No change on the home front just yet. Oliver remains free of symptoms. Sarah, Maggie, and I have intermittent sore throats, but nothing that would normally phase us much.

We await our test results as patiently as we can. Today was the first day of the 2–4 day window wherein we expect to hear back. Nothing yet…

This week has been an unusual teaching week for me, involving me teaching classes with students at school while I’m at home. Let me back up and provide a bit of context.

For the past seven weeks at my middle school, students have been in “distance learning” mode on Mondays and Tuesdays. On those days we all stay home and do school via Google Meet, similar to how we did it last spring and for the first few weeks of school in September. On Wednesday through Friday, we’ve been in hybrid mode where most students and teachers go to school. There are lots of policies and procedures to maximize safety (masks, desks six-feet apart, fancy air filters, hand washing and desk cleaning procedures, etc.) but it runs mostly like school used to be.

The only unusual wrinkle is that the students who are at home (for whatever reason—health risks, a family member with COVID, etc.) join the class remotely. We have these funky “Owl” cameras that provide a 360-degree view of the classroom. They zoom in on audio sources (like students or teachers talking in the classroom) and make the remote experience a bit more immersive. Naturally, they don’t always work as intended and there are lots of little issues, but it’s a cool idea.

Until this week, I’ve never really been on the other side of the Owl except when getting some training on them at the beginning of the year. This week, however, since I am in isolation, I attended my classes remotely. It was a strange experience seeing the bulk of my students through the Owl’s camera. We always have another adult in the classroom to help with physical things like collecting work, setting up the camera, managing a break in the middle of class, etc.

With more practice, I expect I would get better at it, but it’s hard to be seated in front of a camera when my students are mostly together in a classroom. I’m usually a pretty mobile teacher, gesturing wildly, jumping around the front of the room, checking on students individually, etc. It’s a lot harder to feel connected when I know that my face is hovering on a big screen at the side of the room.

But, this was a short-lived experiment. Due to skyrocketing COVID rates around the state, my school is going back to full-distance mode next week through at least the middle of January. The metric that Minnesota is using to guide schools is the two-week “cases per 10,000” rate for each county. I’ve been graphing the data for the counties around the Twin Cities (from which we draw the majority of our students). It’s pretty grim. Saint Paul is in Ramsey County and Minneapolis is in Hennepin. (Recently they’ve been nearly identical.)

Chart of cases per 10,000

The state recommends that middle- and high-schools move to full-distance mode if their county rises above 30 cases per 10,000. Elementary schools are also included when they hit 50 cases.

Both Hennepin and Ramsey counties hit 50 by the end of October. Based on daily case figures since then, we are estimated to be at around 70 cases now. In short, it’s a hot mess around here. (If anyone is interested in the raw data, here’s a link to the spreadsheet where I compile the information. It includes a link to the latest PDF from the state.)

That’s it for now. We’ll provide further updates if we learn anything new.