Helping Children Cope With Changes Resulting From COVID-19

contributed by Sanam Edwards, Teacher

It’s been more than a year since we shifted to our virtual platform on Teams.

Learners have acclimated to technology like fish to water, and it is sometimes educators who must keep stride with their hunger for new tech tools. We experienced a sense of satisfaction when we could persist with lessons online and believed that we were still giving the next generation a glimmer of normalcy in a complex pandemic scenario.

As time passed, children found their eyes straining and their focus diminishing. Although they attended the classes, facilitators find themselves speaking to display photos. No one talks back.

I had an eerie morning a few days ago when I logged into Teams at 9:00 am despite a bad night of anxiety. The pandemic appears to have taken over our lives and minds in this second wave, and I was up with worry thinking about my husband out at work and how we could remain safe in a dangerous world. The next morning, I did what any teacher would do. I slapped a smile on my face and welcomed my students as though nothing was wrong. For the first time in a year, no one responded. I hurriedly checked my internet connection and ascertained that all was well. A growing sense of worry gnawed deep in my belly as I saw only display pictures and blank screens before me. The teacher’s mantra of “Am I audible?” made its way out of my throat, and one kind soul answered that they could indeed hear me. Something was amuck and I couldn’t consider starting my lesson on this note.

I asked the young ones how their weekend had been, and a few subdued voices echoed the word ‘fine’. My third graders are eight years old, and I found their responses to be startlingly measured, almost adult-like. A few weeks ago, they had been giggling children, poking fun at each other, eagerly asking their teachers about the tasks set for the day. The anxiety surrounding my day began to compound. As an adult, I can suppress my worry and regulate it while reflecting on my choices and consequences in these pandemic times. I suddenly began to wonder, how many of us are asking our little ones if they are doing alright?

I invited the students to switch their cameras on so we could have a heart-to-heart. When I saw their faces pop up on the screen, there were tell-tale signs of events taking place in the quiet of their private lives. Dark circles under their eyes indicated to me that they were either up with worry about their family or were binging on electronic devices while they were being cared for by someone other than their mum or dad. Unfamiliar surroundings told me that they were not in the spot where they usually attended their classes. A lack of a pencil box and notebooks spoke volumes on how quickly they were ushered out of their homes. Coronavirus, in some form of the other, had crept into their lives and had infected them with fears, if not with the actual virus itself.

It hit home when one of my students confided in me this his parents were Covid + and he was wondering if they were going to die. They were quarantined in the same house, so he was barricaded away from them, looked after by lesser-known family members who mollycoddled him even though he knew the situation was dire. When he asked his parents through the door if they were alright, they said that they were fine and that he should not worry at all. He knew it was not true because he had heard them retching during the day and saw uneaten plates of food left outside the door. This child had been forced to grow up before his time and had nowhere to turn to voice his fears and anxieties as others made him feel like they were unfounded. I only wished that I had been there for him sooner.

My class of students began bubbling over with stories of how the pandemic had affected their homes. If it had not seeped into their homes yet, their friends’ houses had been shaken. I initiated speaking with them about statistics and telling them about recovery rates. A quote by Michael Marshall came to me at the time- “You can’t stop being afraid just by pretending everything that scares you isn’t there.” I found this to be the case as the students took turns to cry, console, and gorge on information that their parents had not given them. 

The children in COVID touched households had been shuttled back and forth residences with only a few details about what the plan of action would be and how the situation was truly being handled. I urged my students to have an open line of communication with their parents as well as their teaching team. I had seen that the young ones in my class were displaying maturity far beyond their years as they had learned to bottle up their emotions to avoid upsetting the adults of the house. They had become exceptionally independent, even though this was at the cost of their childhood and their sense of security.

I have had numerous conversations with my husband behind closed doors on how to keep our children and other family members safe. We have weighed the pros and cons, talked about action plans in case we get infected and have prepared (to the best of our ability) how we will take care of ourselves in case we suffer from COVID. I reflected on how much of this discussion reached our children. They are keenly aware of what Coronavirus is, its lethality and in some households, the little ones know that the disease can be fatal. The youngest of the lot know of the grave consequences should a mask come off in public and are given dire consequences if they fail to wash their hands when they charge into the house after an outing. The fear of COVID has been successfully passed on by parents to children, or even through hearsay at the park. This was essential to keep everyone safe and on the same page when the fiasco began. 

I cannot possibly speak for the various household dynamics that exist in this world. As an educator, I see signs of a struggle daily. Students confide in me because I lend them my ear without judgment or advice. I hear what they have to say and empathize with what they are going through. I cannot tell them that the journey won’t be tough, and perhaps this honesty is what they need. 

Every parent knows their child best and knows their threshold for information. Bearing this in mind, every adult needs to be present to listen to their children, including their teachers. I can foresee troubled times for our young ones ahead in the sphere of academia as well as their social and emotional health. The most we can do for the next generation treat them with the maturity and responsibility that they are exhibiting. Speak to them about their fears and combat them with facts rather than brushing them aside. They have already seen more troubled times in the last year than we have in our entire lifetime, and we need to appreciate and respect their resilience.

