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An update from the airing cupboard
Nov. 18th, 2020 08:41 amSo, school? Yeah, I'm not there. I'll tell you why in a bit.
After the autumn break we all returned to school, now with our masks on our faces at all times (except for when we're eating and yes, colleagues, I'm not happy about that, in our tiny staffroom for the ten or so people on our team). How are we making school safer? We open the windows. We close the windows. Every twenty minutes. For five minutes. Preferably all the windows - provided they work and they're unlocked. I've managed to acquire keys for the windows in both our buildings, so I'm a professional opener of windows now.
If you want to know about Germans and their "Lüften" obsession, there's a Guardian article about our "sophisticated hinge technology.
Numbers went up. A city near me wanted the schools to go hybrid - half the school at home, the other half in the classroom, so that we get a little more distance between pupils halving the risk of infection. No, not allowed the higher ups said. Meanwhile, the number of students with infections or quarantining was rising. The first students who had caught Corona in the holidays returned. (Oh and there were the kids who missed the first week after the break because their parents had taken them abroad on a holiday and the kids were in quarantine and we have to count that as an excused absence.) When a student tests positive, the kids sitting next to them are sent home and wait for a phone call from the local health authority. Front row kids get the chance of sending a teacher home.
Anyway, we're wearing our face coverings, opening the windows, providing those in quarantine with things to do online and doing our usual job, teaching, preparing, marking. Parent-teacher-conferences we do by phone this year, and most conferences were cancelled. I went to only one and guess what? One of the teachers there had caught it. We had met in the assembly hall, with covered faces and lots of space between chairs.
So, this was fine. Except some of us were using our Track-and-trace-app and so I got the red card on Monday morning. At least I assume, that it was the conference. Managed to get a test Monday night and now I'm sitting at home and waiting for the result, so I can go back to school. I feel bad, not because I have symptoms or because I'm worried that I caught it, but because the situation at school is mad. We had 27 teachers absent yesterday, including me.
If more had downloaded the app, things would be worse and we would have had to close half the school, I think. Or maybe we shouldn't have had that conference at all.
And then, all day yesterday, the system we use for distance teaching was inaccessible. It's back up, so I can check on my students' work and then later get on top of my marking.
After the autumn break we all returned to school, now with our masks on our faces at all times (except for when we're eating and yes, colleagues, I'm not happy about that, in our tiny staffroom for the ten or so people on our team). How are we making school safer? We open the windows. We close the windows. Every twenty minutes. For five minutes. Preferably all the windows - provided they work and they're unlocked. I've managed to acquire keys for the windows in both our buildings, so I'm a professional opener of windows now.
If you want to know about Germans and their "Lüften" obsession, there's a Guardian article about our "sophisticated hinge technology.
Numbers went up. A city near me wanted the schools to go hybrid - half the school at home, the other half in the classroom, so that we get a little more distance between pupils halving the risk of infection. No, not allowed the higher ups said. Meanwhile, the number of students with infections or quarantining was rising. The first students who had caught Corona in the holidays returned. (Oh and there were the kids who missed the first week after the break because their parents had taken them abroad on a holiday and the kids were in quarantine and we have to count that as an excused absence.) When a student tests positive, the kids sitting next to them are sent home and wait for a phone call from the local health authority. Front row kids get the chance of sending a teacher home.
Anyway, we're wearing our face coverings, opening the windows, providing those in quarantine with things to do online and doing our usual job, teaching, preparing, marking. Parent-teacher-conferences we do by phone this year, and most conferences were cancelled. I went to only one and guess what? One of the teachers there had caught it. We had met in the assembly hall, with covered faces and lots of space between chairs.
So, this was fine. Except some of us were using our Track-and-trace-app and so I got the red card on Monday morning. At least I assume, that it was the conference. Managed to get a test Monday night and now I'm sitting at home and waiting for the result, so I can go back to school. I feel bad, not because I have symptoms or because I'm worried that I caught it, but because the situation at school is mad. We had 27 teachers absent yesterday, including me.
If more had downloaded the app, things would be worse and we would have had to close half the school, I think. Or maybe we shouldn't have had that conference at all.
And then, all day yesterday, the system we use for distance teaching was inaccessible. It's back up, so I can check on my students' work and then later get on top of my marking.
