BC EDUCATION
Saved by @jay_millerjay

For months, but especially after the new CDC school recs came out, supporters of reopening all schools now have been peddling the idea that schools across the country have been open all year successfully. This argument is used to push for ALL schools to be opened now.

A long 🧵

 Though some schools in the U.S. are open & doing well with safety protocols, many places used as examples of opening success have profoundly unsafe schools & are neglecting covid safety. Some have been lucky not to have outbreaks and other issues--it's not that they're safe.
In the last few weeks, I've been in touch with teachers in Ohio, Florida, Texas, Wisconsin, New Jersey, Utah, and Pennsylvania.

(Thanks to @eduwonkette_jen @GeoRebekah and @saribethrose for the threads and forums that have helped me meet SO MANY teachers this year).
I collected the accounts of dozens of teachers. Obviously, this isn't an exhaustive list and it isn't a study! It's what teachers on the ground in some states are experiencing. And it's easy to see why so many in our profession are so frightened this year.

Here's the list:
There are currently open schools in the US that are being hailed as "successful" that have:

▪️no safety protocols at all besides contact cleaning, in some districts
▪️some districts with no mask mandate
▪️classes in windowless rooms, some with full classes of 20-30
▪️dozens of cases at a time but no changes in (poor) safety protocols
▪️no contact tracing or quarantining of close contacts at all
▪️teachers who have to pay for all masks and cleaning supplies for their classrooms because the school/district won't
▪️cases and spread that aren't reported to anyone
▪️teachers who are threatened not to tell anyone about cases and spread
▪️teachers who have been asked to come back early from quarantine when sick with covid
▪️ventilation that was condemned decades ago
▪️districts that threw out closure thresholds when they were reached, to keep schools open
teachers who have been threatened with retaliation for asking for PPE, ventilation and/or physical distancing
▪️administrators shame mask-wearing staff for "fear-mongering"
▪️teachers who were asked to teach remotely when sick with covid
▪️teachers who got covid at school & brought it home to vulnerable family
▪️teachers who were forced to quit because the school wouldn’t accommodate their medical conditions (including cancer and heart conditions)
▪️covid denier and mask denier administrators who are in charge of all covid safety decisions in the school(s)
▪️teachers who were told not to do anything to memorialize colleagues who died of covid bc it could upset families
NO ONE is coming to help the staff in these schools, and others like them across the country.@CDCgov recommendations (which don't need to be followed at all anyway) don't mean anything to many politicians and many school districts. There's no one REQUIRING school safety.
But many school staff are in schools NOW, some very unsafely. What can be done to help these school staff, with so little support for making schools safer?

School staff vaccinations might be the best answer.
Not a perfect answer, not without issues, but it would help overlooked teachers already in schools be there more safely, and it could also help educators in schools that haven't reopened yet be in schools more safely too.

And the fact is, we don't have many options.
@bhrenton has a great thread on educator vaccination, below. It mentions a really interesting idea of @JReinerMD that some of the soon-to-be-approved J&J vaccine, that only requires one shot, could be reserved for educators when production shoots up.
https://t.co/99Vlxn8VOK
School staff in the 21 states that aren't prioritizing teacher vax (& staff in priority states having a hard time getting vaccinated soon) could be fully vaccinated by the end of March & safer in even unsafe schools by April. This could help some schools reopen more safely too.
The CDC made sure nothing could stop schools from being open if people want them to be. Safety protocols are optional. Ventilation is ignored. They made sure to say teacher vaccinations aren't a requirement to opening too.

Teachers are regarded so poorly in this country.
With so much stacked against school safety and teachers, it's heartening to see growing interest in school staff vaccinations (@POTUS @DrLeanaWen @ashishkjha @CT_Bergstrom among others).

Now we just need a real plan.

More from Education

Melanie
Melanie
@Mel_the_Labrat
APPLYING TO GRAD SCHOOL, POST #18: INTERVIEWS (PART 4)

You've finished your interview(s) and you're tired, but it's not over quite yet! What should you do after interviews?

@OpenAcademics @PhDVoice #AcademicChatter #AcademicTwitter #phdchat #gradschool #firstgen #nontraditional

Firstly, congratulate yourself for making it through the interview! Take some time to relax and reflect on your experience, especially if you have forthcoming interviews for other programs. Take note of questions and positive and negative moments that stuck out to you.

*Huge note: PLEASE try not to beat yourself up too much if you didn't know the answer to every question in the interview. Depending on the type of interview (and interviewer) you had, there might have been many difficult questions presented to you, specifically for the purpose...

of not only seeing how much you know, but also seeing how you think and process problems when you *don't* know the answers. If you can, reason your way through the question and explain yourself as well as you can, so that they can see your way of thinking, but if you truly...

have no idea, it's perfectly fine to just say that you don't know, as opposed to rambling nonsensically and hopelessly.

