"the pigs won, man!"

Joined
Oct 8, 2008
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Location
South Texas
Heh.

Welcome to Texas, aka Swine Flu Central. Especially here in the southern portion of the state, where the border with Mexico can be a bit, aaaah, permeable. More of a suggestion than a statute. :rolleyes:

So today, we shut the school district I teach for DOWN. All of it. Closed up tight until Thursday of next week at the earliest. One of our high schools already had to shut down early last week, and by the end of the week all extracurricular travel, competitions, proms, and so forth had been cancelled or postponed, so we were all expecting this might happen. As of last Friday, in fact, the official word was "one more case and we HAVE to close the schools."

One of my students had it texted to her in class before I got word, lol.

Ah, well.

I don't mind the extra paid vacation, but I do mind what it's likely to mean: the students probably won't have to make up those days, but WE might. Precontract training days or summer curriculum writing without the usual stipend, say. Maybe, maybe not. It's a LOT of days compared to when we've had to shut down for hurricanes and such.

But the main impact is likely to be that when students return, after over a week off and with just three weeks left until summer . . .well, think back to what YOU were like as a teenager, lol. School's over for the year now, whether we hold classes or not. :rolleyes:

The art teacher made himself a button to wear . . . it's where my topic title came from. :laugh:

Now, geeeeeee . . . what to do with 9 days off? :whistling:

~Boar
 
HAH! They are talking about shutting down the school district I work with for 2 weeks as well. I don't even think we have 10 confirmed cases in MD yet.
 
Well, we have one confirmed, one probable (94% of all probable cases end up confirmed) but hundreds of suspected cases . . . so rather than wait for probable status to be conferred from Austin, by which time we might well have THOUSANDS of cases, we're going to "keep 'em separated" and hope it blows over.

I think I'll get those patio pavers put in . . . between beers and cigars! :laugh:

~Boar
 
The pig farmers here are all in an uproar. We can't call it Swine flu anymore. It's H1N1. One farmer said he's not letting schools bring their children to visit his farm anymore. Got to protect his pigs.

Doc.
 
Aye, Devil Doc is right. It is now H1N1.

I don't understand the closing of the schools. H1N1 is no more dangerous than the flu, which kills substantially more people each year.

Edit; I had just actually heard that some European country slaughtered 300,000 pigs because it was called swine flu, which seems to be a misnomer or some sort. Talk about overreacting.
 
Well, like I said . . . we have literally hundreds of suspected cases already. Given the propensity of our stupider parents for dropping sniffling, snuffling, sneezing children off at our door, that could end up being THOUSANDS of cases if we didn't shut down and let it pass.

Ever work in a school? Takes about a week for one kid's cold to turn into everyone's cold! :sign:

~Boar

What do you teach Boar?

English 1 & 2, high school. 'Bout twelve years now.

~Boar
 
English 1 & 2, high school. 'Bout twelve years now.

~Boar

Good on you. I have a lot of friends teaching HS English. Do you run silent reading all day on Friday? ;)

I'm working on my twelfth year too. 8th grade science currently. 2nd, 4th, and 5th grade before that.

Enjoy your time off! :thumbs: Hope you don't have to make it up this June.


-Mike
 
Yeah, waiting to see. They gave us the hurricane days last fall, so these they might want back.

Fridays are SSR for the kids, grading time for me. But most of the year it's with a class set of newspapers and a writing assignment . . . I use a format response that gets them ready for the open-ended response items on the state TAKS test.

Next year I'll probably have all sophomores, and plan on going back to a Literature Circle-based small group discussion format. It's something I've pioneered in my district the past 10 years but wasn't allowed to run with this year . . . we lost the fundingn for the Advanced Reading class I used it in, which I had designed to bring 9th graders up to speed for high school ELA work.

But I really miss teaching like that. The kids learn so much more, and it's fun for all of us.

~Boar
 
Ever work in a school? Takes about a week for one kid's cold to turn into everyone's cold! :sign:

~Boar


Not yet, but I do have the fine privilege of living in a East Coast dorm room during cold, winter months. I think everyone on campus was sick for 6 months straight. I'll pass on H1N1 being added into the mix.
 
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