Adventures in Quarantine

 What is the mission of education in the United States?  To create a more just and peaceful world? To create informed, democratic, global citizens? To create good little robots that recite the Pledge of Allegiance and don't question authority and believe everything they hear? I teach French. I teach about global competence, intercultural competence, and issues of global importance. Yes, that involves talking about race, talking about climate change, talking about imperialism, and talking about social justice. I've worked over the years (and am still working) to make my curriculum less "settler centered" (i.e. less white and European, I'm avoiding the word "decolonized" on purpose) and to tell the story of French from many different perspectives from many different places in the world. Teaching about the Haitian Revolution involves talking about race. It is hard to discuss immigration in France without addressing colonialism, slavery, and racial identitie...

 Some interesting news today. First, a justice of the Supreme Court is stepping down, and Biden is vowing to appoint a Black woman! But the one that made me want to stop and write was the headline about New Mexico Schools calling in the National Guard to serve as substitute teachers amid crisis level staffing shortages.  It is hard for me to explain what it is like, as a public school teacher, to suddenly have my profession and my colleagues in the spotlight so much. Before Covid-19, education would occasionally make headlines, but usually only when teachers were off striking for some crazy cause. And in those cases we were often villiafied for making ridiculous demands for pay and working conditions, and it seemed to me the general consensus was that we should just get back to work.    But much like health care workers, teachers found themselves topping headlines pretty constantly throughout the pandemic. For me, teaching has always been somewhat of a public role, b...

 Well, yesterday as Mike and the youngest two kids finished their quarantine and we ready to head back to work and school, my eldest child (11 years old) and I both got faint red lines on our rapid tests. I don't know what to say at this point. I'd accepted a long time ago that this day would come, and now that it is here I honestly feel a little indifferent about officially having the mischievous virus inside my body.  I've built a big fire in the woodstove and made broth and tea...and M and I are watching Boba Fett and Mandalorian. But we are also doing work. One thing I am not indifferent about: This pandemic is still hard. And I don't want to get all "woe is me", but one of the frustrating parts about being a teacher is the expectation/necessity to work, even when you are out sick. We need to provide sub plans, learning materials, links, and keep our online plans updated, even while we are away. Sometimes making plans to be out sick is harder than just sho...

 Two years ago, who knew that we'd all know the ins and outs of different kinds of virus testing? Line 'em up! Here we are testing all 3 kiddos: Last week the schools in Vermont announced a big change in their testing strategy. The powers that be have decided to move away from the more accurate (but longer turn around time) PCR test, and instead rely more heavily on rapid antigen tests to identify covid in schools (among other changes, see more here) .  The logic here (as I understand it) is that because the omicron variant spreads so rapidly, waiting 2-3 days for a pcr test no longer makes sense as an effective way to detect and contain the virus. Instead, students (and staff) are told to use an antigen test for two days in a row (on day 4 and 5 after exposure, and/or at some point after you're positive, that part is still confusing, more below). The rules are different if you are unvaccinated (or you've been vaccinated with a certain vaccine a certain number of months...

Conversations in Quarantine, one week in:  Mike and kids have been home for almost a week now.  For the record, no one has symptoms except for Mike, but 2 out of 3 kids are now positive (we think?1) Conversations at dinner tonight from our covid confined household: Me: How was your day kids? Kids: Oh good, we played outside in the snow this morning... E: Oh yeah, and I put a snowball in the fridge! Me: Fridge? Not the freezer? ... E: And S drew on me. Me: You drew on your sister? S: Oh yeah. I drew on her...by ACCIDENT. ... Me: Isn't this wine good? Husband: I don't know, it's very subtle. Me: Covid tastebuds!  We are fine. This is fine. 

Whirlwind of a week.... Mike got a positive result on a rapid test that Saturday morning. The line was very faint, but I insisted that I was the pro from years of reading pregnancy tests. A line is a line, any line is showing that you have virus in your system... The next few hours were a whirlwind of deciding what to do. Mike contact tracing, calling anyone he had been with at work for the past few days. Us deciding who to test next and how.  Rapid tests have been missing from store shelves for weeks now. It seems impossible to find them anywhere. School sent home one box (2 test) per child in the days before winter break ended (shout out to VTrans for getting that done!), but we used those, as requested, to test the kids after break before they went back to school. The state also recently let us sign up to get 2 boxes free online, so we had those in the house. Because the rest of us were asymptomatic, I took the boys skiing on Sunday, followed by a PCR test. It was MLK weekend, s...

 Today, Saturday January 15th 2022, we finally saw the first positive covid case in our household. The lucky winner was my husband, Mike! Omicron is here!  Feels pretty lucky that we made it this far, honestly. But had to update, will post more details soon. So far Mike just has very mild symptoms!  (From the beginning of the pandemic, I have included case count numbers in the footer. But since the omicron variant spreading so quickly, and with the advent of at home testing, counting individual cases has stopped being practical.  Some official said recently that for every positive case that is counted, there are probably 5-10 more actual cases out there. Soon Vermont will transition to just counting hospitalizations and deaths, and not counting individual cases any more. I may continue to include some statistics, but this may phase out slowly).

 First of all...it has been a long hiatus. I have not written since December of 2020. Where did 2021 go? January 2021 had me in a pretty dark place. Teaching was the hardest it has ever been, we were all in "survival" mode, overwhelmed with several different cohorts in a hybrid model AND trying to work with fully remote students who were at home full time. I really didn't have the emotional bandwidth to write anything down. It was a difficult time.  I was working on (and still working on) having a better shield between myself and all the secondary trauma we experience as teachers.  February I suffered a pretty serious concussion. Recovery was long, screen time was extremely limited.  Limiting screen time, with everything happening on zoom and pretty much all instruction and grading needing to be done on electronic platforms made my recover even longer. I resented everything about my job and had a hard time finding any joy at all at work. Recovery in a noisy house wit...