That was all to say, try to make notes of tough questions so that you can be prepared for similar questions in the future, but don't beat yourself up if you...
EDUCATION
Gail Simone
Gail Simone
@GailSimone
You know what I don’t miss? Parent teacher conferences.

Most of Rocketkid’s teachers were lovely, but we had two that still stick out in my mind as sad/hilarious.

The first one, he was in elementary school. The teacher said it was ‘important’ for us to come in.

1/

So we worried about that for two days until the meeting. What could be wrong? It’s scary for parents to be left hanging like that.

So we meet his teacher, goatee and sunglasses...we live in the boonies and yet there’s something here like he’s trying to be a player.

2/

Not like a lady-player, like he’s got an image of himself in his head. We like teachers, but this guy’s manner is just weirdly kind of pushy a little bit.

Anyway, we sit does in the kid chairs, he’s behind his desk, again, weirdly focused on ‘power,’ somehow.

No idea why,

3/

We ask about our son, he acts as if he forgot that’s why we’re there, says some random stuff, all normal, nothing at all worthy of a conference. I mean, contact and communication is important, but thus just feels off-the cuff entirely.

4/

So then suddenly he gets really intense, but pretends being casual. Like it just occurred to him.

And he says to me, ‘So, I hear you’re a writer.’

What?

I tell him yes, I write comics and some animation and stuff.

He says. ‘I looked you up.’

5/
EDUCATION
Advertisement
Dominik Mertz
Dominik Mertz
@DocDominik
Time for some thoughts on schools given the revised SickKids document and the fact that ON decided to leave most schools closed. ON is not the only jurisdiction to do so, but important to note that many jurisdictions would not have done so -even with higher incidence rates.


As outlined in the tweet by @NishaOttawa yesterday, the situation is complex, and not a simple right or wrong https://t.co/DO0v3j9wzr. And no one needs to list all the potential risks and downsides of prolonged school closures.


On the other hand: while school closures do not directly protect our most vulnerable in long-term care at all, one cannot deny that any factor potentially increasing community transmission may have an indirect effect on the risk to these institutions, and on healthcare.

The question is: to what extend do schools contribute to transmission, and how to balance this against the risk of prolonged school closures. The leaked data from yesterday shows a mixed picture -schools are neither unicorns (ie COVID free) nor infernos.

Assuming this data is largely correct -while waiting for an official publication of the data, it shows first and foremost the known high case numbers at Thorncliff, while other schools had been doing very well -are safe- reiterating the impact of socioeconomics on the COVID risk.
EDUCATION
David Fox
David Fox
@davidfoxio
1/

Supercharge your skills with effective learning⚡️

AVOID:
⛔️Wasting time with inefficient strategies ⏳
⛔️Spinning your wheels in tutorial hell ⚙️

A summary of the most effective learning strategies GUARANTEED to make you a better developer

🧵👇


2/

⚡️Deliberate practice

It's good to know the fundamentals well, but you will never improve by sticking to practicing only what you already know.

The alternative to this is deliberate practice...

3/

Deliberate practice means:
✅Practicing things you're weak at
✅Constantly pushing the boundaries of your knowledge and skills.

Before each learning session, ask yourself whether what you will learn adheres to the above.

If it doesn't, learn something that does instead

4/

⚡️Scoping the subject (credit to @AliAbdaal for this concept)

When new information can be 'docked' to an existing framework of knowledge, you can understand and retain the information better because you can relate it to what you already know and understand...

5/

Build a 'map' of the entire subject you're studying 🗺

Include all of the sub-headings that exist within that subject, make it a nested structure (I do this as a bullet point list in @NotionHQ)

You've then got a skeleton list to 'hang' your knowledge from as you go along 💀
EDUCATION
David Frum
David Frum
@davidfrum
On October 16 2020, a secondary school teacher named Samuel Paty was beheaded with a meat cleaver in the street of a small town 20 miles down the Seine from Paris. 1/x

Paty's murderer, a young Chechen refugee, had never met the teacher. The killer was incited to the crime by a multi-day campaign of defamation and disinformation on French social media. 2/x

For 5 years, Paty had taught his classes a unit on free speech and its limits in a democratic society. As part of the discussion, he showed his students some of the famous Charlie Hebdo cartoons - after inviting those who might be offended to leave and then rejoin the class. 3/x

One parent of one student - not the student herself - then set in motion a campaign of denunciation against Paty. And the result was a crime that shocked France and pulled tens of thousands to vigils and protests. 4/x

