least, and clapped my hands to get everyone’s attention. Little arms froze in the air.

“Quick!” I said. “You have to get to the busses. We can’t do any more gloves or hats now. C’mon. We have to get out of here!” And I practically ran those guys to their bus locations.

I’ll give myself a D- in “First Day as a Kindergarten Sub in Winter.” Yes, the busses should wait. That’s too many busses to trust, though. Plus I didn’t want to be the sub who slowed down the whole end of the school day.

Trying to shove forty or fifty small hands into tiny tubes that only sometimes match the fingers takes more time than I had left that day. I trusted the kids to identify their belongings. I left the teacher a note to help her sort through the mysterious pile on her desk upon her return.

She let me teach that class again. The second time, I got the timing for those gloves … well, better anyway. As time went by, the kids were getting more adept at handling their own gloves, hats and coats too. They also listened when I told them, “I need you to help me and do as much as you can on your own.” After that first performance, I am sure they had identified me as someone who needed a little extra help.

We can handle masks. Our kids can handle masks; teaching is all about reinforcing desirable behaviors, and masking has become simply another metaphorical hill to climb in classrooms. Teachers learn. Kids learn from their teachers, from parents, from each other and from their own experience. As the meme goes,

Masks are no problem unless we make them a problem. If we purchase the right masks, masks are much easier than winter gloves and zippers. And if everyone is wearing masks, kids won’t mind wearing masks unless adults influence them otherwise. From a very early age, children somehow grasp that they should dress like their peers — even if that leads to tantrums because plain brown backpacks are much less fashionable than Paw Patrol, Spiderman or Disney princess equivalents.

Eduhonesty: Spiderman wears a mask. Captain America wears a mask. Ironman is trussed up in full body armor. I truly don’t get the fuss over masking. Kids can do this. If it makes some or most people feel safer to be masked, the cost is so small and the benefit a genuine kindness to the worried well. Besides which — the research overall says masking is safer, an imperfect method of controlling viral spread which is better than just blasting germs freely out into the air.

Please share this with anyone who might need a nudge to get behind masking. I acknowledge that as children enter adolescence the picture becomes more complicated, but at all ages we can stand up for the idea of kindness toward all.

Hugs to all my readers and anyone who stumbled into this post! Jocelyn Turner

Talk about the efficacy of face masks is reverberating throughout the country right now, mostly talk about how well various materials filter out viral particles.

I’d like to offer a different argument for face masks, one not used nearly often enough in official conversations: Masks keep hands away from noses, lips, and mouths. I was out with a nurse friend in a bakery awhile back* when she pointed out to me that I was using my hands as I talked and putting them on or near my face.

“Don’t do that!” she said fiercely. “Not now. Not with COVID.”

I frequently do “that,” however — and so do many other teachers I know. Teachers often talk with their hands. Those flourishes in front of the whiteboard come naturally after awhile. A more vivacious, animated teacher has an easier time holding her classes’ attention. I point. I wave my arms. And I also crook my index finger and rub my lips while I think. Sometimes I stroke my chin while making a decision.

What I have realized and want to share is that I stop those unsafe behaviors when my mask is on. When my face is covered, my hands don’t go near my face. With my mouth and nose inaccessible, my hands find other things to do.

This change in a lifetime of natural behavior strikes me as an argument for finding the most comfortable, effective mask(s) possible and keeping them on throughout the day. I would suggest any readers who are face-touchers especially should stay inside their masks until they leave work, except for lunch and other necessary breaks. Even if the class has gone to gym or art, germs are still in the air and may be on surfaces. While you are working alone, it’s worth thinking about air flow in small, converted closet spaces. So many schools have converted closets and storage rooms into active work areas. Copy machines and laminators turn up in the strangest of places. Any ventilation and maybe cleaning in repurposed spaces will likely be haphazard at best.

Comfort is key here. Comfort is also extremely individual, while masks are unfortunately mass-produced. Because of the lack of careful sizing, we can expect to see many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip in our masks.

That’s part of our problem in classrooms. A mask that fits an adolescent doesn’t fit a kindergartener. Even with mask mandates, certain adults and children are running around in face coverings that are more theoretical than real.

Below is an example of a tip I got from an MD friend. She staples her masks to make them shorter along the side. This prevents gapping for shorter-faced persons. This mask has a wire so I can fit it to my nose. It covers my whole lower face and chin easily. Longer face persons may need to discard or share a few masks within the family, those masks that simply don’t cover enough face.

