recently popping up in East Coast hospitals, it is in the best interest of all to reduce disease transmission.
Here is what I did to reduce my number of colds and flu from four or five a year to NONE for my last two years of teaching.
(1) At the beginning of the year I taught my students to cough and sneeze into their elbows. They practiced in class. When someone was sick I and other students remind them how to cover their faces.
(2) The community Kleenex box was always located at a separate back table away from me and other students not at my teacher desk.
(3) Actively coughing, sneezing, hoarse or running nose children were moved from their desks to that special separate table at the back of the room for the days that they showed symptoms
(4)All students who wish to talk with me had to stay at least five feet away whether they sounded sick or not (This one rule reduced my colds by half). I tried to
(5) Students who wished to go to nurse had to remain even farther away when they asked and as I wrote the permission slip. I instituted this rule after, I discovered early in my career that the more ill and infectious a child was the closer they wanted to be to me when I wrote the note to the nurse--then three days later I was sick with the child's cold.
(6) At staff and VTA meetings, I sat a little away from others and moved if someone sounded hoarse or is coughing--It may sound rude or even crazy but how rude it is for sick teachers to make others sick. Even minor colds are several days of misery.
Rule (6) was the most important rule for me staying healthy. I found adults, especially fellow teachers, to be the most likely to give me an illness and the least likely to be considerate of others when they were sick. My students rather easily accepted, learned and applied the anti-illness rules and were FAR more likely to try not to spread illnesses than many adults at school.
Rule 7--Another suggestion keep a bottle of pump top hand sanitizer near the Kleenex box and encourage students to use it each time they blow their noses.
Rule 8 Corollary to rule 7 keep a trash can for the used Kleenexes and all other student trash needs at the back of the class far from your teacher desk.
Rule 9 Keep a window or door open as much as possible. Fresh air and higher winter air humidity means less transmission of viruses. Closed rooms with hot dry air are the perfect medium for spreading airborne diseases like the flu. http://sciencenow.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/2009/209/3
and the time of especially vigilance is during the cold and flu season that starts in October and lasts through March.
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn12808-cold-weather-really-does-spread-flu.html
Not all these rules can or should be used by all teachers in all classrooms at all times. They are general suggestions, however, instituting some or all will cut down on your illnesses and your student's illnesses.
Better attendance means more chances to learn and better chance at higher test scores.
Besides the parents really appreciate having you take precautions to keep their children healthier if for no other reason then it saves them from taking sick days from their jobs to stay home from work with their sick kids.
Here is an article with comments from the San Diego Union Tribune on the same subject.
Schools try to minimize cases of colds, flu
By Bruce Lieberman
Union-Tribune Staff Writer
2:00 a.m. February 19, 2009
It's that time of year when schoolchildren are getting sick in droves, forcing parents to take off from work and care for them.
From Green Elementary School in San Diego, where a number of students have contracted strep throat, to the Encinitas Union School District, where the stomach flu has sidelined more than a few students, the message from educators has been consistent: Wash your hands. If you have to cough, cough into your sleeves. And if your kid gets sick, don't send him or her to school.
“I'm always grateful when we have winter vacation,” said Rosemary Jaworski, a school nurse at Horton Elementary School in San Diego. “We all stay home with our own bugs.”
Knowing how to minimize the spread of colds and flu at school doesn't require a doctorate in public health. But that doesn't mean the simple steps that schools routinely take, and others that families should take at home, aren't important.
Schools can quickly become epicenters of illness, and school nurses, teachers and administrators work hard to contain their spread. On average, schoolchildren get six to 10 colds every year, and about 22 million school days are missed each year nationwide because of colds, according to the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases.
Flu season typically peaks in January or February but can spike as late as March, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta. The incidence of flu this year is low but increasing, the CDC reported this month.
Schools have always encountered families who send ill children to school because both parents work. In today's troubled economy, the situation could get worse.
“Parents are afraid to leave work,” Jaworski said. “I think we're going to see more parents giving the kid a couple Tylenol and hoping they'll make it through the day.”
That could be one reason why a 2008 study from the University of Arizona listed teachers and day care workers as the “germiest” jobs in America – topping doctors, police officers, sanitation workers, janitors and meatpackers.
