the tb update

I don't have it. Phew to that, folks!

All of the kids were tested this past week. To put it shortly, this was a logistical nightmare.

The whole show was run by the Lorain County Health Department, with the assistance of our school administrators. Neither party saw eye-to-eye on the desired outcome of this process. And frankly, I don't think either saw the goal of trying to do this with the least disruption to the learning that goes on in the school.

The Health Department's goal was to efficiently test every student who had proper permission to do so. I'm not sure what the school's goal was, because they seemed like so much more of a hindrance than anything.

As previously stated, the most "logical" procedure for this was to have the students be tested during their English class. The rational for this is that every student has an English class since it's required to take 4 years of English.

On the first day, on the first period the true test was held of the effectiveness of their process. And it failed.

The problem that the Health Department didn't understand was that, every student must be supervised at all times. So as teachers, we take all of our students, both those being tested and those not, down to the auditorium. We instruct the students not being tested to sit in the chairs and sent those who were being tested on their way.

Ideally, if the kids could sit still, this would have worked. But kids can't sit still. They're like herding cats. So the Health Department's perfect system was destroyed because our kids are monsters.

So for the remainder of the week someone would come to my classroom, retrieve only the students who were to be tested, and take them down to the auditorium.

This seems safe enough, but here are the flaws:

1. This left approximately 3-5 kids in the classroom. What were we to do? Have a staring contest? There was no point in moving on to anything new because the rest of the class would be behind.
2. No one brought the kids back. Some Brain Child thought that the kids would actually bring themselves back, but when you give a group of 16 year old kids the opportunity to wander the halls for the remainder of the period, they will always take it. You can bet on that.

To the best of my knowledge, none of my kids were positive.

And the best part of all of this? This was just a base-line test. It sometimes takes months for TB to be active, so in March, we get to play this game again.

Joy.