Eduhonesty: This post was inspired by my habit of stripping off that mask as soon as I am out of a crowd or store, along with a family habit of automatically putting hands on faces throughout the day. Especially before Delta took off, many of us were becoming casual about masks. I wasn’t paying enough attention while eating my croissant at that bakery table. It’s easy to fall back into old habits while in conversation or contemplation. So I thought I’d share this cautionary note about keeping masks on until the school day has actually ended.

*My RN friend won’t sit inside that bakery now. The Delta strain has pushed her back to taking outdoor walks and using double masks.

Your face, your choice! Except when trapped in a classroom or a closed space with others.

Feeling shaky about taking off that mask, reader? While I seriously hope the Delta variant does not undo our newfound freedom, the fact is America has been masking up again after a brief period of exposed faces. The WHO has come out to say that students and teachers can go unmasked if everyone has been vaccinated, but now Delta is rewriting rules in the middle of this game and, more crucially, do you trust everyone around you to be vaccinated?

“Everyone” is the key word in the above sentence.

I easily find a number of solid arguments for masking up. Yes, the classrooms are often underventilated and social distancing in those rooms can be impossible. Kids are also haphazard about personal hygiene — they wipe snot on their masks and sleeves all the time. A look under desks can reveal whole booger cities. Meanwhile many more kids appear to be getting sick lately.

But here’s the main reason why I am wearing my mask in closed spaces: I won’t take people’s word for their vaccination status. I wish I could but…

From a study by Bella DePaulo, Ph.D., a psychologist at the University of Virginia, The Truth About Lying | Psychology Today: “Lying might be considered endemic in our culture nowadays. Both men and women lie in approximately a fifth of their social exchanges lasting 10 or more minutes; over the course of a week they deceive about 30 percent of those with whom they interact one-on-one.”

People lie frequently — not always and not invariably, but often enough. People rewrite inconvenient truths to make their lives easier. I remain slightly shaken that my very likeable and competent massage therapist lied to me about his vaccination status. He told me he was vaccinated. A few months later, apparently having forgotten his original statement, he shared the experience of his just-accomplished first vaccination.

Eduhonesty: Mask up, teacher reader, and everyone else out there who has to be in groups and crowds. It’s just a mask. But that and the vaccination are the main tools in the toolbox for ducking COVID right now.

In particular, trusting vaccination promises made by people who don’t want to wear masks is like believing the “I never got the email” line. Maybe that piece of email did actually get lost in the spam folder, but I remember an earlier time when “the check is in the mail” filled the same function — getting out of trouble. “Car trouble” and “my alarm didn’t go off” made frequent appearances as well.

Who is behind the maskless face? We all wear masks, covered faces or no.

Humans lie to make their lives simpler. Why do people lie? 12 main motives for deception (ideapod.com) lists a number of reasons why people lie. The following motives apply to lies about vaccination status:

1) To steer clear of consequences; this one’s the biggest reason for the Lie, I suspect. Liars don’t have to wear a mask indoors. No one will demand they take regular COVID tests as a condition of their employment. Plus massage clients will keep booking hours with them. Etc.

2) To avoid feeling awkward; they don’t have to explain why they have not gotten that shot. The vaccinated will take their masks off, thinking the liars are unlikely to be a source of contagion, whether that’s true or not. Liars in this category may not plan to get anyone sick, but they obviously are not greatly concerned one way or another.

3) To fit in with the crowd; if everyone in the English department except Joe has gotten their shot, Joe gets to avoid explaining his position and can join in the group camaraderie without questions.

4) To get ahead; Joe can also look like a team player even if he is not.

5) The lies get caught in a web and feel out of control. Once liars first tell people they are vaccinated, they can’t say anything else without risking being caught.

6) Lying gives liars a sense of control over you or their situation. This is the “They can’t make me!” argument. It’s the, “she’s just a sheeple but I need her to sign my paperwork” argument.

Obviously, these reasons for lying overlap often. Avoiding consequences may be all about fitting in and getting ahead for one person, for example. Exact numbers will vary from study to study, depending on participants, how we define lying and other factors. But it’s not a big leap from Joe saying, “I love your Google Slides” (not true) or “Great haircut!” (SO not true) to Joe saying, “Oh, yeah. I got jabbed last March.” It’s not a big leap. Not for many of today’s Joes anyway.

Mask up. Because you can trust most people to do the right thing, but all it takes is one COVIDIOT to shut down the whole kindergarten because they decided to send their sick kid to school — one COVIDIOT to get family after family sick when they lie about their kid’s headache and fever. And all it takes is one Joe to compromise the whole teacher’s lounge.

