Stay Tuned... New School Principles

–Wearing a Mask as a Fashion Statement–

“Just treat it as another item of clothing that is

part of the new normal.”

Wearing a face covering when you can’t socially distance should be as normal as wearing a seatbelt, says Nobel laureate Venki Ramakrishnan, the president of the Royal Society in London.

–From the Nature Journal

Refusing to wear a mask in public during the Covid-19 epidemic should become as socially unacceptable as drunk-driving or not wearing a seatbelt, the president of the Royal Society has said. He spoke as new research emerges suggesting the UK’s uptake of the practice is way behind that of other countries and that face coverings can protect the wearer as well as people around them. Venki Ramakrishnan called for everyone to be required to wear a mask in all indoor public settings, rather than only on public transport, and criticized confused messaging from the government.

Research suggests that, in late April, uptake of mask-wearing in the UK was around 25%, compared to 83.4% in Italy, 65.8% in the United States and 63.8% in Spain, according to the Royal Society. Ramakrishnan said: “Wearing a mask did not bother our Italian, French or Spanish neighbours; none of whom were used to wearing one before the pandemic, yet now do so routinely.

“So just treat it as another item of clothing that is part of the new normal and wear it whenever you cannot socially distance safely. It is the right thing to do, and a small price to pay, to help keep infections down and the economy open in the pandemic.”

–TOMORROW's CONVERSATION– (summer schedule)

The International School of Nido de Aguilas

Campus Plan for August 2020

–An Essay By David B. Perry–

I’ll start with a mistake: we jumped too quickly into a problem-solving mode that was characteristically more reactive than proactive. We wasted most of our initial time together trying to figure out how to “do school” safely and on our campus, in a delivery system that was as close to pre-COVID as possible. And with a team of shrewd, forward-thinking, analytical planners, each solution proffered by someone on the team was met with a list of reasons it would not work by other members of the team. Eventually, we realized that in order to be more productive and decisive, we would benefit from a protocol and some principles. Protocols, drawn from Adaptive Schools, allowed us to generate ideas and saved us from continuing to chase our tails, and the following principles guided our thinking:

• The physical and emotional safety and health of Nido community members are our top priorities.
• Learning is our core purpose and should drive decision making.
• Learning is inherently social, whether on campus or online.
• Communication must be clear and timely to ensure all members of the community understand the vision and expectations.
• Flexibility and empathy will be essential for all community members as we learn and grow from this experience.

CLICK HEREto read David's full essay about the Nido de Aguilas campus plan, where each principle is unpacked for meaning and action.  SCHEDULING for each school division is also outlined.  

AN EXAMPLE:  The Elementary Division's ROOM AND ZOOM Learning Plan

The Elementary School hybrid model will employ what is called a “Room and Zoom” learning plan. One group of students will be on campus in a de-densified classroom from 7:45 am - 12:15 pm (times vary according to grade level). The students will be receiving instruction in subjects like mathematics and literacy among others. There will be a one hour and fifteen-minute break for students to return home for lunch and recess. From 1:15-3:30 pm, all students will be engaged in Distance Learning. There will be synchronous classes in Spanish, EAL, and Learning Support. We are also looking to integrate After School Activities during this period as well. On Wednesdays, all students will be engaged in Distance Learning. From 8:00 am-12:15 pm, Elementary students will have Physical Education, Art, and Music. After lunch, we will begin Wellness and After School Activities.

–THE NEWS of COVID-19–

11,900,855 Cases Worldwide (Johns Hopkins CSSE)

Florida With Mixed Messages Between Leaders and

Frontline Hospital Personnel

Florida has tallied a record number of cases over the past week, averaging 8,766 a day, according to Washington Post data. In a sign of intensifying trouble, 52 intensive care units across more than a third of the state’s counties had reached capacity by Tuesday, according to data released by the state’s Agency for Health Care Administration. Another 17 hospitals had also run out of regular beds. The state has “abundant capacity,” [Governor Ron] DeSantis said at a news conference Tuesday. Some nurses at Good Samaritan Medical Center in West Palm Beach have been working 18 hours instead of the usual 12 because of overnight staffing shortages, according to a nurse who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of jeopardizing her job. Patients are being treated in an open area cordoned off by curtains that is typically used for quick medical consultations, she said. “We’re overfilled and understaffed,” she said. “It’s really bad.” (The Washington Post) 

 
Cold Hearted:  US International Students Face Deportation
Some international students in the United States whose classes are going virtual are facing deportation. US Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) announced yesterday that it was withdrawing an exemption, prompted by COVID-19, that allowed students on some visas to take all their classes online. The change means that they “must depart the country or take other measures”, such as transferring to an institution that offers in-person classes despite the risks of infection. Those who are outside the country will not be allowed to enter the United States. Universities have just one week to certify whether they will be offering any classes in person. 

