Teacher’s Corner: Teaching kids and training dogs

Small tri colour dog lying on his back in a fluffy bed

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Socks has been living with us for two months now, and after he settled in, I took him to doggy school. While we were absolutely lucky in getting a dog with very few behavioural issues who’s keen to learn, he needs training. He was abandoned as a puppy and grew up in the shelter, so he never had any of the usual training. As a teacher, I don’t like badly raised kids and poorly trained dogs. I love my friends’ dogs, but seriously, they’re a nightmare trainig wise, only being manageable by either having a gentle nature (big dog) or being a prototypical small dog (no manners but easily controllable). I also would like Socks to become a school dog one day and therefore he needs a solid basis. So I’ve been taking him to doggy school for the last weeks, for general training and for recall. Right now it’s breeding season anyway, so dogs need to be on a lead, but hopefully once that’s over we’ll have a solid recall so he can have more freedom.

In recall training (and in general training), we mostly work with classic conditioning: Desired behaviour is rewarded. I’m very happy to live in a country where it’s illegal to torture your dog in the name of training with prong collars or worse electric collars. So for recall, our first job was to find out what our dogs love the most. Not only did we have to test what their favourite snacks are, but also what others things could motivate them to abandon whatever they’re doing elsewhere and to come back to us. So each team in the group came back with different answers, which got me thinking: Now, of course children are not dogs. I can’t explain to Socks why it’s important that he doesn’t just run into the street because there’s a blackbird on the other side. He’s got all the understanding of a toddler. Instead I teach him that sitting down and waiting for me the lead the way gets him a reward. But children are similar to dogs in that they’re all different and want and need different things. And unlike with my dog, I can’t sit down and analyse those things for 250 different kids. And I can’t implement them for 25 different kids in a classroom. The ressource “teacher” is spread a lot more thinly than the resource “dog owner”. But we thoght it would be fun to try and throw them a cheese cube every time they gave the correct answer…

Teacher’s Corner: Keep your paws off the holidays and buy those damn pencils

A drawing of a yellow school bus in front of a blue sky with the words "Back to School"

Source: Wikimedia Commons

Ahhh, August. Summer, ice cream, ripe fruit … wasps and parents on social media.

There are two discussions on social media right now that I find highly problematic. One is as sure as the fruit fly invasion, the other one is relatively new, so let’s start with that one.

I saw complaints, on social media, in traditional media, usually from parents, that the school holidays are too long. This cry seems to be independent from the actual length of the summer holidays. Germany is towards the low end with 6 weeks, while Spain gets a whole three months. The complaint is that parents don’t have that many days off and that those long summer holidays are from a time when mothers stayed home.

Now, I fully understand that childcare is a problem for working parents. But really, forcing kids as young as 5 to conform to capitalism’s desire to control our lives? Is that the answer? Not to mention that the very same parents would then have two other problems:

First of all, not everybody can get days off from work at the same time. Not even in Europe. Already people have to coordinate with co workers. For years my husband and his colleague had to decide who’d get the first, and who’d get the last three weeks. No matter how long the holidays are, they’d only ever get half of them off, which means that either you and your spouse never get a holiday together, or you’d still be stuck with a childcare problem.

Second, family holidays are already expensive as fuck. Families are a captive audience, so to speak. Shorten the holidays, shorten the main season, see prices soar.

Which all leads me to the suspicion that they don’t actually want more education, they want childcare where they’re free to take the kids out of class for a holiday. And since they are all working under the false assumption that teachers have all those school breaks as paid time off, they want to punish us and make us “work like normal people”. But here’s a heads up: If we work like normal people, I will not call you, read or answer your emails or schedule an appointment after 4 pm or at the weekend. I will absolutely not grade at the weekend. Trips? Forget about it. A 4 days class trip is 60 unpaid hours. Oh, and I will take my days off when I want.

Also, how much do you actually hate your own kids? They made it through the year, they are exhausted, there’s a heat wave and you want them to sit in class and do homework? What parents should be asking for is cheap or free summer daycare*, but then poor kids might profit as well and I guess we can’t be having that. Instead parents demand that their kids be turned into good little workers.

*My kids had that in primary school and it was amazing. I could never have organised all those activities myself.