Parents and teachers should reflect on that sad truth as we go about day-to-day business during the upcoming school year. I offer this as one more solid reason to keep the masks on, I hope for not much longer. ________________________________________________________________________

A snapshot of our ripped political quilt: Fortunately, many locations are demanding proof of vaccination from teachers and/or students but this is still the COVID Wild West in terms of who is running the show. See: Some states move to block Covid-19 vaccine requirements in public schools – CNN Teachers and parents in California are safer than their counterparts in Alabama, for example.

Readers, please share with friends and others. I have seen many mask articles, but none that tackles this single issue: In today’s emotionally-loaded time, the easiest answer to “Have you been vaccinated?” may be “Yes!” Any parent or teacher knows from experience that the easiest answer doesn’t have to be the true answer. Answering “yes” to the vaccination question has become extremely convenient and as convenience goes up, I fully expect truth-telling will go down.

Hugs to my readers! Jocelyn Turner

We are living in a time of monsters, doing battle with wily viruses and putting up kaiju* tracking stations. But tracking does not help when defenses are not erected. The maps are bleeding red, especially in the South, and many people are hardly blinking as county after county goes down. COVID exhaustion is setting in for portions of the population, especially the vaccinated who figure they are safe. Many vaccinated Americans have decided the unvaccinated are not their problem, except for the risk of contagion they may pose.

An M.D. friend of mine recently shared a strategy for outreach that she thought might work to cut through vaccine hesitancy. Forget about oxygen levels, coughs and fever. She wanted to go straight for the test results that might cut through that Tucker-Carlson-glaze of irreality: sexual dysfunction. The evidence is mounting that COVID-19 can cause erectile dysfunction and even possible infertility (SARS-CoV-2 and Male Infertility: Possible Multifaceted Pathology – PubMed (nih.gov)).

For an unfortunate group of COVID-19 sufferers, one manifestation of COVID-19 is hyperinflammation, along with blood clots, little clots and sometimes bigger clots. Tony-nominated Broadway star Nick Cordero died more than 90 days after contracting the coronavirus, essentially from lung damage and clot consequences. His body had long since defeated the virus, but it could not undo the damage the virus had done.

What does this have to do with sexual dysfunction? “Researchers are piecing together that surviving COVID-19 may be associated with erectile dysfunction (ED), the inability to achieve and sustain an erection for purposes of sexual intercourse. The research points to three factors that can lead to the potential onset of ED in men who have had the virus:” (Yes, COVID-19 Can Cause Erectile Dysfunction – Cleveland Clinic)

1. Vascular effects. Erectile function is a both a predictor of and a consequence of heart disease. One hallmark of COVID-19 has been its ability to cause hyperinflammation throughout the body, “especially in the heart and surrounding muscles. Blood supply to the penis can become blocked or narrowed as a result of a new or worsened vascular condition caused by the virus.”
2. Psychological impact. 
3. Overall health deterioration. ED is typically a symptom of another underlying problem, frequently a vascular problem.

Maybe my M.D. friend is right. A lot of so-called tough guys are wandering through short TV segments explaining that they trust their natural immune system to fight off the virus. Unfortunately, that strategy has turned into a literally ultimate epic fail for many young and hearty middle-aged men who will never be old men. Others are getting lung transplants or slowly wandering around their houses lugging oxygen equipment. That guy with the oxygen tank? He’s not having sex, not any version that most of us would recognize anyway.

Let’s add a fact a lot of us know from having grown older: The things we thought we escaped from when young sometimes come back to bite us. A familiar argument of this nature relates to smoking: People who quit smoking decrease their risk of smoking-related illnesses, but the past does not simply vanish. Yes, people should quit but quitting does not erase the past. Not entirely.

Here are the results of a sobering study related to smoking: “Conclusion: There is a strong association between the intensity of cigarette smoking and degree of ED. Stopping cigarette smoking can improve ED in a considerable proportion of smokers. Age and the severity of ED before stopping are inversely related to the chance of improvement.” (Do cigarette smokers with erectile dysfunction benefit from stopping?: a prospective study – PubMed (nih.gov))

Eduhonesty: Readers may be asking, why all this smoking data? What do cigarettes and kaiju have to do with vaccine hesitancy?