Sanam Edwards is a teacher in DPS International, Gurgaon (India). She enjoys building the student’s voice and choice within the classroom environment while infusing her quirky sense of humour into daily activities. She is an advocate for technology in the classroom and is constantly on the lookout for new ways to engage the students emotionally, especially in light of the COVID crisis that has recently taken over the world. 

COVID Vaccine Side Effects & Your Immune System

No, vaccine side effects don’t tell you how well your immune system will protect you from COVID-19

Robert Finberg, University of Massachusetts Medical School

If someone gets a headache or feels a bit under the weather after receiving a COVID-19 vaccine, it’s become common to hear them say something like “Oh, it just means my immune system is really working hard.” On the flip side, when people don’t notice any side effects, they sometimes worry the shot isn’t doing its job or their immune system isn’t reacting at all.

Is there any link between what you can notice after a vaccine and what’s happening on the cellular level inside your body? Robert Finberg is a physician who specializes in infectious diseases and immunology at the Medical School at the University of Massachusetts. He explains how this perception doesn’t match the reality of how vaccines work.

What does your body do when you get a vaccine?

Your immune system responds to the foreign molecules that make up any vaccine via two different systems.

The initial response is due to what’s called the innate immune response. This system is activated as soon as your cells notice you’ve been exposed to any foreign material, from a splinter to a virus. Its goal is to eliminate the invader. White blood cells called neutrophils and macrophages travel to the intruder and work to destroy it.

This first line of defense is relatively short-lived, lasting hours or days.

The second line of defense takes days to weeks to get up and running. This is the long-lasting adaptive immune response. It relies on your immune system’s T and B cells that learn to recognize particular invaders, such as a protein from the coronavirus. If the invader is encountered again, months or even years in the future, it’s these immune cells that will recognize the old enemy and start generating the antibodies that will take it down.

In the case of the SARS-CoV-2 vaccines, it takes approximately two weeks to develop the adaptive response that brings long-lasting protection against the virus.

When you get the vaccine shot, what you’re noticing in the first day or two is part of the innate immune response: your body’s inflammatory reaction, aimed at quickly clearing the foreign molecules that breached your body’s perimeter.

It varies from person to person, but how dramatic the initial response is does not necessarily relate to the long-term response. In the case of the two mRNA COVID-19 vaccines, well over 90% of people immunized developed the protective adaptive immune response while fewer than 50% developed any side effects, and most were mild.

You may never know how strongly your body’s adaptive immune response is gearing up.

The bottom line is you can’t gauge how well the vaccine is working within your body based on what you can detect from the outside. Different people do mount stronger or weaker immune responses to a vaccine, but post-shot side effects won’t tell you which you are. It’s the second, adaptive immune response that helps your body gain vaccine immunity, not the inflammatory response that triggers those early aches and pains.

What are side effects, anyway?

Side effects are normal responses to the injection of a foreign substance. They include things like fever, muscle pain and discomfort at the injection site, and are mediated by the innate immune response.

Neutrophils or macrophages in your body notice the vaccine molecules and produce cytokines – molecular signals that cause fever, chills, fatigue and muscle pain. Doctors expect this cytokine reaction to happen any time a foreign substance is injected into the body.

In studies where neither recipients nor researchers knew which individuals were getting the mRNA vaccine or a placebo, approximately half of people aged 16 to 55 who received a SARS-CoV-2 vaccine developed a headache after the second dose. This reaction may relate to the vaccine – but a quarter of people who received just a placebo also developed a headache. So in the case of very common symptoms, it can be quite difficult to attribute them to the vaccine with any certainty.

Researchers anticipate some reports of side effects. Adverse events, on the other hand, are things that physicians do not expect to happen as a result of the vaccine. They would include organ failure or serious damage to any part of the body.

The blood clots that triggered the U.S. to pause distribution of the Johnson & Johnson vaccine are a very rare event, apparently happening with one-in-a-million frequency. Whether they are definitely caused by the vaccine is still under investigation – but if scientists conclude they are, blood clots would be an extremely rare side effect.

What component in the shot causes side effects?

The only “active ingredient” in the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines is the mRNA instructions that tell the recipient’s cells to build a viral protein. But the shots have other components that help the mRNA travel inside your body.

To get the vaccine’s mRNA into the vaccinated person’s cells where it can do its job, it must evade enzymes in the body that would naturally destroy it. Researchers protected the mRNA in the vaccine by wrapping it in a bubble of lipids that help it avoid destruction. Other ingredients in the shots – like polyethylene glycol, which is part of this lipid envelope – could cause allergic responses.

If I feel sick after my shot, does that signal strong immunity?

Scientists haven’t identified any relationship between the initial inflammatory reaction and the long-term response that leads to protection. There’s no scientific proof that someone with more obvious side effects from the vaccine is then better protected from COVID-19. And there’s no reason that having an exaggerated innate response would make your adaptive response any better.

Both the authorized mRNA vaccines provided protective immunity to over 90% of recipients, but fewer than 50% reported any reaction to the vaccine and far fewer had severe reactions.

[Insight, in your inbox each day. You can get it with The Conversation’s email newsletter.]

Robert Finberg, Professor of Medicine, University of Massachusetts Medical School

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

How COVID Will Change The Future Of Learning And Development

contributed by Gal Raviv

COVID has proved to be far more of a shock to our working and home lives than anyone could have possibly predicted in January 2020 and the Learning and Development sector has been as affected as any.