Imagine some clever way in which I linked the two topics here

Which leads me to the second part, the inevitable whining about school  supplies. Let me get my point clear before I continue: I’m the first person to demand that we finally properly finance education and also school supplies. Schools should get both the money and time to organise and buy the things needed, including exercise books, folders and pencils. But I guess until that moment, we’re stuck with the Karens on Instagram. (If we did, they’d probably complain about not liking the colour of the pencils).

What really annoys me about this discussion is that it takes away attention from actual issues with school supplies: They can be a huge burden for poor families, especially when a kid starts school. Every year I have to collect (as a teacher) and pay (as a parent) “photocopy money”, to pay for each and any copy  we make. On top of the usual supplies, this can be quite difficult, especially if you have more kids. I always inform my students to discreetly tell me if they need more time. I’ll then put my broad back between them and administration and take the blame for not handing the money in.

Another issue is that there are colleagues who do use this as a personal self fulfillment trip with seriously ridiculous demands. I once had a colleague who insisted on fountain pens in year 8. Like, WTF?

But all that justified criticism gets drowned out by the Karens and Sabines*, usually financially safe white women, crying about having to spend two hours shopping for supplies and another two hours with labelling them, if they care to do so. Why don’t the teachers do it???, they want to know. Well, maybe because you’re not paying me. Just a guess. Why would I spend even more unpaid hours and pay with my own money, hoping that in a couple of months you will deign to pay me back? I already spend more on supplies for other people’s kids than I spend on my own kids. And again, what message are you sending to your kid? That school and education are not your priority. That you don’t really care. Lady, that’s not a good look.

*Of course it’s not the Todds and Martins who do this because they don’t even know what year their kid is in.

To finish my rant, parents and their ever growing sense of entitlement are really the worst part of the job. So if you’re friends with a teacher, remember to keep them from social media in August and maybe give them some pencils.

Teacher’s Corner: It’s Ramadan

I am a life-long atheist. I didn’t have to deconvert  and I’d go as far as saying that I’m anti theist, because I do think that religion is a net evil in the world. But here and now I share the planet mostly with religious people and for the majority of my teaching career I’ve been teaching at schools with large Muslim populations, so I’m well used to the month of Ramadan, where Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset. Thankfully, it’s moving backwards in the year, now being in early spring and no longer in the middle of summer. Those years were pretty hard. I won’t say I’m a fan of children not eating and especially not drinking, but I also understand that it’s important for the kids. Where religion takes a backseat for most of Germany’s Christians, it’s still at the centre of most Muslim children’s identity, especially of those who arrived from Syria in recent years. It’s not just religion, it’s a piece of home.

With that in mind, it’s important to me to support my students, all my students, in growing into the best version of themselves and they can only do that when they’re feeling safe, accepted and respected. We’re talking a lot about teaching kids respect and tolerance, but many colleagues simply don’t do that themselves.

I took over a year 5 ethics class* four measly weeks ago, and this week the Muslim kids practically ambushed me during break because of one of my colleagues. During class, one of the Muslim kids had not felt well and was tired. The teacher asked him what was up, he said he was fasting, and she turned around and audibly murmured about “victim religion”, which greatly upset the kids. How, I mean how on earth can you do that to kids? Does she think that any learning was happening after that remark? And most of all, does she think those kids will trust her when she tries to teach them about humanist values? In my experience, if you turn it into an “either your religion or being part of our community” situation, their religion wins. From that point on, any new idea will be seen as an attack on their faith. Also, they’re children. They’re still closely linked to their families of origin. If you bring them into conflict with their families, you put them in a position they shouldn’t be in.

Also, in my experience, if you treat them with respect, you can set some ground rules that will be accepted. My rule is that we don’t comment on how another person practises their faith. If or when to fast, or wear a hijab, varies greatly between groups and populations, and I especially don’t need any competition about who’s the best Muslim. I tell them that if Allah is almighty, he doesn’t need 5th graders to do his work. This works well for me. They understand that this rule protects them as much as it binds them. They know that their way is accepted and tolerated, and in return they tolerate others. That’s how you actually teach those values, and not by insulting 10 year olds who can’t argue back.

 

  • In Germany school must provide religious education for Catholics and Lutheran protestants. If you don’t belong to those groups, you get ethics class. I teach them quite a lot and like them pretty well.