School nurses say that educating children, parents, teachers and others about preventing illnesses on campus is an ongoing effort.
At Horton Elementary School, Jaworski said she grabs a few minutes at every campus meeting that involves parents to talk about wellness. For the past five years, a local pediatrician has spoken to Horton parents during back-to-school night about health care basics.
To head off colds and flu, many teachers in the region stock their classrooms with dispensers of antibacterial gel that children can use on their way in and out.
In a 2008 study published in the journal Pediatrics, researchers from Children's Hospital in Boston found that absenteeism rates for gastrointestinal illnesses were lower in classrooms where teachers used disinfecting wipes once a day on desktops and helped students use alcohol-based hand sanitizers, including before lunch and after coming in contact with other ill students.
At Poinsettia Elementary School in Carlsbad, second-grade teacher Tricia Rowe has a bottle of hand sanitizer on a cart outside her classroom door where students hang up their jackets. She encourages her students to use the bottle on the way in and on the way out, and she stocks her classroom with plenty of tissue. Rowe encourages her students to drink a lot of water during the day as a preventive measure.
Rowe, a 25-year veteran, said encouraging hygiene is an ongoing effort. She teaches her students to think about their classroom as a family, and to be “conscientious and responsible for your friends and class.” Sick children are an inevitability, however.
“Right now we have a lot of kids with runny noses and a lot of coughing going on,” Rowe said last week.
Outside of measures a school can take, effective home care is vital, school nurses say.
Many school nurses help families with many tasks, including choosing the right over-the-counter medicines and navigating health insurance issues, Jaworski said.
Parents should follow a few simple rules for home health care, the National Association of School Nurses advises.
Children should stay home if they have a fever of 100.4 degrees or higher, have been vomiting or have other symptoms that would prevent them from participating in school.
Such symptoms could include excessive fatigue and lack of appetite, productive coughing and sneezing, headache, body aches and/or earaches, and a sore throat. A severe sore throat could be strep throat even if there is no fever.
Children should stay home until the fever has been gone for 24 hours without medication.
Bruce Lieberman: (760) 476-8205;
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docandroo
February 18, 2009 at 9:06 p.m.
You missed the most important part of your story.VACCINATION. You currently have a Public Health preparedness conference in San Diego and just had a workshop devoted to this topic. The best way to avoid influenza is NOT through the measures indicated, but through annual vaccination! The measures that you quote are secondary to immunization, and in the case of true influenza 24 hours out of school is insufficient to keep the child from transmitting the virus to others. Please rectify this egregious omission.
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justathought2
February 19, 2009 at 8:05 a.m.
If the prevention of colds and flu is truely the goal, then why do we give out "perfect attendance" awards to students? This award incentive program seems to encourage kids to come to school even when they're sick. Every time my wife and I have been to a school award assembly and we see kids getting the perfect attendance awards, we're thinking one of two things; 1. this kids is getting an award for having perfect health or 2. this kid came to school even when he was sick, spreading germs to my kid. If we want to award kids for not being truant from school then let's do that, not disguise it. And what about the great child who is a wonderful student and inspiration to others who happens to have an illness that prevents them from ever being able to win the perfect attendance award? Do away with this award, it is not rewarding behavior, academics or choices, it is merely rewarding health, at best. I'm more inclined to believe those kids are forced to come to school healthy or not.
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sandiegowryter
February 19, 2009 at 8:57 a.m.
I agree about the flu vaccine. But this year's dominant viruses were not in the vaccine and so it is ineffective, and I am, unfortunately, living proof of that. Cough, cough, hack, hack.
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svmamma
February 19, 2009 at 9 a.m.
True, the more kids at school the more money they get. They would prefer for you to send your kid sick and in an hour call you to pick them up. That way they still get paid for the child. I know I work at an elementary school. Wait til middle school they really don't care. All they want is money.
JoeCat
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February 19, 2009 at 9:02 a.m.
Hopefully they got rid of those newfangled school designs that only had non-opening window slits with a central circulation system like a freaking airplane. It's San Diego for chrisakes - give the kids some open windows!
nancat
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February 19, 2009 at 9:23 a.m.
Justathought2
Here, here! I have been wondering when someone besides myself was going to realize that. Well said!
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