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Social (studies) Isolation

Navigating Social Studies 20 during the Covid-19 pandemic. One teacher's adventures from social isolation

Update from Philip in Germany

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March 31, 2020

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Numbers

March 28, 2020

+79 in Alberta. 5655 in Canada. 663 740 globally. The political news hasn’t been good today either. Usually when I’m in a mood like this a soccer game would pull me out of my funk. I haven’t been able to play in 3 weeks. I’m looking forward to our Monday morning virtual staff meeting and hoping for information and clarity about what’s to come. I’m also thinking of the 20k support staff that make learning possible for so many students who found out they were being laid off through a tweet this afternoon. And all of the other people who have been laid off or furloughed. We have friends that we met through our baby class. They have a son who is exactly 3 hours younger than our daughter and was born in the hospital room right next door. They made the impossible decision to send their son 10 hours away to live with his grandparents until this passes. The mom is an ER nurse. It’s been tough processing this information all day today. So my gratitude for the day is privilege. ...

Graphs and stuff and things

March 23, 2020

Today was a good day. I ventured over to Sobeys to pick up some more of my husband’s medication. He’s immunocompromised so I’ll be making all those trips for the time being. It was busy again. There was no toilet paper again. I grossly underestimated the weight of the stuff I was going to buy and had to walk all the way back home with extremely heavy bags. I miss my family and my friends. The social piece of this is starting to feel harder. The reality is that we will see my parents again soon, we need them to help with childcare starting next week. But it’s still hard right now. 42 new cases in Alberta today. 10 000 in the USA. It’s worrying what’s happening over the border and is responsible for about 70% of my current anxiety. Science and numbers make me feel better though and I saved a series of graphs published by the Globe and Mail today. Some perspective for why we’re doing this.

Working from home day 1

March 30, 2020

I need brain breaks. This is something I've known about myself forever. I can focus and get my work done and do a good job as long as I can also get up and move around for a couple of minutes. So, at work this usually looks like me going down to the water bottle filling fountain by the main office, or running down to the basement to ask an English teacher a quick question instead of sending an email, or having to go to the second floor to get the laptops that I booked, or leaving the classroom for a couple of minutes to check with groups working in breakout spaces. At home it's more like a 5 minute break after a meeting to put some laundry away, a quick tidy up of the toys in the living room, running the compost bin out to the back alley because I'm working in the kitchen and have become acutely aware of the scent of decomposing banana peel from yesterday's breakfast. This is making it significantly harder to close the activity rings on my apple watch BUT my house wi...