A very Shark Look

A common prejudice against teachers is that we have so much free time, because a lot of people think that school holidays = teacher holidays and end of schoolday = end of workday. Sure, people do see my car parked all snug and safe at 2 pm, they don’t see me sitting at my desk at 10 pm. Same with the holidays: not only is it the time when we’re reducing our overtime, it’s also grading and preparation time. Not to mention that nobody cares if you are sick during that time, the grading is still expected.

But here still is some free time left so I used my new work area to get something done I bought the material for last year: A shark hoodie. We absolutely love sharks. Dolphins, those guys are assholes, but sharks? Cool!

Side view of a woman wearing a hoodie with a shark fin on top and eyes on the side

©Giliell, all rights reserved

3/4 front view of the woman in the hoodie. You can see the shark teeth in the hood

©Giliell, all rights reserved

Actually I’ll claim that this is medically necessary as my neck should be kept warm and nothing is cozier than a hoodie.

School starts tomorrow – and I’m nervous like a first grader

Back to school in colourful lettersTomorrow the new school years starts in my neck of the woods and hell I’m nervous. This year I finally got an unlimited contract (but not tenure because working for ages on limited contracts I’m now deemed too old and high risk for tenure, but that’s a different conversation), but it also meant that I have to change schools and I really didn’t want to, despite the new school having much nicer working conditions.

My old school was a hell of a commute, 90 to 120 minutes each day, and it had two different locations which meant that I often had to spend my rare breaks commuting as well. We were also a school next to a poor part of the state capital with all the challenges of working with underprivileged families, lots of refugee families with language barriers and also plainly neglected and abused kids. And while having the qualifications for teaching high school up to year 13, I usually only got to teach up to grade 9 and never Spanish, because that’s year 11.

My new school is pretty close, 10 minutes by car and I’m planning on getting an E-bike next year. The small town has less social problems (though of course they exist everywhere), more space and I get to teach high school and Spanish.

So why on earth did I not want to change? Well, people. I had amazing colleagues and I actually genuinely like kids. I am a notorious “Gutmensch”, a goodie two shoes, bleeding heart progressive person who wants to see kids thrive, regardless of where they’re from. But I’ve accepted the change and am looking forward to new colleagues and new kids and so the term starts tomorrow with my brand new 8th grade who mostly don’t want to be in my class, because they, same as me, had to change.

The German school system is horribly stratified with social background having a huge influence on kids’ school career. While I’m not opposed to our different school leaving certs and vocational training system, putting the kids in different schools after year 4 is bad. It used to be 3 different schools: for the kids of workers who should become workers, for the kids of employees and clerks who should become employees and clerks, and the kids of academics who should become academics. While there’s only two types now in most states, the Gymnasium (yes, that’s a very false friend) where you get the highest leaving cert and the comprehensive schools where you get all the others and often have the possibility to go for the highest cert as well (like in my new school), people still think the Gymnasium is the best and the comprehensive school is the rest. The Gymnasium considers itself an elite school and if you have problems you don’t belong there. Not a type of school where I want to work, despite having the formal qualifications. I much prefer working with all kids and getting some of them to the highest leaving cert despite all odds. Anyway, because of these structures, around year 7 and 8, we see a steady influx of former Gymnasium kids in comprehensive schools, as well as the overwhelming majority of refugees and migrant kids, which means it’s not uncommon for comprehensive schools to form a new class in year 7 or 8 and that’s my class. Now, schools hand it differently how they do that. My old school used to form a new class with the new kids and then put all new arrivals into that class. My new school put kids from the already existing classes as well as new kids into my class. Both ways have their pros and cons, the biggest con for me right now being that I’m going to have a class where a lot of kids don’t want to be in because they lost at the raffle. That’s going to be a challenge. But hey, I’m taking it on, it’s not like there’s an alternative anyway, I’m just here voicing my feelings of being very, very nervous.

So, wish me luck!

Women Educators on YouTube – Czechamerican – Dream Prague

Since it is officially spring now, I wanted to write about Morana this weekend. But I do not have to because coincidentally, Jen from the Dream Prague YouTube channel has just made a video about her.