The move raises difficult questions for graduate students whose work might be on hold owing to the pandemic. “If their labs close and they’re not able to work full time on dissertation research … do they have to leave the country?” asks Lizbet Boroughs, associate vice president of federal affairs at the Association of American Universities. (Washington Post)

No Herd Immunity in Hard-hit Spain
Only 5% of Spain’s population has had COVID-19, despite it being one of the European countries most affected by the pandemic. A serological survey 

tested more than 61,000 people from randomly selected households for antibodies against the coronavirus. The highest rate of infection was around 10%, in Madrid. That is well below the required level — something more like 60% (maybe) — to achieve herd immunity, which might slow the outbreak. Scientists don’t know for sure whether a past infection will give a person immunity, or to what extent. The study comes on the heels of similar results from France and elsewhere. “In light of these findings, any proposed approach to achieve herd immunity through natural infection is not only highly unethical, but also unachievable,” write virologists Isabella Eckerle and Benjamin Meyer in a commentary accompanying the research.
 (The Lancet paper) 

More on the Evolution of COVID-19, From Seven Years Ago

Virus samples sent to the Wuhan Institute of Virology seven years ago closely resemble Covid-19, according to a report in the Sunday Times of London that highlights unanswered questions about the origins of the global pandemic. Scientists in 2013 sent frozen samples to the Wuhan lab from a bat-infested former copper mine in southwest China after six men who had been clearing out bat feces there contracted a severe pneumonia, the newspaper said. Three of them died and the most likely cause was a coronavirus transmitted from a bat, the Sunday Times reported, citing a medic whose supervisor worked in the emergency department that treated the men. The same mine in Yunnan province was subsequently studied by Shi Zhengli, an expert in SARS-like coronaviruses of bat origins at the Wuhan Institute of Virology. Shi, nicknamed “bat woman” for her expeditions in bat caves, described Covid-19 in a February 2020 paper, saying it was 96.2% similar to a coronavirus sample named RaTG13 obtained in Yunnan in 2013. The Sunday Times said RaTG13 is “almost certainly” the virus that was found in the abandoned mine. (Sunday Times of London, Bloomberg News)

China Conspiracy Theories Continue

A former British spy chief says he wants a more open debate on the origin of the coronavirus pandemic and warns against dismissing as conspiracy the idea that it might have come from a laboratory. Sir Richard Dearlove doubled down on his belief the virus that causes COVID-19 was engineered and escaped by accident from a lab in the Chinese city of Wuhan, where the first victims were identified. His opinion contrasts with a prevailing view among scientific experts as well as the US and British intelligence communities that the SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus was not man-made. The intervention comes as a team of scientists from the World Health Organization (WHO) prepares to fly to China this week to investigate the origin of a disease that has killed more than half a million people globally. "I subscribe to the theory… that it's an engineered escapee from the Wuhan Institute (of Virology)," said Sir Richard, who served as head of the Secret Intelligence Service, MI6, between 1999 and 2004.

(Sky News)

The USA Pandemic Map Burns Bright

The pandemic map of the United States burned bright red yesterday, with the number of new coronavirus infections during the first six days of July nearing 300,000 as more states and cities moved to reimpose shutdown orders. After an Independence Day weekend that attracted large crowds to fireworks displays and produced scenes of Americans drinking and partying without masks, health officials warned of hospitals running out of space and infection spreading rampantly. The United States is “still knee deep in the first wave” of the pandemic, Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, the director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said yesterday. Fauci noted that while Europe managed to drive infections down — and now is dealing with little blips as it reopens — U.S. communities “never came down to baseline and now are surging back up.”  (The Washington Post)

Vaccine and Only Finite Protection

Any vaccine developed to ward off the novel coronavirus would likely be limited in how long it would shield against infection, top U.S. infectious disease expert Dr. Anthony Fauci said Monday. “You can assume that we’ll get protection at least to take us through this cycle,” Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, said in an appearance on a live-streamed video conference hosted by the National Institutes of Health. “We’re still knee-deep in the first wave” of the pandemic, Fauci said. Health officials are assuming a shot would offer a degree of protection, though it’s likely “going to be finite.” (Bloomberg News)

Spotlight Shifts to India– Death Toll at 20,000

India passed a grim milestone earlier today, as its death toll surpassed the 20,000 mark while new coronavirus infections surged. The country of 1.37 billion people recently overtook Russia to have the world's third-largest coronavirus caseload, behind only the United States and Brazil. There are over 719,000 confirmed cases in India, with more cities experiencing a surge of infections. The tech hub of Bangalore has recorded more than 10,000 cases alone. The spread of infection has hit India's economy with business activity remaining 30 percentage points below pre-pandemic levels. (Financial Times)

–From the WHO Director General–

"It took 12 weeks for the world to reach 400 thousand cases of COVID-19. Over the weekend alone, there were more than 400 thousand cases across the globe.

There have now been 11.4 million cases of COVID-19 and more than 535,000 lives have been lost.

The outbreak is accelerating and we have clearly not reached the peak of the pandemic.

While the number of deaths appears to have leveled off globally, in reality some countries have made significant progress in reducing the number of deaths, while in other countries deaths are still on the rise."

–Dr Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus

–Quotable–

“They literally gained nothing… it’s a self-inflicted wound, and they have no economic gains.”

–Economic researcher, Jacob Kirkegaard,

responds to numbers showing that Sweden’s light-touch lockdown approach to the pandemic has cost many lives without protecting its economy.

(NYT)

CLICK HERE for full article

“Someone you know is likely to die from this. Going forward, how do we stop more of that happening? Easy. Stop transmission. Stop blowing on the embers. It’s epidemiology, not rocket science.”

-William Hanage, associate professor of epidemiology,

Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.

–REBUILDING COMMUNITY–

BELONGING AND CONNECTION

with Dr. Fran Prolman

A Partnership Between  the Learning Collaborative and AAIE, Focusing on a key Leadership Dilemma

–FROM THE WHO and JOHNS HOPKINS CSSE–

A Final Note: The AAIE COVID-19 Briefing is provided to support your leadership for the school community you serve. We encourage you to use these resources in any way, shape or form that helps you, your communications and toward furthering close relationships across your community.  – The AAIE Board