“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.
We might as well let this kid wear a snorkel. It would work as well and he might have more fun.
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.
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.
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)
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.”
Psychological impact.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
COVID has ironically helped as schools all over America added tech and connectivity.
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.
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.
These came from Staples.
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
Are you getting ready for the next school year, reader? In my daughter’s schools, teachers are already coming back. Other teachers have only weeks before the year begins. Parents are out school shopping and I realize I ought to have written this post sooner.
COMFORT should be the key word when back to school shopping. Many children have sensory processing issues, even those who have not been and may never be recognized as having a “problem.” A definition of sorts will help here, although definitions vary and sensory issues fall into a gray area filled with hazy examples more than concrete science. But sensory processing challenges are very real and clothing does not get enough attention.
“Sensory processing disorder is a condition in which the brain has trouble receiving and responding to information that comes in through the senses. Some people with sensory processing disorder are oversensitive to things in their environment. Common sounds may be painful or overwhelming. The light touch of a shirt may chafe the skin.”
A tag in the back of a shirt can distract a kid ALL day and, as strange as this may sound, that kid may not say anything for days, months or forever. Some kids will immediately pipe up, “Mom, I hate that white thing! It itches!” But others will simply keep scratching their neck. They will pull the fabric from their shorts or pants away from their skin. They will fiddle with their shirt, maybe pulling it away from their skin. They will do little scooching moves in their desks, shifting their position, one inch in one direction and then another inch to the side. Maybe they will scooch nonstop as the school day goes by. They may often be pulling or pushing waistbands, or simply putting their hands inside those bands to get the band away from their skin. (An act which has definitely gotten a few kids in trouble!) And despite all these subtle and not-so-subtle signs of discomfort, certain children never think to complain. That’s just how clothes work in their minds.
Sensory issues may be far less obvious at home where there are more immediate distractions and less need to stay in one position. Distractions help to distract us from our distractions. Plus students who wear uniforms to school can change out of that uniform, and other children can come home and pull out favorite baseball shirts or other changes of clothing that seem perfectly natural.
A few school shopping suggestions:
Smell the masks! I recently returned a batch to Amazon because the odor was … off. Not enough to make me immediately take off the mask, but enough so that I decided after awhile that I could not identify that faint smell and I was not comfortable using those masks. A child might keep wearing a mask with a faint, unfamiliar smell. I’d take the new box of masks and put one on myself for awhile before I started handing them to my kids.
Watch shoes. Some kids can get attached to shoes that no longer fit. They won’t say anything when their feet start bothering them because they don’t want their favorite shoes replaced. Some kids don’t bother to say anything when their toes are getting pinched because pinched toes don’t much bother them. And feet sometimes grow in leaps and bounds.
You are looking for softness. It helps to shut your eyes and feel the fabric. As the Jedi Masters say: “Your eyes can deceive you. Don’t trust them.”
Take the kids if possible. Have them feel possible future school clothes. Ask them, “Do you like how it feels?” Teaching children to put comfort high on their list for clothing choices will help them for life. While shopping as a family can understandably seem too daunting, shopping together helps with the mystery of sizes. One store’s size six can be another store’s size eight. Seven-year-olds do not run true to size.
That’s the major problem with haunting the end-of-season sales. Yes, that size eight outfit may be a great price and size eight ought to be next year’s size. But some kids just rocket through the size chart. Boys especially can easily go up two or three sizes in one year.
If I had the kids with me, I’d try to get them to sit down in any pants they tried on. Many pairs of pants feel great when upright but are much less comfortable while seated at a desk. Where does the fabric bunch? If trying on multiple pairs of pants, I’d ask, “Which ones are most comfortable?” Kids will resist trying on clothes sometimes. I’d be prepared to say, “I know it’s a pain but I want you to be comfortable all day. I am doing this for you because I love you.”
The internet can be hugely helpful. Just type “sensory friendly” into your Amazon or other clothing search. You might try “soft cotton” and other similar searches, too. Sometimes guessing and maybe returning is much easier than a trip to Target, that’s for sure!
Eduhonesty: Parents whose children have pronounced sensory issues likely don’t need any shopping tips. They are already seeking sensory friendly clothing, even when they have not yet tumbled onto that specific description for what they are seeking. Anecdotally, though, I believe mild sensory processing concerns in children are often overlooked. Even teachers may simply get used to watching the scooching. Because some children will scooch nonstop regardless of what they are wearing — clothed or naked, the average kid is not meant to sit still in any one place for a long period of time.
Here’s a quote for the day: “Once you are comfortable in your own skin, you will become unstoppable.” ― Christine E. Szymanski
I don’t know that Christine is right about that unstoppable part 🙂 but I do know Itching can short circuit thinking. Discomfort is distracting. Discomfort can block learning. Here’s a thought-provoking read that lays out some sensory processing issues and provides a good overview: Understanding Sensory Processing Disorder | Understood – For learning and thinking differences
And now for something completely different! This blog used to write about many topics that had nothing to do with the evils of excessive standardized testing. I’ll be back to that testing soon because I believe excess testing has become a vicious contributor to the achievement gap. But sometimes we all need a break. Thanks to all my readers! Jocelyn Turner
P.S. Using unscented, hypoallergenic detergent always helped my kids, while fabric softeners and dryer sheets were problematic for us.