If you are interested in Czechia, Jen has scores of interesting videos about our land and our culture. And she is an immigrant from the US, so her point of view is that of an American, so she is actually better qualified to give info to Affinity’s mostly USA audience than I am because she can better spot and point out things that are important and/or interesting to Americans.

Teacher’s Corner: Liar, liar, pants on fire

You know, I can deal with a lot of things. My colleagues declare that I have the patience of a Saint. I am extremely understanding. I don’t expect kids to be prefect and rule abiding. I would be a fucking hypocrite if I did, because while I was always a straight A student, I was never docile. My popularity with teachers therefore depended on whether they expected me to obey, or whether they expected me to learn.

So when a kid fucks up, I don’t take it personally. There’s just one thing that I absolutely cannot tolerate : bold faced lying.

Today I was a bit latish, though still on time. I see two of my 8th graders, let’s call them A and B, walk away from the school gate instead of inside, so I inform their tutor.

We also quickly change plans and I get to teach their class for the first two lessons. I start with a whole 6 kids. The tutor is pissed, another kid says “yeah, I saw them, and C, D and E, too”.

Again, I can deal with it. It’s not like I didn’t occasionally skip lessons, especially when I knew that the actual teacher was sick. But at least I did it somewhat smarter. Like, WTF? You all got smartphones. When I was your age the Enterprise didn’t even have smartphones. Go hang out where I don’t have to see you.

But that’s not the worst. As I said, I did shit, too. But when I got caught, I knew I was in trouble and that I was going to suffer the consequences of my actions. Today, the merry troop shuffled in one after the other. I told them that we’d talk later. Near the end of the lesson their tutor came to inform them that they’d have to make up the missed time. One kid, C, exploded. He gets aggressive quick. That it wasn’t his fault! He’d missed the bus! He’d just came by bus, together with B! Yes, the attentive reader will have noticed a little problem here. I calmly asked him “Just yes or no, you say that at half past you were on a bus to school with B?” He indignantly informed me that yes, of course he was, I can ask B!

See, this is where I get angry. The lying, with indignation, with rage, with an aura of an innocent person suffering some terrible wrongs. B tried to back him up, claiming that no, I couldn’t have seen him, it wasn’t him! I said that well, all we need then was A telling us who it was I saw him with, but A had at least the good sense to shut up.

The real problem is that I already know that at least half the parents will choose believing their kids over the words of the teacher and a couple of classmates. In the end, I pity the kids, since none of them have the socioeconomic background to be a successful liar.

Teacher’s Corner: Failure (or the limits of what school can do)

Today we expelled a student. Now, in other countries this might be a mundane occurrence, but here lots of things must have happened, and lots of things must have failed. As they did. Kid started at our school with “behavioural issues”. First thing I read about the boy was a paediatric review in which they recommend in patient treatment. But he didn’t want to, so his parents said “well, that’s it then”*. He was 10 years old, and he was already the boss. Over the years, that was the result of whatever measure was proposed. A rather desperate mother would agree that something must be done, an indifferent father wanted to be left alone, the boy said “no”, end of story. That’s how he grew from a difficult kid into a bully and a tyrant. Racist? Check! Sexist? Check. Basically no female teacher  stood any chance of teaching in  that class. Trans- and homophobic? You would believe it. Violent? Of course.

The two chaotic Covid years saved him from being expelled earlier, but with this school year being in person again, things quickly came to an end. Unfortunately this made him believe that he could do whatever he wanted without any consequences. And right until the end, the same drama played out. He was offered an internship as opposed to temporary expulsion, he thought it was too far away, he refused. He was offered to switch schools without the stigma of being expelled, the mum said “That’s a good idea!”, he said “I don’t want to”, so it didn’t happen, because obviously at 14 he’s the one to make the decision.