As the year draws slowly to a close it’s natural to think about what the future holds, and whilst nobody has a crystal ball, we can see some very clear trends emerging that point the way towards our post-COVID L&D environment.

These aren’t predictions, after all, if anyone could tell what was going to happen in the short-term then we’d all be lottery winners. Instead, our points are more discussion points intended to establish what appears to be the ‘direction of travel’ for the next few years.

Attitude to eLearning will change

There seems to have been largely two responses to the COVID situation in 2020; either close shop or move entirely online.

For many, the restriction imposed by a purely online approach has proved too much but others have seized the opportunity to take their customers on a journey. With eLearning forecast to reach $350bn by 2025, we already know that the future is substantially online and this presents L&D professionals with an excellent opportunity.

From anecdotal evidence, we can see that the attitude of clients has changed. Whereas before many managers were reluctant to engage with a purely online offering, now we see a softening of this mindset.

Pre-COVID we saw a general feeling that an online support package was in some way inferior however that has now changed as executives see the training delivered effectively during lockdown making a real difference.

According to a survey in training magazine People Management, 75% of L&D managers said they had changed the way some or all training was delivered as a result of coronavirus, with 50% saying they had made training available online. 

Interestingly, only 15 percent already offered online courses before the crisis, proving the virus’s role in forcing organisations to quickly adapt.

Training needs to reflect a different attitude to work-life balance

Have you noticed how it is now perfectly acceptable to see an employee’s family members walking about in the background of a zoom call? Or children being invited to say hello to a Microsoft Teams meeting?

There’s a totally new attitude towards working from home and this has extended to other aspects of the work-life balance.

Employees are quite rightly asking whether they wish to suffer the hours spent commuting every day and employers are similarly wondering if it is right to keep a desk for every member of staff in an increasingly expensive office setting.

This shift in emphasis has been happening slowly over time but, as with many of our points here, it has been massively accelerated due to the almost instantaneous nature of the crisis.

If people are now questioning how they manage their working lives then our training output needs to reflect that and we may well need to review all of our content and understand whether it is still as relevant today as when it was first written.

Employers need to make the best use of staff

During the lockdown, many employers have had to adopt some fairly extreme coping methods with regards to staff and it hasn’t been unusual to see large scale redundancies or people laid off for long periods of time.

However, business still needs to go on and employers need to ensure that they retain top-quality talent and make the best use of it that they can. Development programs are likely to become more of a focus with companies looking to retain highly-skilled individuals rather than having a large workforce of less productive people.

Accelerating the development of tech outreach

It is no secret that there has been a definite swing as to how students like to engage with trainers over the last few years.

As millennials start to make up a larger proportion of the workforce so it becomes more normalised to engage using social media style methods.

Students prefer to identify training and then access this on a variety of platforms whereas previously online learning has been done at the workplace computer.

As Ruben Resendez, CEO of online lead generation company Adhere explains, “The shift to online learning has forced those that were not up to date with the technology of today to learn new skills that push them light years ahead of where they would have been had the pandemic not happened. It has also allowed people to engage with each other in a way that opens up the doors of communication.” 

This means that L&D professionals need to make sure that their systems are attractive to all demographics and use methods of affirmation that make sense to younger staff such as likes, upticks and emojis.

Increasing self-directed learning

There has been a general trend towards self-directed learning (see TeachThought’s self-directed learning model for schools) but as late as 2017 only a quarter of L&D professionals felt that they had successfully promoted the method.

That having been said, in many cases, companies have had to adopt a less directed, hands-off approach to employee development as people work from home.

This is a trend that is sure to continue into the near future as businesses start to choose more flexible working patterns and it is to be hoped that industry begins to fully embrace a more modern outcomes-based, self-directed learning pattern.

Moving to Learning & Development curation rather than creation

One of the most interesting developments has been the move towards a ‘curated’ style of learning provision.

With so much information now available online, employers are starting to ask why they are creating original material at great cost when it is possible to buy reasonably priced subscriptions for their workforce.

In this instance the L&D professional becomes more of a curator, signposting people towards awesome resources rather than trying to reinvent the wheel and create original content.

A new emphasis on well-being and soft skills

Very early in the pandemic, it was recognized that people who were furloughed or working entirely from home would face mental health challenges exacerbated by isolation. This resulted in L&D managers searching for resources that would enable people to maintain their mental health when working away from their colleagues.

Similarly, there was an increased requirement on management to show understanding and empathy for workers who had faced serious changes in their home life such as children being off school and a need to isolate and care for elderly relatives.

This has meant that there is an acceleration in the need for good quality soft-skills training that will equip managers with the tools they need to chart what have become uncertain waters.

“We’ve seen a large increase in demand from prospective students looking to study online psychology and counselling programs as of late. More people are starting to realize that the health of a company is dependent on the health of the team that is moving the company forward.”

Learning & Development teams need to stay agile

Perhaps the main message for the 2020s is that now, more than ever L&D teams need to remain agile.

We’ve seen that the pandemic has totally transformed the way that many people work and this brings with it both opportunities and challenges. The future of training appears to be largely online with on-demand and curated learning providing the backbone of the offering.

