"snow day"

This first week back from winter break has left me as a teacher and human being unable to get in a regular rhythm, critical to health and well-being in a profession that tops the stress meter.  The culprit?  The weather.

The county where I work was trending worldwide as one that made a poor decision in not closing schools on Tuesday, January 6.  It took numerous teachers several hours to travel 20 miles to the school.  My only real roadblock was a treacherous slope on the last stretch of road before my school; I made it, but in the process passed three buses stuck going the opposite direction and one poor guy in a Toyota tercel spinning wheels trying to do the same.

However, as I told my friends, if there is meant to be a delay there will be one - whether the county makes the call, or not.  Sure it is much safer to just call off school and not have the county worry about "saving face" for the 8% of parents who are transplants from upstate NY and can't possibly understand the closure of school for a few inches of snow.  Those parents' tales are the modern-day "walking uphill in the snow with no shoes on."  Those folks will complain regardless.

But, should the county decide to not call off school or even delay (which they didn't), this is what could (and did) happen.  When my morning duty rolled around - standing in the gym to greet the kids getting off buses before the first bell - I wasn't ready to start the day.  I needed some coffee.  I peeked outside and saw no buses had arrived yet.  After retrieving my coffee I went downstairs at the time which - on a regular day - school should have started.  Two buses had arrived.

I then spent the next hour babysitting a few hundred kids in the gym; middle schoolers who sat on the floor patiently and well-behaved.  Students didn't go to their first period class until we had a quorum of teachers. 

Each class period I was greeted with a half-empty classroom.  This didn't dawn on me until the last five minutes of my planning period, that so many kids would be absent.  I obviously couldn't run a test review as planned, or anything substantial.  I saw later that on Facebook parents were angry that teachers taught real material on a day when their kids couldn't get to school.

So now in the last few minutes before my class started, I had to plan 90 minutes of class activities that would be beneficial to 50% of kids, and not detrimental to the other half that missed them.  We played a review game.  I stretched things out.  By the end of the day, I was still wound up and pissed.  What a waste of time for everyone.

What not delaying school did was, it put the burden of the county to make a snow day decison on teachers, school staff, administrators, students, and their parents, who had to bear the burden of decisionmaking instead.  

Now, I'm on a real "snow day" two days later.  The temperatures are at near-historic lows and with the balloon in our enrollment, too many students are in trailers, and the buses would not start properly.  I appreciated the county's decision to not repeat Tuesday with 50% attendance and buses stranded everywhere.

Nothing specific for this post - just a tale of how my last week went.

Seizing control

For my first post, I should probably set the scene - 

I teach 8th grade civics at a very diverse middle school.  I'm in my third year and it's a Tuesday morning in November.  I'm seeing my homeroom class first thing this morning, a class that in this year's schedule is virtually non-existent, like a C&E churchgoer.

A student in my homeroom class was sitting with her head on the desk.  I asked her what was up, to which she replied, "I think I'm going to have a seizure - I gagged three times this morning already."  A rush of information comes to my head: yes, she has fits of epilepsy.  The training says don't call 911, right?  Or do call 911?  If she starts, I think to myself, I will lay her on the floor and clear obstacles.  Get the kids out of the way and prevent panic, in a room that already has a kid affected by a car accident two weeks ago. Geez, these kids will never come back to school if this girl seizes in my classroom.  Now I'm panicking.

I almost push the poor girl out of the classroom.  "Go to the clinic."  I feel wholly unprepared in helping her deal with her illness.  I grab a nearby adult and ask them to escort her downstairs, and sigh with relief when she is out of the room.

At the beginning of the year us teachers receive a barrage of background information on all our students. Read all the IEPs, check the 504s. Check the medical flag list, they tell us, for information on allergies (mainly), asthma (sometimes), and other health ailments (rare).

We do all this BEFORE we meet our kids.  And what happens is, by the time I learn everyone's names, I've forgotten everyone's ailments.  

I'm not sure I'm prepared to be a nurse in this capacity.  Yes, I can administer an EPI pen and basic first aid.  I've been CPR trained dozens of times, including in use of the AED.  But seizures?  I've never seen one in person.  I feel like the last time I should see one, is the first time in the classroom.