Now finally we expelled him. What is noticeable is that now his family, who never gave a fuck about rules and procedures, tried to play the system. they were invited for the school meeting today with two weeks in advance, as required by law. On Friday the mother wrote a letter saying that “due to the high number of infections she and her son were unable to attend the meeting, because that would be too many people in a room and her husband was not vaccinated”. Now, I personally don’t see any reason why we should care about anybody wilfully unvaccinated and also for the past 18 months one of the reasons that made teaching the kid unbearable was that he wouldn’t wear a mask properly and yell “Covid is fake!” whenever you reminded him to wear the mask properly, so for all we personally cared, they could kick rocks. But the tactic was clear: get the verdict dismissed on technical grounds. Claim that you had no opportunity to say your part, that the school refused to accommodate your health and safety concerns (and you can bet that the ministry that doesn’t give a fuck about health and safety when it comes to kids and teachers will totally side with the parents). Unfortunately we’re not quite that easily fooled, so we scheduled a video conference on the secure ministry approved school platform, informed them and gave them the opportunity to ask for tech support. Of course they didn’t show up, I could bet a muffin that they will complain, but I can’t see how we can be faulted for them not participating. And thus the lesson from all of this will not be learned. the kid will go on in the next school as he did in ours and he will cost all of us a lot of money, and all because his parents couldn’t tell a child’s wants from a child’s needs and let their 10 years old kid run the circus.

While I’m personally not sad that I won’t have to see him again (I don’t actually fancy being called names three times a week), I’m sad in a more general way. He was a small child once, and he needed help, and he didn’t get help, because his parents refused to see where the problem started. And they think they and their precious son are the victims here.

*There’s a point to be made about how in patient treatment isn’t the best idea if the patient is unwilling, but that’s a different discussion and also we’re not talking about an adult here.

Women Educators on YouTube – Architect – Belinda Carr

This Hempwood product sounds interesting. I actually think that with a bit of tinkering and upscaling of the production, it could become cheap enough to be a viable material for large-scale construction. Definitely, it could replace for example wooden OSB plates for walling. And since the fibers run lengthwise, it could also definitively be used for making load-bearing beams.

Completely independently of this – this spring I was actually really thinking about growing Hemp in my garden for fuel, but although it is legal to grow technical hemp on a patch of land up to 100 sqm, the costs of seeds are prohibitive and there is a risk of cross-pollination with someone’s illegally grown weed so producing my own seeds for future poses risks of accidentally creating hybrids whose THC levels are above the legal limit. It is not worth the potential hassle of discussions with the police. My only hope there is that hemp gets finally legalized for personal use. Until then, I will try and grow hazels, poplars, and willows on my unused land to try and reduce my personal carbon footprint.

Edit: my PC glitched out and the article was initially published with nonsensical title.

Teacher’s Corner: Can I Go to the Toilet, Please?

Periodically I come across post and articles on social media where schools have punished kids for going to the toilet, especially girls on their period. And while in all the cases I came across outrage is more than warranted, there are always people who think that all rules about bathroom visits are bad, and surely, if you look at it from the outside, this seems reasonable. After al, we all have to pee and we rightfully class it as a human rights abuse if people are denied sanitary breaks. So why do schools still need at least some rules?

The first and major issue is safety. When you send your kids to school, you expect them to be safe there. You would object if we let strangers into the school yard and talk to your kids, or let them just run out into traffic. That’s why some of us always spend our breaks in the school yard, supervising breaks. If a kid leaves during lessons, we cannot guarantee safety. I once posted about a kid who went to the toilet and came back with dog shit on his shoes. That kid had definitely left the school premises. And even a simple accident could go unnoticed for quite a while. If there’s something all teachers dread it’s a kid getting hurt and then you having to justify yourself as to why this could happen on your watch.

The second one is that it simply disrupts class. Even very quiet systems where kids just get up, pick up the “toilet pass” and leave, create noise and disturbances. Doors are opened and closed. the kid misses part of the lesson and then comes back and needs to ask others or can no longer follow your explanation because they missed the start.

Number three is linked with number one: vandalism. It’s not unusual that toilets get damaged, walls get smeared, stalls get flooded, it’s a huge mess, somebody has to clean it, somebody has to pay, and the culprit is never found. Everybody suffers. Including the idiot who damaged the toilets.

In the end, it’s also not unreasonable to ask kids above primary school to use the breaks. Exceptions can and will always be made (nobody here will ever deny a bathroom break. But if it happens too often we’ll ask your parents to take you to a doctor), but in the end, 45 minutes is not that long a time. They manage to play video games 4 hours straight, travel for an hour or more, and of course they can hold it for an entire lesson plus the entire break, just to ask you the very moment you start teaching.

