Students, Do This

 Our eighth grade teachers started the year with an email etiquette unit.  I have never been more thankful for their teaching than I was the other day.  Look at this beautiful email I received from a student:

It completely made my day.  You bet I forwarded it to the eighth grade teachers with my thanks.

Students, Don't Do This

I am teaching two electives this school year.  I am not happy about it, because hey, I'm a librarian.  However, I have made the situation be as good as it can be.  Lots of us are doing things we don't want to do during Coronatimes. 

It has been many years since I was a classroom teacher.  MANY.  I am not used to the grading, grading, grading grind.  

This is the timeline of recent interactions with a student.

Wednesday 9/16--discussion post assigned

Friday 9/18--discussion post due

Wednesday 9/16 to October 6--silence.  crickets. nothing.

Today, halleluiah! Student completes assignment:

Five hours later, 7:30 PM  the student emails me to let me know he has finished the assignment AND

WHERE IS HIS GRADE?!?!?!

OMG REALLY?!?!?! I am so not used to this.

My response to him, 14 minutes after his email to me:

Omgosh, I want to have a very candid discussion with this child about his expectations.  The petty side of me wants him to know that it will be done during school hours WHEN I HAVE TIME.  

Coronavirus Catch-up (pt. 2)

Sunday, March 1st was uneventful.  I worked on laundry and met via Facetime with a couple piano students.  March 2-6 was our spring bookfair, and I knew that would be a busy, busy week.  Luckily, we had Tuesday March 3 off for primary Election Day, and I knew I'd be able to catch up on sleep and house stuff that day.
It was a crazy-busy week back to school.  I arrived at work extra early Monday morning to finish setting up the bookfair and be ready to open when students arrived.  I didn't see many teachers that day, but we had a couple hundred students through the bookfair.  Wednesday through Friday weren't really different at school--busy with lots of students.  My principal saw me Wednesday morning and welcomed me back (he hadn't see me Monday); he joked about my bringing back the Coronavirus, and I jokingly said back to him, "I'd be the hero of this school if I got us a couple weeks off!" We had one snow day and a couple delays this winter, so a little break would be welcomed by staff and students.  How funny it was at the moment and how NOT funny it is now. The news from Italy continued to be dire, and people really started asking me about our trip and what it was like there.
Sunday morning, March 8, we got a phone call from my spouse's Board of Directors chair, who let us know a parent had questioned him why we didn't self-quarantine.  We knew nothing about self-quarantining, but quickly went on the CDC and Health Dept website to read the information there.  YES, we needed to self-quarantine.  Or did we? The guidelines were not clear.  I immediately texted and emailed my school administration, and over the next four hours, I was told to stay home indefinitely; come to school--it was fine; stay home for a day so they could sort it out; not problem, come to school.  The last thing I heard Sunday night was from the school nurse, who heard from her nurse manager that I was fine to come to work.  So I went to work.

The wording above is what is currently posted on the CDC website; it is not what it said on Sunday, March 8th. The Virginia Health Dept put out this notice on Sunday, March 8,  It "recommends" that we stay home for 14 days.  I absolutely would have felt devastated if I had been sick and didn't know it or passed the virus on to others.  Thank God that did not happen! By the grace of God that did not happen.  Everything was so cavalier that first week of March; we were not taking things seriously at all.
I went to work Monday morning, March 9th, still needing to pack up the bookfair and do the final deposit for the week. I was also rehearsing with the chorus for their assessments later that week.  About an hour into the school day, the nurse pulled me out of the chorus room and told me I had to go home until the end of my 14-day return period, which would be Saturday, March 14.  We immediately grabbed the closest administrator, who gave me one hour to finish out what I needed to do in my office and go home.  First, in tears, I had to tell the chorus teacher I couldn't be her accompanist, completely abandoning her the week of her assessments.  I called my spouse and told them the news and finished packing up my school life.  I drove home in tears and started my home confinement. 
At first, I was so embarrassed--I thought that if word got out it would look bad for my school and my district.  I didn't tell anyone for days, even though the school nurse said that everything was changing so quickly and that I did the right thing letting administration know as soon as I realized. But as these days went by, everything continued to change so quickly that my little self-quarantine was such a little particle.  Thankfully, I still felt healthy and had no symptoms.  My assistant principal and school nurse checked in by text every single day, which was comforting.
In my next post I'll write about that week of home-confinement and the news we were receiving from around the world.