Promoting a truly agile L&D department that is able to offer directed and self-directed training whether that be online or in-person is likely to put any business at the forefront of staff development.

The Strange Binary Thinking On COVID In US Public Schools

by Terry Heick

I read this article last week based on issued recommendations from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine.

In general, they recommend schools open so students don’t continue to fall ‘further behind’–echoing the American Academy of Pediatrics recommendations (which I wrote some about in Teachers Are Becoming The Frontline In The Fight Against COVID-19).

Public Education’s Coronavirus Response: New Problem, Same Broken Thinking

Oh boy. So there’s a lot to unpack here but one overarching issue? That we continue to view schools not as centers of learning and human improvement but rather industrially-fashioned civic infrastructure. Something whose condition is binary–something to ‘open’ or ‘close.’

And if they’re ‘open’ kids are being socialized and learning and growing and if they’re ‘closed’ students can’t learn and they’re withering.

Among other detrimental effects, this leads us to think not of children and learning and knowledge demands and understanding but rather ‘grade levels’ and ‘learning loss’ and ‘falling behind.’ We do this every year when we talk about summer ‘learning loss’ and it’s just, at best, very strange.

On American Students ‘Falling Behind’

So in this case, what exactly are students falling behind? Is there some ideal and standard we’re not meeting that we otherwise would be–students who live in a country relative unaffected by the virus, I guess? Are they falling ‘behind’ some criterion-based reference point? The school district’s pacing guide?

Learning is never done in a vacuum but for some reason, schooling can be? You can’t begin to effectively solve a problem until you’ve identified the problem–and the problem here isn’t ‘kids are out of school’ because the purpose of school can’t be for students to be in them. The problem is that children aren’t growing–and that is a much easier problem to solve than masking up millions of teachers and students and hoping for the best.

To know what to do, we have to know what we’re supposed to be doing. The purpose of school–while subjective and largely arguable–has to at least be somewhat based on transfer of understanding from placing of learning (schools) to places of knowing (communities). And at the center of this effort is the utility of that knowledge. Put another way, students ‘in school’ to ‘avoid learning loss’ is both a cause and an effect–and a tidy metaphor for our broken thinking about how and why and what children should learn.

Another excerpt from the NY Times articles:

Online learning is ineffective for most elementary-school children and special-needs children, the panel of scientists and educators concluded.

Okay–ineffective compared to what? Did we shoe-horn teacher-led curriculum into Zoom and Google Classroom ‘distribution’ and expect that to be ‘effective’? Are we trying to get 8-year-olds to sit still and watch a slideshow identify living and non-living things through a teacher-led, synchronous lesson?

Have we considered thinking backward from the platforms we’re using? Instead of thinking, ‘How can we use technology to teach students a given curriculum?’, have we instead considered, ‘What is the overlap between the (human/academic/intellectual/knowledge-based) needs of students and the features of our existing technological tools?

Put another way, ‘How can we use what we have to help them learn what they need?’

That eLearning ‘didn’t work’ when it wasn’t funded properly and teachers had little training and experience shouldn’t be surprising. Of course, that’s going to be ineffective. It’s ‘ineffective’ with 17-year-old’s too–they’re just either mature enough and sufficiently externally-motivated enough to learn the content in lieu of the challenge. Younger children aren’t motivated by the same things and their brain development and attention span and curiosities demand altogether different approaches to learning.

COVID-19 has made a spectacular mess of almost everything in the United States in 2020. Dr. Jha and other experts noted that the committee did not address the level of community transmission at which opening schools might become unsafe because too much virus may be circulating. “They punted the most critical question,” he said.

Here’s another excerpt:

And the report said that evidence for how easily children become infected or spread the virus to others, including teachers and parents, is “insufficient” to draw firm conclusions.

Here’s where the ‘recommendations’ start to feel ‘political’: They are suggesting that it’s ‘unclear’ how easily children spread the virus. While it’s true that how (and how easily) the Coronavirus spreads is ‘unclear,’ that doesn’t mean that there are compelling data that students won’t spread it to teachers and staff–not to mention bringing the virus home to the families who’ve been able to avoid the virus so far. Very few policies should be created on ‘unclear’ data but in this case, that’s what’s happening, which makes it feel like someone has something they want to see happen and they’re finding data to support that position.

This is not how reason and science and critical thinking work.

While studies from other countries are indeed mixed in this regard, few if any of those countries in those studies have anywhere close to the numbers that exist in the United States as of July 2020. It’s simply indisputable that the Coronavirus is an extremely contagious virus.

The Purpose Of School In The Age Of COVID-19

So what about the purpose of school?

While teenagers may be better able to learn online, they suffer the social and emotional consequences of being separated from their peers, Dr. Beers said. “Adolescence is a period of time in life when you are to be exploring your own sense of self and developing your identity,” he said. “It’s difficult to do that if you are at home with your parents all the time.”

This statement is full of faulty underlying assumptions, not the least of which the two options here are either re-opening school doors or children end up ‘home with parents all the time.’ It also assumes that it is the job of the school to develop student ‘identity’ and if the schools close, they’re somehow on the hook for not sufficiently developing said identity.