 

Teacher’s Corner: And suddenly you’re dealing with sexual child abuse

Very obvious, very big CN for this post, but no graphic descriptions

A long, long time ago, I decided to study two foreign languages in order to become a teacher and teach those languages to children. And I learned how to structure a lesson and got graded on how well I worded my questions and I almost got failed and nothing in that whole time prepared me for the reality of school. No lesson ever mentioned “and then there might be the day you accidentally discover that there might be a video of a former student being sexually abused that is making the rounds amongst year 7”. And of course nobody told me what to do. Or how to deal with it myself, especially when the supposed victim and the kids passing it around are the same age as your daughter.

What happened? Well, a girl in grade 7 complained that the boys were spreading a rumour about there being a sex video of her, so we talked to the boys, who then said “oh no, we don’t know anything about a sex video of her, we only know the video of K”, which was the point when the week collapsed to a single point. K is a former pupil. She was originally from Hungary, lived with her mum in Germany in very difficult circumstances, and then went back to Hungary with her dad in a rushed move which left all of us powerless and with a very bad feeling, but she kept in contact with a few of the girls. And apparently she’d kept sending one of them increasingly sexualised content. From dick pics grown men had sent her via social media, to a video that she claimed showed her having sex with an adult man. Which then got passed around…

At this point I needed to update my ideas about “child pornography”. Because when you hear the term, what you think of are men raping young children and then passing those videos around. What you don’t think of is teenagers filming their own sexual activities and then passing the video around to other teenagers, all still under the earliest age of consent. And you just. don’t. know. what. to. do.

We do have a “crisis team” and I’m a member of it, so this was our first “test” as a team and damn, it was a hard one. One thing was that we were very unsure about what we had to do, and what we mustn’t do. Basically we were left with the feeling that we were with one foot in jail in all directions. That we were liable for doing things, but also for not doing things. The rules about mandatory reporting in Germany are difficult and essentially for teachers they are “it depends”, which leaves you exactly as clueless as before, especially since the stupid guidelines from 2020(!) don’t cover anything about internet and social media.

What kind of “saved our necks” was the fact that the kids passing around the video are under 14 as well. That makes them children who are victims of sexual abuse as well (because showing pornographic material to children is sexual abuse), and talking to the kids, you could see how some of them were harmed by something they didn’t want to see, they didn’t consent to, they knew was wrong. The police watched the video, saved it on their devices and removed it from the phones, thus covering the legal aspects.

We are still left with the social aspects. How to deal with the kids who watched it, who sent it. How to prevent such things in the future. How to deal with the parents and how to get help. The police say the face of the girl/woman in the video wasn’t clearly visible, thus they can neither verify nor rule out that is was our former student. They also say it wasn’t a girl under 14, they have experts who can tell that. Yes, I’m just as confused about these statements in combination as you are. We still informed social services who can possibly get a track on her in Hungary, because whatever the matter with the video, that kid is in danger of sexual abuse/being sexually abused. I think it entirely possible that this was her way of calling for help. We also informed the school psychologist and will contact organisations that can help us doing workshops etc. to prevent such things from happening in the future.

What left me pretty shocked and clueless was the reaction of the parents. We had to call 4 parents to inform them about what had happened, about the fact that the police was involved and what was happening / going to happen. Out of those 4, exactly one reacted the way you would expect, with shock and worry about their own child. One was: “OK, never mind, actually I wanted to talk with you about whether my kid can go to the advanced courses” (no, the kid can’t, the kid is getting regular Fs for refusing to work). The other one was: “I really don’t agree with her not having her mobile. She needs to have her mobile, when is she getting her mobile back???” (this is why we sealed the mobiles in envelopes and handed them to the police without touching them. Sadly the police returned the mobile the same day). The third one laughed about the whole story. Were there any legal consequences? No? Oh, and which kids had sent the video to their kid? (No, we don’t give out names of other kids and this is why). It also shows one of the big problems we’re having: school is supposed to deal with issues we have no control over. Apparently it was our fault that we didn’t know what was going on, but of course we’re also not supposed to touch the children’s mobiles (and no, I don’t want to touch them anyway) because that’s private? I mean, how about the parents taking some responsibility for their children’s social media activities?