The smoking data is great support for an argument that might help convince some men to get vaccinated. The biggest enemy of a solid erection is a damaged circulatory system. In doing research on this topic, I even came across one article where the author suggested that difficulty getting an erection could possibly be used diagnostically as an indicator of possible COVID-19 cardiovascular damage. I also found another study worth sharing that said upfront, “Erectile dysfunction (ED), as the hallmark of endothelial dysfunction, could be a short- or long-term complication of COVID-19. Additionally, “subjects with ED could potentially have a higher risk of contracting COVID-19.” (“Mask up to keep it up”: Preliminary evidence of the association between erectile dysfunction and COVID-19. – Abstract – Europe PMC)

I grant the study itself is a rather technical and wordy read. I’d focus on that ED “could be a long-term complication of COVID-19.” Also, the data suggests people who already have ED may have increased risk of getting COVID-19.

Let’s journey into a little speculative paranoia. The “Mask Up” article doesn’t say definitively that people with ED have a higher risk of getting COVID-19, only that logically the data supports the possibility. But here’s the Godzilla hiding below our sea of overflowing ICUs, the giant creature from the deeps that we should not ignore: That data’s not truly in yet. This monster could be sneaking up on us even now. The shadows are there. Studies show the virus in testicular tissue. Multiple reports of ED after COVID-19 are beginning to come in. The fact that this virus can blast blood vessels is well established.

Godzilla is in this post simply because some anti-vaxxers appear to be living in a monster movie, one where the evil 5G Nanobot kaiju is coming to eat their DNA. The vaccine hesitant often have some unreal or at least unsupported ideas as well. If we want to approach this time as a monster movie, I have a monster of my own to cast in my film: We’ll call him Erectile Dysfunction. I’ll bet that some of the anti-vax crowd will find my monster even scarier than the 5G Nanobot.

Our systems have been overwhelmed since early 2020. Research into erectile dysfunction is in its earliest stages. It’s happening now, but a great deal of more immediate research had to happen first. The ability to get an erection doesn’t rate much strategy-time when weighed against the need to supply oxygen to people on the edge of death. It doesn’t hit the radar when trying to pull people back from that edge before they enter the transplant zone.

Here’s a last article worth reading and sharing: “COVID-19 could cause male infertility and sexual dysfunction – but vaccines do not” at COVID-19 could cause male infertility and erectile dysfunction – but vaccines do not | PhillyVoice.

Godzilla returned to the sea but Tokyo did not just revert to an earlier version of itself. I think my friend is right, too. Many men who are not worried about their lungs or heart will take the possibility of long-term erectile dysfunction seriously because those big, technical words in research articles convey a simple idea — maybe the only kaiju that will rescue some of today’s vaccine hesitant once they catch COVID-19 is Viagra, and Viagra doesn’t work for everybody.

Common Viagra side effects include flushing; headache, dizziness, abnormal vision (blurred vision, changes in color vision), runny or stuffy nose, nosebleeds, sleep problems, muscle pain, back pain, or upset stomach. Users are told not to use this drug with nitrates, and to report severe dizziness, sudden loss of vision, and sudden hearing loss or ringing in the ears to their doctor immediately. Do the vaccine hesitant really want to become reliant on this drug? Viagra may be a port in the storm, but it’s no port I’d choose to visit unless I’d run out of alternatives.

Some things, once broken, can be hard or even impossible to fix. The unluckiest polio victims never walked again. Many of the denizens of this planet still have not wrapped their minds around the idea that this disease dose not operate like a toggle switch — it’s not sick or well, not for everybody anyway. (See When I Could No Longer Walk Up the Hill — And Amber Is Still Sick, Six Months Later | Notes from the Educational Trenches (eduhonesty.com)) Long haulers are real and nobody wants to haul this particular disability around through life. Among the many things masks and vaccinations may prevent: the need to cruise the Walgreen’s drive-up lane to pick up the latest Viagra refill.

Thanks for reading this slightly off-topic post. Masking and vaccinations will keep our students and teachers safer. Readers, please keep trying to reach across the philosophical divide that has developed around vaccinations. We can’t prevent massive misinformation from being shared across the internet, but we can keep supplying facts.

*Word for the day: kaiju [ˈkīˌjo͞o] — a giant monster especially featured in Japanese fantasy and science fiction movies and T.V. programs.