This is not what school is for–and even if this is indeed among the benefits of school, the argument to open or close schools can’t be made on that basis. That’s like arguing to open office buildings because closing them increases depression and anxiety in middle-age adults by 37%.

And then we have the folly of focusing on whether or not teachers are ‘scared’ rather than whether or not they’re safe.

In one survey, 62 percent of educators and administrators reported that they were somewhat or very concerned about returning to school while the coronavirus continues to be a threat, according to the report. “The school work force issue is really not discussed that much,” Dr. Bond said.

So 38% are ‘not at all’ concerned? And because they’re (seemingly) the majority, they must be right? If half of motorcycle riders aren’t ‘concerned’ about helmet safety, do we let them decide what’s safe for the other half?

Regular symptom checks should be conducted, the committee said, and not just temperature checks. In the long term, schools will need upgrades to ventilation and air-filtration systems, and federal and state governments must fund these efforts, the report said.

To clarify, all schools are getting not just ‘upgrades’ to HVAC systems but the precise type of system that will filter out the Coronavirus? For cash-strapped states, districts, and schools, this would be surprising–not to mention that money spent here could be invested in improving distance learning–or remote teaching or eLearning or whatever it is you’d like to call it.

And this is all being funded when? Installed when? Checked for efficiency when? Would teachers be safe? Isn’t providing safe working conditions for all school staff a very clear legal–and moral–issue?

“Staffing is likely to be a major challenge if and when schools reopen. A significant portion of school staff are in COVID-19 high-risk age groups, or are hesitant to return to work because of the health risks. The report says some COVID-19 mitigation strategies, such as maintaining smaller class sizes, will require additional teaching staff.”

This seems like a not-small detail–especially mere weeks before many districts are expected to open. A ‘significant portion’ are ‘high-risk’–so we give them smaller class sizes? This is a massive, spectacular failure of rational, critical thinking from top to bottom and is really discouraging to read and see argued on social media on a daily basis.

There is so much propaganda and misleading information being thrown around and it’s just very sad when, while incomplete, there is plenty of very clear data that says this:

Fact: While it’s not a ‘global killer’ many media platforms make it out to be, COVID-19 is a dangerous virus

Fact: In the United States, we’ve had over 4 million cases and 140,000+ cases in a matter of weeks/months

Opinion: As of July 2020 in the United States, the prevalence of the Coronavirus makes going back to school a disaster waiting to happen

Opinion: Arguing whether or not we should ‘open or close’ schools is emblematic of our broken way of seeing ‘school’–its purpose, its delivery mechanisms, its sociocultural outcomes, etc.

Opinion: We should use this opportunity to permanently innovate education and at the kernel of that innovation needs to be a very frank discussion not about funding air filters, but rather about the purpose of school.

The ‘Schools Aren’t Superspreaders’ Argument Misses A Lot About COVID

contributed by Sean McCauley

A popular Atlantic article on early data seems to show schools can safely reopen, but worrisome questions remain.

Econ. Prof. Emily Oster of Brown U. published an Oct. 9 Atlantic article, “Schools aren’t Super-Spreaders: Fears from the summer appear to have been overblown.” Prof. Oster is an expert number cruncher and enthusiastic advocate of fact-based reasoning, as may be inferred from her Twitter feed and books, “Expecting Better” and “Cribsheet: A Data-Driven Guide to Better, More Relaxed Parenting, from Birth to Preschool (The ParentData Series).” Both aim to help parents make informed decisions regarding the health and well-being of their children based on statistics from authoritative sources.

Oster told Time in April 2019, “One of my least favorite phrases is ‘studies say’ because you can always find a study that says whatever is the thing that you think already. And one of the things I try to do here is not what does a study say but what do all the studies say.”

This is precisely what one would expect from a respected researcher from a top-shelf school like Brown, but Oster’s “more direct than typical” article flatly denying school openings cause super-spreader events flies in the face of that precept. It does so in spite of new reports from the CDC noting that 90% of Americans live in counties falling into the two highest risk categories for reopening schools, and the American Academy of Pediatrics showing a rapid rise in pediatric COVID-19 cases over the last five months, not to mention an alarming 14% increase in children with COVID from Sept. 17 to Oct. 1 as schools begin to reopen.

The questionable exclusion of these studies becomes less surprising with a brief glance at Prof. Oster’s previous Atlantic articles. Oster questions distance learning and school closures from almost the beginning, publishing articles such as “Parents Can’t Wait Around Forever” July 2, and “The ‘Just Stay Home’ Message Will Backfire” May 14, just eight weeks after her home state of Rhode Island closed in-person education and entertainment venues.

Both articles also appear in Atlantic, which makes sense as her new “Schools Aren’t Super-Spreaders” article currently ranks as the publication’s no.1 most popular piece.

However, while Oster’s fresh arguments come directly from authoritative data, they’re also startlingly brash conclusions in light of where the numbers come from, how many of them there are, and the disease’s plainly fatal potential.

Oster’s case-closing Atlantic article cites “data on almost 200,000 kids in 47 states from the last two weeks of September” which showed “an infection rate of 0.13 percent among students and 0.24 percent among staff.” That works out to about “1.3 infections over two weeks in a school of 1,000 kids,” and “2.2 infections over two weeks in a group of 1,000 staff.” She notes that “Even in high-risk areas of the country, the student rates were well under half a percent” and invites readers to “see all the data here.”

