Abstract:

Laura Reasoner Jones discusses one of the daily challenges of her teaching life--pre-schoolers and germs!

Jones, L.R. (2004). Germ alert. Teacher Leaders Network diaries. Retrieved from the Teacher Leaders Network 11 Apr 2008. Link:http://www.teacherleaders.org/old_site/diaries04_05/LJ11_04_05.html

Full Text:

Germ Alert

The Flu shots, or rather, the lack thereof, have been niggling at the back of my mind for a couple of weeks now and on some level I wish that I was in the high-risk group. After all, who could be more a of germ carrier than a person who goes from house to house carrying toys that another child has used? So, I was talking to my husband about asking our specialist to write a letter asking students' parents to be even more vigilant this year about canceling sessions when someone in the house is sick. That may not be enough, however.

My fellow NBCT Erica Jacobs, in her weblog "A modest proposal" suggests that her high school students "wash up" every morning before starting class. She talks about teachers wearing surgical masks and low-level microwaving of tests and other student papers. She closes with this note to her students: "So please enjoy the handi-wipes available as you enter the classroom—and have fun in Senior Seminar! Participate, and make comments, but—please—use vowels instead of consonants. They emit less saliva."

So, I start to think. I could wear a mask and those cool purple latex gloves that we see at our daughter Julie's Johns Hopkins Hospital visits, the ones that all the Baltimore Ravens fans steal. No, I am scary enough to preschoolers with my graying hair and obsession with the sound of "f". And although the thought of little Playmobil figures writhing in death throes in the microwave brings a weird grin to my face, I have way too much money invested in them to ever let anything happen. So I make my own plan modeled on Erica's, with the preschool twist of course.

We are going to have a new start-of-session ritual. I am going to put it on the Rebus schedules I make for my four-year-olds. After I park myself and all my stuff at the table or wherever we work, we are all, and I mean all, going to get up and wash our hands. Me, the parent, and the child. We will either do it at the sink, or we will use the wipes I will bring. Then, we will put on nicely-scented hand lotion and get to work.

This sounds very obsessive, but you know, I think over the years I have become inured to little children and facial discharge. I am so accustomed to children sneezing, spitting, and coughing on me, wiping their faces with their hands or worse, or putting things in their mouths, that I don't even think about it. As Erica points out, consonants spit out more saliva, and we in preschool work on consonants every session. The parents wipe the noses, I wipe the toys, and we all keep working. And because I always get a flu shot and haven't been sick for years, I don't think about it.

This obliviousness came to light a couple of years ago when our first exhibit on the Digital Edge Learning Interchange went live. I sent the link to my family, and my sister-in-law, the one with no children, immediately wrote back in disgust at seeing videos of the kindergarten class listening to the teacher. As all kindergarteners do, they listened with their hands on the floor, in their mouths, and on the crayons. I can't tell you how many times I watched that video as we edited it for publication and never saw those actions!

So, my plan tonight is to go out and buy scented wipes and cool-smelling hand lotion and start being Miss Laura, the Queen of Clean.

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