Study: Erectile Dysfunction Is 5 Times More Likely in Men Who’ve Had COVID-19 (verywellhealth.com), Effects of COVID-19 on male sex function and its potential sexual transmission – PubMed (nih.gov)

P.S.S. Studies can be found related to women’s sexual health and COVID-19 but these remain thin on the ground and frequently relate to the effects of quarantining and sheltering rather than direct illness. To be continued…

Hugs, readers. I hope the summer is giving you a chance to relax and regroup. Jocelyn Turner

There’s a rather fascinating “let-them-die” sentiment floating around out here. “They” deserve more compassion than they are receiving in my view. The internet is a hot, steaming mess of crazy ideas right now, not remotely based in science.

People believe in the 5G, nanobot mind control crisis or the pretty-sure-it-will-kill-us-in-a-few-years-because-there’s-DNA-in-it and it’s-rewriting-our-genetic code stuff. Sorting through facts, factoids and outright lies can be a tough proposition for the science-lite. Somehow — and we absolutely must figure out where U.S. education went so wrong — the US is filled with science-lite adults who don’t have the slightest idea how 5G or DNA works. But let’s be clear: Many monster whoppers and pure lies are populating cyberspace right now. Media stars with enough followers to fill a small city post stories they have never checked for accuracy and suddenly hundreds of thousands of lies are getting reposted and retweeted across the universe. How COVID-19 infected the world with lies – CNET

Politics isn’t helping us at all. Florida’s governor DeSantis has been championing the right not to wear a mask even as conventions cancel their Florida bookings and friends of mine decide to vacation in the North instead. “Florida has the country’s highest hospitalization rate and second-highest rate of recent cases, behind Louisiana. Infection levels have been rising in every state, with especially alarming rates in the South. Many of those governors have also been reluctant to impose new restrictions or require masks.” (A COVID Surge in Florida Challenges Gov. Ron DeSantis, Again (yahoo.com))

Almost all of America’s children may be masking up for the next school year. As it stands, “CDC Director Rochelle P. Walensky urged all schools reopen to in-person learning in the fall, but with proper safety protocols — and that now includes masks.

‘CDC recommends that everyone in K-12 schools wear a mask indoors, including teachers, staff, students and visitors regardless of vaccination status,’ she told reporters.” (From CDC recommends masks for all K-12 students, even those who have been vaccinated (nbcnews.com))

Eduhonesty: It’s a tiny little mask, not a fifty pound backpack. Unless you have COPD or a serious lung disease, that mask is no big deal. I did a stress test while wearing two masks. I didn’t keel over. In fact, I passed my test just fine.

Here is my suggestion as we go through August. As we post the pictures of our paintings, kitties, puppies and delicious lunches, let’s make it a point to sometimes post the story that explains why children should be wearing those masks. Post the story of the Florida dad who thought he’d be fine because he was a former athlete, the dad sitting in his window with oxygen tubes running out his nose after he spent two weeks in the COVID ICU because his elementary age child brought the microbe home and gave it to the whole family. Vaccinated mom had the equivalent of a cold. The kids recovered quickly. Dad has not been so lucky. Weeks later, he still needs supplemental oxygen just to manage light daily activities.

Post those stories. Yes, many of us are vaccinated and have effectively moved on, tired of endless COVID stories, especially now that only one or two out of 100 COVID deaths are occurring in the vaccinated. But not all of us are living in entirely stratified COVID bubbles. Readers, we have to make sure the information flow doesn’t revert back entirely to puppies and vacation photos. Our science-lite friends need us.

In particular, I’d suggest digging up some of the old mask stories. Here’s a story that provides a start: Do face masks work? Here are 49 scientific studies that explain why they do | KXAN Austin . Here’s a useful picture:

Let’s help the schools to help the parents to help the kids mask up.

Parents who are dubious about masks, here is my simple argument. That mask may work. The evidence strongly suggests it does if you read far enough and long enough. That mask does no harm to a healthy kid. (I acknowledge special cases such as autism.) If the mask is useless (it’s not), still, having your child wear the mask will do no harm. If the mask is useful, you may save your family or others an incredible amount of misery.

As to the civil liberties argument: There are hills worth dying on. This for damn sure is not one of them. We are talking about a thin facial covering versus disease and even death. Please. The idea that we should even balance one against the other sounds … stunningly out of touch with our common humanity. The fact that I can drive though the crosswalk and probably everyone will be able to leap out my way in time to escape serious injury does not mean I should barrel through the crosswalk.

Please, readers, let’s keep the flow of accurate information on COVID going out to our various feeds.

Questions to share with social media friends:

Did you check Snopes?

Have you cross-checked that story?

Why do you believe Fred when most everyone else says something else?

I’ll confess I haven’t always checked out my sources as much as I should in this life. Right now, though, we should all be holding each other accountable. Because we have a long way to go and a short time to get there before the next school year begins.