Coronavirus Catch-up (pt. 1)

Unbelievable.  That's what the past few weeks have been.  I hope this blog survives the decades and can be useful to someone looking for information on this time in history.

On Feb 21, I flew to Rome, Italy for a week.  It was long-planned, and I used all my personal days plus an unpaid day of leave to go.  It was a great week! We had been to Rome before, so this visit, we got to do lots of less-touristy stuff.  Everything was amazing and awesome and so memorable.  Unfortunately, the COVID-19 virus had planted itself in northern Italy and was quickly escalating.  We had registered our visit with the American embassy in Italy and were regularly receiving email updates from the State Department.  I saw this graph (below) on March 11th and it is still astounding to me.

When we got to Italy, there were 17 cases, and when we left a week later, there were well over 800.  ONE WEEK.  A week later and there were 4,000 people infected.

While we were in Rome, people were cautious.  We saw lots of people with masks and using hand sanitizer.  It wasn't a busy time in Rome anyway, and the touristy places we went were busy but not anything like what you'd experience in the summer.  Coronavirus was definitely on people's minds, but we knew we were being careful and diligent with hand-washing, etc. And there weren't any cases in Rome then.

Towards mid-week, friends in the US emailed and texted to let us know that the news coming out of Italy was dire.  We assured them we were fine and taking precautions. On Feb. 26, we got an update that Italy remained at Level 2, and no travel bans were in effect.

Then we got a more seriously worded email from the embassy, discouraging travel to the entire country, whereas before, it was only the northern regions.  Our last day in Rome, Friday the 28th of February, we got an email that the threat level was raised to Level 3, meaning avoid non-essential travel.  

We were leaving the next morning, Saturday, Feb 29, and really, nothing in Rome had changed at all. The CDC, though, raised the threat level to Level 4, and the warnings made my heart race a bit.

We were glad we were leaving that day.  As we were checking out of the hotel, the desk clerks told us to tell people in the US that everything was fine in Rome, that they didn't need to cancel reservations.  Looking back, this just makes me shake my head.  They (just like us now) had no idea what was to come.

We heard from lots of family members and friends who were getting all the bad news about Italy and worried about us.  We got on our flight from Rome to Atlanta and had no trouble at all.  Landing in Atlanta, we saw warnings about Ebola as we passed through customs and passport control.  There was nothing at all about Italy or Coronavirus.  We did get asked if we'd been to China in the past 14 days. Then we flew from Atlanta to DC and were asked no questions. We commented to each other several times how there was no screening whatsoever for symptoms of Coronavirus. (Since I'm writing this two weeks after returning, I can say that as of yesterday, many passengers still were not being screened as they came into the US.)

Cover Art

I process a lot of books.  I read a lot of books.  Things stick in my head.  So when I found the third book this year that looked alike, I had to stop.  Cover artists... WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? 

Not surprisingly...

Got this email from a vendor today:

Not surprisingly, I'm not going to be calling you.

Happy, happy summer!

A couple of things have happened in the last two weeks that have made me smile--school stuff, which I try to take a little break from during the summer, but not really.  I'm always thinking about stuff for next year.  Who am I kidding!?

First, we have a Teachers Are Reading bookclub, and I changed the format of it this year, and a bunch of new people signed up.  One of them is our PE teacher.  She just finished Ghost by Jason Reynolds, and I got this message from her on Facebook:

It just makes my heart sing to get a message like this. I keep envisioning all the ways this teacher will be able to connect with her students about this and other books.  YES!

And then on Monday, we had our first day of summer school, and our chorus teacher (who recently got her admin certification) is the administrator.  She is starting off every day with the students before they go to their math/English/coding lessons.  And she asked about a book to read aloud to the kids, and I suggested two from our statewide readers' choice award list.  After school Monday, I got this message from her:

She was a little nervous about reading aloud to middle schoolers, but I assured her they would love it.  AND THEY DID!  YES again!

Reason #812 Why I Love Middle Schoolers

Today is our library assistant's birthday, so we have a banner up and are celebrating low-key.  A group of eighth grade boys who comes in every few days to get a lollipop from her just came in and I told one of them it was her birthday.  He quickly gathered his friends together and started singing Happy Birthday.

One of them was like, "Dude, it's a library!"

And they finished the song in whisper voices.