I just hope you had a better week, I could do with a refund on this one…

Teacher’s Corner: Sacrificing our kids to Covid

Remember when last year large parts of Europe, who thanks to quick and strict measures got relatively well through the first Covid wave shook their heads in horror at Trump’s science denial and his complete refusal to act? Well, now it’s time for the rest of you to have some pity on us. Germany has been on varying stages of pseudo-lockdown since October. With the second wave peaking around Christmas and over 1.000 deaths a day ion January, it happened exactly what scientists said would happen: the second wave hit hard, in all areas, and since our politicians refused to act quickly, it got a lot worse than it had to be. From that point on we’ve been in an unbearable state: Our private life is severely restricted. At some part it was illegal for Mr and me to enter my parents’ house at the same time when bringing them groceries. But there are zero restrictions on workplaces, and schools reopened three weeks before the Easter holidays, but at least only with half size classes and rotation. And we keep going…

One of the ways we’re measuring the spread of Covid is the 7 days incidence value. I’m not sure if that is used everywhere, so let me quickly explain: It tells you how many people on average got Covid during the last 7 days out of 100.000 and is seen as a key value, together with the R-value (how many people does one person infect). Last year, an incidence above 50 meant that an area was a high risk area. With the new mutants, especially the highly contagious British variant B117, some time in February our politicians decided that we needed to get below 35, which was a goal supported by scientists. then they noticed that we won’t reach 35 until we implement some really strict measures, especially in offices and factories, and they abandoned the goal. and much like in the USA, each Ministerpräsident*in decided they knew better, usually by implementing less measures than they actually agreed on.

Schools and daycare have always been central in these discussions. under the guise of “child welfare” they are kept open to the last possible minute, when actually the issue is that we provide “free” childcare so mum and dad can go working and catch Covid in an open plan office. Don’t get me wrong, this school year basically didn’t happen in terms of learning. I’m fully aware of the many issues that come with closing down schools, in terms of learning, in terms of providing structure, in terms of child welfare. I’m also fully aware of the alternatives and they are worse. they are literally killing our children and their parents.

At the start of the pandemic we saw huge infection rates and deaths among the elderly, and people, mostly politicians, claimed that children didn’t get Covid, and if they did, they weren’t infectious. Once they could no longer deny that children do get Covid, the next lies were that it’s harmless for children (7% get Long Covid!) and that they also didn’t catch it in school, but at home. I don’t know how this must have felt for the two of my colleagues whose children did catch it at school and one of whom infected his mum who has been in  hospital or a couple of months now. It makes me fucking angry. All those bullshit lies are crumbling down, of course, so the new idea is to simply ignore children and families.

The new plan of the federal government is that the “all is well” incidence is 100, which is already three times the number we agreed on at the start of the year. But for schools to close down completely, the number must be 200. If you now say “that’s horrible, that’ll kill people”, I’m afraid I haven’t even hit you with the worst of it. As said before, that number is calculated on 100.000 inhabitants, but 100.000 regardless of how many people are already vaccinated. Even those who only received one shot are largely removed from the battle field as long as they keep up with the rest of the measures. This means that currently the number in Germany is actually per 80.000 unvaccinated people. Therefore an incidence of 100 is actually more like 120. With vaccination finally progressing, this will shift more and more. Now, who’s the largest group that currently has a zero percent vaccination rate and has to meet many people every day? Yep, children and adolescents, and it’s already showing:

©Giliell, all rights reserved

This shows the incidence of kids between 5 and 14, the deeper the blue, the higher the incidence value. In my county, that incidence is 421, while the overall incidence is “just” 183 and doesn’t trigger any measures now and will not trigger any measures should the federal “emergency break*” be enacted. By the end of summer, an incidence just below hundred over all age groups could mean 600-800 among school kids. Of course they carry the virus home and many parents will also be in the last group to be vaccinated as they tend to be younger and healthier. With the wild type, isolation within the home was often good enough to protect the other family members. With B117, if one person gets it, everybody in the family gets it, thus putting kids and parents at risk. Some of those parents will die, just like it happened in New York, where thousands of kids lost a parent. And all of this is done in the name of “child welfare”.

Oh, and our government has asked us all to put a candle in the window to honour the Covid deaths. maybe they shouldn’t ask us to set things on fire right now?