France has suffered terrible crimes in the name of religion before the Paty killing. We're only 5 years from the horrifying nightclub attacks that killed 130 in November 2015. But past attacks caught France by surprise. This murder announced itself in advance. 5/x
EDUCATION

You May Also Like

Brian Armstrong
Brian Armstrong
@brian_armstrong
1/ Productivity tip: when I keep procrastinating on something I often trick myself by saying, "ok just work on it for the next 20 minutes" or some short period of time, "and then you can chill/relax guilt free" and give myself some treat (sugar, netflix, etc)

2/ Usually at the 20 minute mark (sometimes I set a timer) I'm so engrossed in what I'm doing that I don't want want to stop and end up working on it for the next hour or two. But getting started seems to be the hardest part.

3/ Key to this: you have to actually be ok with stopping after 20 minutes and being guilt free if that's how you feel. So it's not a trick, i have the option every time, I just often don't want to use it once i'm in the zone.
PRODUCTIVITY
Daddy Files
Daddy Files
@DaddyFiles
This is my son, Sam. He’s 5. And today he learned how shitty and harmful #ToxicMasculinity is. My rage meter is spiking right now so excuse me if this is a little raw but there are some things I want to say about BS #gender norms (a thread)


Sam is my middle child & he’s a terror. A “boy’s boy” as so many (not me) would say. He’s rough and tumble, he’s loud, he’s always dirty, loves trucks, plays sports and knee drops me from the couch. But he also loves a lot of “girl” things.

Sam has a collection of purses because he likes to carry things around. And he also loves to have his nails painted bright colors because he thinks they “look beautiful.” And he’s right – they are beautiful…


So he proudly wore his red nail polish to kindergarten this morning because Sam has absolutely no concept of nail polish only being for girls or reason to think anyone would possibly have a problem with beautiful nails.


But his classmates did have a problem. A big one. Sam was ridiculed for being a boy with nail polish. They called him names and told him to take it off. This lasted the entire day.
ALL
Advertisement
Jaya_Upadhyaya
Jaya_Upadhyaya
@Jayalko1
DEVI KARUMARIAMMAN, THIRUVERKADU (TN)

Devi is worshipped here as both Swayambhu (self-manifested) and as Parashakti (with 4 arms holding skull,sword,trishul,udukkai/damru).

Here, Muruga got Vel from Devi to fight Suran. So the place was called Vel kadu which became Verkadu.


It is said that there was an anthill here long ago. Devi appeared in the dream of a devotee and asked him to build a shrine at that spot. When the anthill was removed, the swayambhu murti of Devi emerged. So Devi is called Karuvil Illadha Karumari ( not in the womb of mother).


Once, Devi went to Surya in the form of an old woman but Surya neglected her. Devi’s anger made Surya lose his brightness.
To appease her, Surya said that His rays would fall on Her directly twice in a year and touch her feet. Also, Sunday is celebrated as day of Devi Karumari.


There is also a wooden image of Devi (Marachilai Amman) here. Devotees offer locks to her in the belief that She would safe guard their houses.
Temple tank (Thiruchamber Poigai) is said to have been created by Subramanya. Taking dip in it is said to cure skin related disorders.
ALL
Will Buxton
Will Buxton
@wbuxtonofficial
The Haas / Force India argument is fascinating, and the decision of the stewards may still have consequences. The first key finding is that the stewards ruled Racing Point Force India to be a valid constructor. That means that it builds its own cars.

Haas had argued that the cars had been designed by Force India, but as Haas knows only too well, "outsourcing" is legal. The stewards decided that "there is no regulatory support for the argument that Outsourcing of Listed Parts cannot come from a former or excluded team."

In determining this, the stewards also came to the following conclusion: "In relation to the submission by the Racing Point Force India F1 Team that it is not a new team, the Stewards decide that the Racing Point Force India F1 Team is indeed a new team."

This will have a big knock on effect for Haas in its continued arguments over the rights of RPFI as relates to its eligibility and rights under the complex payments structure. Haas has argued all along that RPFI should be treated as a new team and tread the same path that it did.

TLDR? Haas lost the fight but may have won the war. In having its argument that Racing Point hadn't designed their own car thrown out, they gained clarification that RPFI was a new team.
SPORT
Formula 1
Formula 1
@F1
After 17 years and more than 300 races, it could be @alo_oficial's last F1 race on Sunday 😭 He's given us a lot over the years... including some superb GIFs!

Here we have a rare example of a GIF you can actually hear. TOMA. 💪


The Spanish Samurai


Never give up. 💪 #GraciasFernando


Winning is everything. #GraciasFernando
SPORT