Schools Aren’t Superspreaders If You Leave Out the Teachers

Here’s the thing, though: while the data may be viewed on an online dashboard programmed by stats-software company Qualtrics under direction from Oster, it actually comes from “a group of educators from superintendents’ and principals’ associations who had access to schools.” In other words, it comes from administration officials from the principal upward, all of whom have every reason to want schools open ASAP.

President Trump has directly threatened the funding of schools operating under distance learning, saying relief funds will be conditionally available to physically open sites, putting further pressure on administrators already squeezed by dire budget constraints. This pressure comes from parents, too, whom the NY Times dubs “involuntary homeschoolers” of “students falling months behind.” These parents proudly sue their state governors for closing schools during the epidemic and hit the streets to protest closures even as COVID spikes in their areas.

That data would be better informed by including numbers from other sources such as teachers’ unions and associations, as evidenced by cases reported to newspapers by teachers in COVID-fraught districts where testing isn’t mandatory. This is the case with the New York City Department of Education, where parents might never have known about faculty infections except that teachers tested themselves and informed their union, who then went to journalists without involving admin officials.

There’s also a tracker run by the Natl. Education Assoc. created by a Kansas teacher which NPR reported on at the end of August. A simple run through just the first ten states alphabetically, Alabama through Georgia, tells a much different story than Oster’s dashboard. According to the NEA tracker as many as 21-41% report infected faculty in some states (GA, CT, AL, FL). In fact, of those ten states, districts saw an average infection rate of 19%, much higher than one would suspect with an infection rate of just a fifth of a percentage point.

Naturally, these amounts measure different things — the percentage of infected people vs. the percentage of infected districts. Even so, this rudimentary research shows a massive disparity between Oster’s sample and that provided by teachers, one which makes plenty of sense considering 45% of all UK cases stem from education settings according to Public Health England as reported by WSWS Oct 4. That’s even more bleak considering the US ranks as the global leader in infections while the UK comes in 12th.

Incomplete Data Around COVID Continues To Be A Problem

Note, too, that while private schools haven’t been included in the above numbers because they don’t belong to public districts, they are included in the NEA’s tracker. This brings us to the next issue with Oster’s claim, her admittedly lacking sample from private schools. She writes of this:

“Private schools have little or no reporting requirements for coronavirus, but in many locations they are the only ones to open. These private schools are an opportunity to learn about what might happen when public schools open in these areas, but only if we have data.”

OK, but how much of the picture are we missing, then? Of Oster’s collected numbers, she cites a population of “400,000 children in more than 700 schools across 48 states, while the total K-12 population in the United States is about 56 million.” She says frankly of this, “So we have a way to go. About 123,000 of those children are in person on an average day, along with 47,000 staff members.”

This amounts to a startlingly modest 1/140th of students in the US and apparently excludes the bulk of private schools. Those schools account for a whopping 25% of all US sites, 68% of which are religious institutions, the spiritual affiliations of which wouldn’t matter if churches weren’t constantly proving themselves undeserving of faith in their ability to keep COVID under control.

Prof. Oster downplays the importance of including these schools in her data, saying, “Private schools …  have lower infection rates, which seems to reflect, at least in part, their demographics and the fact that they do more mitigation.” And while it’s certainly true that COVID inordinately affects the poor, private students clearly need representation if her data is to represent the population.

Those students need representation much more than, say, schools with zero infections. Clean schools don’t tell us whether in-person education is a super-spreader event. They just water down the infection rate among all school-going persons. Nevertheless, 100% COVID-free schools are clearly included in her data.

Even if the data were as round as one might prefer, Oster’s project further entices administrators to take part by an understandable but potentially harmful non-disclosure promise that “identifying information on districts or schools will not be made public,” thus ensuring that parents of students in an infected school won’t learn about it from the Qualtrics dashboard.

Not to mention, Oster’s project is ‘largely volunteer,’ which means the moment the data show something contrary to one’s druthers, such a volunteer can up and quit, all but assuring that the hypothesis apparent in week six of data collection will remain supported by that data in week 18.

Making Better Decisions About School Openings And COVID

This seeming bias at the outset is hinted at by tweets from Oster such as her Oct. 8 “framework for making better decisions during the pandemic”:

1. Frame the question

2. Mitigate risk

3. Evaluate risk

4. Evaluate benefits

5. Decide

…which does a great job of not-so-subtly implying the benefits of opening schools outweigh the risks; as well as one-offs about students lucky enough to have in-person school, a passionate lamentation about students impacted by distance learning, and gifts from working moms grateful for her work on “school/daycare” data, all in the space of the last two weeks.

Still, Prof. Oster’s reputation is solid, her tireless enthusiasm for objective analysis verifiable all over the internet. And it’d be a silly mistake to say her ongoing project is without merit when she can produce such findings as “the relative frequency of coronavirus prevention policies (masks are the most common, while routine staff testing is very uncommon)” and “limiting group sizes to under 25 seems to be the mitigation practice that is linked most strongly with low infection rates.”