In my last posts, I barely touched on the larger question of “Barney’s” morale and self-esteem. What does it mean emotionally to have fallen below grade level — perhaps even years below grade level? Silence on this issue ignores one extremely potent argument against increased testing: Too often, we leave behind a trail of emotional devastation with these nonstop tests, depending on the resilience and obliviousness of kids who may be neither resilient nor oblivious.
Let me pull a few paragraphs from the Chicago Tribune link at the top.
“’During springtime, our units with children and adolescents would fill to capacity during testing season,” said (Katie) Osgood, recalling the years she was a teacher at a Chicago hospital’s psychiatric unit.
“We would see children arriving by ambulance directly from testing sessions with things like self-harm … banging their heads on desks, pulling out all of their eyelashes … panic attacks, and we’d see suicidal ideation,” Osgood said.”
I recall a student who carved a word in his arm after one of these tests — a self-criticism that landed him a psychiatric hospital stay. I knew that boy, a hard-working child who was straddling the categories of bilingual and special education. He was trying so hard, but he could not answer the questions in front of him. He had no chance. That test was pitched years above the academic level where he was actually functioning. Special education and bilingual teachers especially know these kids.
I have seen students break into tears during these tests. I have seen quiet acts of defiance, students who put their heads down on their desks and simply refused to start testing. I watched as a student went from trying to answer questions to writing pure gobbledygook on one form, extended response free-association that made almost no sense.
We break some of these kids.
Eduhonesty: I have said what I wanted to say today. I will repeat: We break some of these kids. The percentage may be tiny, but that percentage is spread across all fifty states of this nation.
We have made these standardized tests the focus of instruction and the only barometers of success. What if a kid can’t do what the test demands? We have millions of failing children across the country. We know this. All we have to do is look at standardized test scores across our schools and our states. Or we can simply look at some of the daily work teachers are receiving.
This yellow unit test page is from the year when I was regularly required to give seventh grade Common Core problems to ALL my students so that teachers had comparable data to use to plan instruction. The problem asked students to determine the probability that a family will create a pizza with pepperoni and black olives if the given meat choices are hamburger, sausage and pepperoni and the vegetable choices are mushrooms, black olives and onions. My picture shows a student’s entire answer. The “common instructional plan” that led to this test was not so much a plan as a massacre for the boy or girl who wrote the answers below.
“If you judge a fish by its ability to climb a tree, it will live its whole life believing that it is stupid,” the saying goes.**
We keeping looking at the gasping fish at the bottom of the tree and throwing salt on them, as far as I am concerned.
The Question Too Many Legislators and Educational Bureaucrats Neglect to Answer: What if You Are Not Hermione Granger?
I want to go sideways today to make a sobering observation, one I don’t recall seeing elsewhere. The people who rise to high office are usually good or even excellent test takers. That man or woman with decision-making power within a government hierarchy? The trauma of test taking may be utterly foreign to that person. While not always true, the ability to do well on standardized tests helps predict a person’s chances of getting into the best colleges, and the best colleges have always made pathways to success shorter and easier. The following example illustrates this fact.
“…In the present 112th US Congressional session, there are 27 Senators with at least one Ivy League degree–either undergraduate, graduate or both. More interestingly there are 44 US Senators with at least one degree from an Ivy League school or other comparable elite institution of higher learning. This includes top law schools like New York University, University of Michigan, University of Virginia, and University of Texas. Also included are the top three liberal arts colleges in the nation–Amherst, Swarthmore and Williams –and prestigious institutions like Cambridge, Oxford and the London School of Economics in the UK, and Georgetown (which is heavily represented), Duke, Stanford and other highly regarded non-Ivy universities. Couple this with most Senators being millionaires, and you start realizing how unrepresentative Congress–or at least the Senate–really is.”
Eduhonesty: How do you get into those schools? Especially in the past, ACT, SAT and other standardized test scores were often deciding factors. My point is simple. No doubt we can find exceptions but, overall, the people deciding to test and add more tests cannot viscerally understand the impact of their choices.They may even have enjoyed test days. Back before test score emphasis felt so frantic — back when most of these legislators and top educational bureaucrats were young — that test was an annual feather in their caps, another 90% or higher in most or all categories that resulted in a guidance counselor pointing them toward Stanford, Williams, Cornell or the best their region had to offer.
These leaders do not and cannot understand the impact of their choices to increase testing. Too many of them were the Hermione Grangers, or at least Ron Weasleys, of their student body.
“During springtime, our units with children and adolescents would fill to capacity during testing season,” said (Katie) Osgood, recalling the years she was a teacher at a Chicago hospital’s psychiatric unit.
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