Day 3. March 18th, 2020

Didn’t feel good all day due to allergies. Finally feeling better.

I am happy that there are more and more students (I only have about 10-15 total as of today) participating on Google Classroom and Flip Grid. Still not a proper distance learning environment but slowly they are asking for “What next?” I just wrapped up reading and acknowledging their terrific writer’s notebook entries. The prompt was either respond to this image or

Singapore artist Dawn Ng, “I Fly Like Paper,” 2009, installation #womensart pic.twitter.com/rcUnAt3Ciq

— #WOMENSART (@womensart1) March 17, 2020

write a letter to the virus, signing of as yourself, from your family, from humanity or from that guy buying all the toilet paper.

Kelly Gallagher and Penny Kittle started us off on Day 3 with the following book talk and teach/writing talk.

Here are some things I have read online that are worth sharing:

My mother-in-law shared the following: Coronavirus pandemic triggers reduction in air pollution. I know it’s just something we are not willing to talk about, but population increase in the last decade alone is unprecedented. We want to blame “these people” and “those people” and immigration here, immigration there, but there’s just a lot of people now.

Venice’s canals are crystal clear now. I have been to Venice twice (two decades apart) and I have never seen it this clear. Here are some photos.

Also, I read about the small town of Gunnison, Colorado and how it dodged the Spanish Flu of 1918.

Two quotes worthy of sharing:

It erected barricades, sequestered visitors, arrested violators, closed schools and churches and banned parties and street gatherings, a de facto lockdown that lasted four months.

Instead of face masks and anti-bacterial hand gels, Gunnsion relied on the guidance and authority of local newspapers, doctors and police – a trust in institutions that may now seem quaint – and on people’s capacity for patience. And on luck.

100 years later, we have hand sanitizers, masks, internet and so little faith in luck and ourselves.

I loved reading Seth Godin’s “A short manifesto about the future of online interaction“:

Rather than doing what we’ve always done in real-life (but online, and not as well), what if we did something better instead?

What Kelly and Penny are offering, what I am attempting with my students, what is happening in my Dooligans’ What’s App group, what doesn’t happen on social media despite the best of attempts and intentions is… conversation.

Social Media didn’t ruin us; we had lost our way long before; social media just made it easier to blame something other than ourselves. Those of us who never forgot can take others to the shore of what matters, what’s always mattered.

I am making time to reflect in between all the authentic connecting and all the keeping up.