So while Oster’s assertion seems founded on hubris in early fall 2020, the careful skeptic shouldn’t be surprised if she comes to admit more comprehensive evidence trumps her premature claim in the end, if indeed that’s how it shakes out.

-S. McCauley

Sean K. McCauley is a freelance writer and public-school English teacher in So. Cal., as well as Sr. Editor at Octiive Music Distribution and the author of the Agnostic Bible.

How Has COVID Changed School In 2021?

contributed by Anne Davis

While many classrooms across the world remain closed in 2020, some schools have indeed opened up this fall despite the COVID-19 pandemic.

As one might expect, these classrooms don’t look the same. In order to safely re-open K-12 school buildings, school administrators have had to work closely with district state, federal, and even global organizations like the CDC to find ways to protect everyone entering the school as much as possible. While not an ideal circumstance to have to navigate (nor safe, for that matter), some schools may not have a choice but to open due to local laws, policy, and legislation. For those schools and classrooms, things are very obviously different. Here are 9 ways COVID has changed the average classroom–and will continue to until a vaccine is achieved and distributed sufficiently enough to halt community spread.

The Drop Off Line

The drop off line at school looks a little different this year. Instead of parents getting out to help their children out of the car, the child is expected to do it all on their own. Staff members wait along the sidewalk to help navigate the students into the classroom. If children walk to school, the parents cannot walk them into their classrooms. Rather, they’re expected to let them go at the corner. 

Face Protection

Masks and face shields are a normal sight in classrooms. Many of the younger students aren’t forced to wear a mask all day, but most do wear face shields in class. When these younger students walk out of the room, they’re usually required to wear a mask. Older students are required to wear a mask during special classes like Art, Music, PE, etc.

Classroom Design 

The classrooms won’t look as full this year. Most schools have smaller classroom loads, so it’s ‘easier’ to space students out. The desks are at least six feet apart and are often all facing the same direction. The learning stations are modified so that students are able to sit further apart. Some schools installed physical barriers like sneeze guards between desks. There are sanitizing wipes, soap, and wipes everywhere you look in the classroom. 

Shared Objects

The use of shared objects in a class isn’t allowed in most classrooms during COVID. Items that are tough to clean are not to be shared. Each child should have their own supplies individually labeled. There should be enough supplies, so students are not sharing them. This means each student should have their own art supplies, notebooks, crayons, etc. They should never share electronic devices, books, or other learning aids.

Better Ventilation

Many schools are trying their best to get better ventilation. Some schools also installed high-grade filters and HVAC systems. Others are simply trying to open the windows and doors more. In addition to properly wearing an effective mask while distancing 10′-12′ apart, ventilation and filtration are among the most powerful ways to protect students from COVID in a classroom.

Social Distancing 

Congregating in the hallways or after lunch isn’t going to happen this year. Educators urge social distancing to anyone in the building. Even standing in line at the cafeteria means standing six feet apart. Instead of high fives and hugs, students wave hello and give air hugs. Instead of playing crowded games in PE, students do exercises or run (at least) 6′ apart (10′ or more is better).

Virtual Classrooms

Some classrooms are moving online. Instead of going into an actual classroom, some schools choose to hold virtual classes. This also happens in many schools when a classroom or entire school is forced to quarantine. Students log into different classrooms where a teacher educates them virtually as if they were in the physical classroom. 

Monitoring Symptoms

Before anyone even walks into a school building, they’re expected to monitor their symptoms. If anyone in the household is exhibiting symptoms of a basic cold, they must fill out a form. Many schools even take the temperature of students as they enter the building. Stopping the virus spread starts at home, so everyone in the house is expected to follow these guidelines. 

Better COVID Testing 

Many parents understand there will be a need for multiple coronavirus tests this year, especially since a cold isn’t just a cold until you get a negative COVID test result. That’s why there are now home testing kits. The Everlywell COVID test kit is one of these tests that you can take in the comfort of your own home. You collect your sample and ship it for secure digital results. You get these results back in about 24-48 hours (once the lab receives your sample). COVID testing is getting easier for parents and students. Instead of waiting in a line to get tested, many are opting for the at-home tests. 

Classrooms across the country are going to look different for the time being. Only time can tell when a traditional day of school will be normal again. (Here’s hoping the 2021-2022 school year is as close to normal as possible.) The pandemic has changed the way the world approaches education. The classrooms may be smaller with extreme sanitizing efforts, but the knowledge and power given to students to face the future are more critical now as they’ve ever been.

For schools in districts where there is no choice but to open, COVID safety strategies are a must. 

A True Equality-Driven Democratic School Choice Initiative

With nonstop news stories about divisions around class, income, race, and anything big government and the media can think of to cause conflict, the reality of our unity in California is missed and hardly talked about these days. But a new school initiative, the Educational Freedom Act, does this.

After watching the consistent efforts of the California School Choice Foundation in the community, I am proud to endorse the effort.

The last year has become quite an eye-opener for me. Fighting for many causes I believe in as a local community organizer, I found that both political parties, including some in the grassroots, are quite willing to throw aside their values and common sense to play for their ‘team.’ The team should be everyone. California needs to be uplifted as a group, as we are now at the bottom of the ranks in academic achievement compared to other states.