Hugs to my readers. Jocelyn Turner

Here’s my starting truth: The hare will always beat the tortoise when the race is short and timed.

In the US, students who have grown up with access to keyboards and QWERTY keyboard practice enter the game at an undefined and unquantifiable advantage. Slow test takers can lose points simply because of their need to hunt and peck at keys. UNTIL THE TECH GAP IS CLOSED, WE WON’T BE ABLE TO ACCURATELY JUDGE THE ACHIEVEMENT GAP. One of the best students I ever had — valedictorian for her high school — got a nineteen on her ACT.* That low score was about her typing speed and nothing else but her typing speed. My former student has the ability to be a rocket scientist. But “Esmeralda” got her first, minimal exposure to proper keyboarding skills toward the end of middle school, and her high school only haphazardly emphasized typing speed.

I think it helps to visualize what I am talking about. Reader, your fingers probably automatically hit the keys when you are typing. You don’t think about letter location. I never look at the keyboard unless a mistake pops onto my screen. But suppose your fingers did not automatically find the “p” or “q”? Suppose someone shifted the letters on your keyboard? You would be staring at all the letters on the black rectangle in front of you, trying to pick out what you need. And the problem here is not simply time loss. Yes, it takes a while to find the letter “p” if you don’t know it’s location, but while you are searching you are also multitasking. Your attention has been diverted away from the test problem to the more immediate problem of getting your answer down.

We know multitasking affects performance and work quality. “Indeed, performing several decisive tasks in parallel reduces your overall performance by 20 to 50% while extending the completion time from 30% to 200% and multiplying the number of errors made. All this causes intense and lasting mental exhaustion,” according to Multitasking in Project Management | Reasons to Avoid Multitasking (businessstudynotes.com)

Eduhonesty: I consider it ironically possible that the aggressive push to get technology into the hands of disadvantaged students may help make up for COVID learning loss. For younger students, this push may even end up closing the achievement gap somewhat despite that learning loss. Our younger Esmeraldas are learning to type early enough so that their ability to rocket across a keyboard may only minimally affect their actual final test score results when they are older.

But in the meantime, that push may also create the appearance of progress where progress does not exist. Improved keyboarding skills have the potential to raise scores because students can supply more information more quickly. The speed with which students can get their answers down when testing can make all the difference to scores, especially for students who naturally write more slowly. But when scores go up due to speed alone — the resulting score increase might disguise learning loss.

The GIGANTIC point that gets lost today is that standardized test scores haven’t been close to trustworthy since we went to computerized testing. “Them as Gits” have had those keyboards at home, crawling up into laps to use them before they even started school. In homes with less disposable income, the keyboard was nonexistent and the internet connection was usually a phone. Phones provide information. They do not provide test practice.

Note for teachers as they start attending the year’s staff meetings: How can we get keyboarding skills out front and center as a critical requirement for student success, one that cannot wait? Amazingly enough, those skills still are often treated as adjunct to success, rather than central to success.

Note to the Biden Administration: The nationwide, standardized tests you decided were required to document the status of the achievement gap and COVID learning loss? Those tests will lie to you. And the only way I can see to solve this problem — and get more accurate data — is to return to pencils on paper for now.

*The ACT puts college readiness around 21.

How Often Should I Wash My Face Mask? (webmd.com) WebMD recommends washing after each use. There are washing instructions in the article.

That much laundry may drive teachers and parents to disposable masks. Disposable masks vary in quality, plus you don’t know where or how they have been stored. Strong recommendation from yesterday’s post: WEAR one of your kid’s new masks for awhile. Make sure it has no off odors or other uncomfortable features like a tag that should be cut off. How does it feel?

Putting masks on now should be helpful. I am seeing more parents out with masked children in the last few weeks and I support this summer masking. If the kids are going to have to mask in school anyway, I would not wait for school. That just adds one more level of weirdness to starting school. If masks have become part of everyday life, school masks will seem more normal and less distracting.

Consider spending up for the Disney Princess or Avengers mask. Masks are items of clothing and may be considered fashion statements by some children. Like the annual backpack, the “Frozen” mask may even add to a child’s comfort and confidence.

For children and adolescents who wear glasses, the below items can help with fogging. I believe they are now being called “aluminum nose bridge.” I found them originally in a craft store.

Eduhonesty: Hugs, readers. The world remains wild and we keep adapting. Wishing you all a great week. Jocelyn Turner