My heart has always been for the issues and nothing excites me more than common-sense legislation. With recent wins in Virginia and New Jersey showing the power of parents, it is no wonder there are multiple school choice initiatives now being proposed. The ‘Educational Freedom Act’ run by California School Choice Foundation is the superior initiative by far and the ultimate end-user legislation.

The end-user, in this case, is North Orange County resident Windi Eklund and her husband Joshua, who homeschool three kids.

“I am a long-time homeschool mom who has tried out almost all of the legal homeschool paths available to us in California. We have homeschooled through district ISPs, non-classroom based charter schools, a PSP, and filed our own PSA.”

In the 80s and 90s, the homeschool community was made up of parents who homeschooled to raise their children free from government control and in the ways of their religious beliefs.

As time has gone on more and more families left the traditional system to educate their children at home. The reasons for this vary, and many never actually want to homeschool. Windi fell into this category. It was only after being faced with the fact that the traditional education system that she had been educated through as a child, was not going to work for her oldest son, that she began to homeschool.

With the pandemic, this group of ‘reluctant homeschoolers’ increased by at least 30% and when the COVID vaccine mandate hit schools in 2021, this group of ‘education refuggees’ only grew and will continue to grow more.

Windi has been closely watching the school choice initiatives being proposed and settled on the Education Freedom Act.

In the initial discussions, she saw groups she respected such as CCSA (the California Charter School Association), the HSLDA (Homeschool Legal Defense Association) and FPM (Family Protection Ministries) consulted about how a successful program should work with charter schools and homeschools.

What was saddest for Windi is she realized that her family was not considered a homeschool family under traditional definitions.

She was a homeschooler under a charter school or independent study program through a district and that excluded her. For 12 years, Windi’s son was under a charter school and therefore was a unique homeschooling case. Now he is a senior but went through his first 11 years under the public school accreditation but will graduate without that. But quality education in the moment is the priority of the Eklund family.

For the last couple of years, she transitioned to private homeschooling and cherishes the flexibility she once enjoyed under the charter school programs. “We had been able to create our own studies and curriculums such as real-life field experiences. For example, US History–we would go to DC and New York. Suddenly the Charter school stopped accepting these ‘learning outside the box’ activities because it didn’t fit in the curriculum that now required us to complete specific worksheets and research papers. And that changed over 3 years. It ultimately didn’t fit my children’s needs”

Windi has a unique perspective and I have considered her a subject matter expert on education choices, being that she has seen many angles of this. Windi was also the director of homeschooling for her charter school and husband Joshua was director of student services. Both lost their job last year and would be subject to means testing and income phase-ins that would have shut them out of this program by the other school choice initiatives simply because they made a great income last year but that has since plummeted due to losing their job.

Many other families would be in this position in a volatile world and job market. It could be destructive to a family unit. The means testing would shut out a ‘high income’ family that makes over $100,000. But what if they have five or six children? That would not be a lot.

The unaccredited programs were the ultimate deal-breaker for Windi. The Educational Freedom Act allows homeschool moms like Windi to opt-in. Many private homeschoolers don’t want government intervention. By extension, private homeschoolers don’t want government funds. Other initiatives shut out Windi but EFA and California School Choice give her the option to opt-in and save for college or even high school – it is an important tribute to parents’ sacrifice, giving up one spouse’s income to stay home and provide quality education to their kids. Other initiatives would shut her out of the college savings option.

As a homeschool parent who lived and worked in the homeschool and charter school communities, Windi Knows for a fact that the majority of homeschoolers nowadays no longer align with the government free (no tax dollars) belief system of the HSLDA and FPM. The majority of families would welcome access to opt into the program.

Our special needs students would be protected better. There are many who have flocked to non-classroom-based charter schools because district schools fail to provide them with the support they need. Many students who are dealing with adult responsibilities who would otherwise have had to drop out of school are served by our non-classroom-based charter schools. Such as teenagers taking care of elderly parents or family members and need flexibility in their schedule.

Students who are not fully vaccinated, especially ones with health issues, have had their ability to attend any in-person school revoked by our legislature. They now attend non-classroom-based charter schools. We need to represent all the families who use charter schools.

All of these families who can no longer be served by the system (funded by their tax dollars) to educate their children not only have to figure out how to educate their children, they also have to figure out how to pay for that education.

A phase-in from low to high income makes sense if we are trying to get the support of those who don’t understand issues on the ground and are more focused on the political elite level where special interest groups dominate. But it makes no sense to people on the ground. Only if we make this available across the board minus the divisions can we make this truly Democratic and accessible to the average family, increasingly protecting those with customized circumstances and situations.

The Educational Freedom Act is an easy solution, opting out of creating barriers and differences between our California residents. It gives the power back to parents, giving an opportunity for families to opt in to an education savings account and save up for college. We do not need divisions, means testing, or a general disinterest in the nuances of our education system.

EFA and California School Choice have what it takes to truly revolutionize our education system by creating friendly competition, uplifting all boats. Most importantly, it does not discriminate against anyone, regardless of income, race, gender, etc. Our kids deserve this. Democrats, Independents, and Republicans should all support this common-sense legislation.

Marc Ang is a community organizer in Southern California and the founder of Asian Industry B2B. He has thrown many quality education fairs, promoting school choice. Marc’s book “Minority Retort” will be released in late 2021.