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COVID-19, the 2019 novel coronavirus, Norwalk health updates

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For up-to-date information about COVID-19 in our area, visit: 

Key COVID-19 Topics:

  • What Can We All Do Right Now? 

    • Keep Physical Distance

    • Make and Properly Use Face Coverings

    • Stop the Spread of Germs

    • Take Care of Yourself and Loved Ones: Mental Health, Food Resources, Volunteering, and other Community Services

  • What Should You Do if you Feel Sick?

    • COVID-19 Symptoms

    • Isolation vs. Quarantine vs. Physical Distancing

    • Test Collection Sites and Call Centers

  • Recovering from COVID-19

    • Release from Self-Isolation

    • Plasma Donation

    • Antibody Testing

  • Links and More Information

    • General COVID Information from CDC, WHO, others

    • Special Topics/Resources: Food Safety, Breastfeeding, Chronic Diseases, Parents and Pediatricians

The Hour: Susan Weinberger, Carver volunteer leader, op-ed remembering Francis X. Fay Jr.

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Frank Fay was a reporter for the Norwalk Hour for 50 years. I first met him in my second year as a Spanish teacher in Room 105A at Norwalk High School. That year, Lewis E. Dunlap was appointed the principal after problems that arose at the school. His job was to establish order. I believed in his approach and touted the school’s potential and virtues. I helped him to develop a new motto, Norwalk High School Home of Pride Intensified.

Mr. Dunlap, as he was called, invited me, a teacher, to become the official Norwalk High School non-paid Public Relations Director of the school. I was thrilled. My first assignment was to organize the June graduation including supervising the press.

Francis X. Fay Jr. was the long time and revered education reporter of The Hour at the time. As the graduation pomp and circumstance was about to begin, I was busy directing the media. There was Frank, a little twinkle in his eye and prepared to report the most unique and touching stories from the graduates as he had for so long. I introduced myself and told him where he and the press would be seated for the ceremony. It did not go over well.

This began a 44-year love affair with Francis X. Fay Jr. Ten years my elder, he taught me so much about attention to detail. “When you write a press release, Sue,” he would declare, “remember all the answers to who, what, where, when and why.” This regard for detail has been a part of my work first with the schools, then as a consultant and an author ever since….

May 29 Is Student Visual Arts Day In Norwalk

The annual Norwalk Public Schools Art Show is going virtual on Friday, May 29th.

The art show is an annual showcase of Norwalk’s talented students. This year, our students have been creating art work from home. There will be a special online opening night reception and celebration.

Leading up to the virtual art show, the Visual and Performing Arts Department is encouraging families to hang student artwork in their windows from May 22 to May 25. Families can view the beautiful artwork of fellow students in their neighborhood using best practices for safety and social distancing. 

Stay tuned at the Norwalk Public Schools website fro more details.

40% of Those Making Less Than $40K Lost Their Jobs in March

In a videoconference address to the Peterson Institute for International Economics, Jerome Powell, chair of the Federal Reserve, explained the depths of the nation’s pandemic-induced economic shutdown and warned that any recovery would take time and much more stimulus spending.

“The burden has fallen most heavily on those least able to bear it.”—Jerome Powell

Of great concern to the Carver community is the fact that the downturn has disproportionately affected low-income Americans. As Powell remarked, “Among people who were working in February, almost 40 percent of those in households making less than $40,000 a year had lost a job in March.”

Office of Early Childhood launches CTCARES for Family Child Care

The Connecticut Office of Early Childhood announced that it has launched “CTCARES for Family Child Care” to provide support to licensed family child care providers during the COVID-19 public health emergency and beyond. The initiative is made possible with approximately $830,000 in support from nonprofit organizations, including the Connecticut Early Childhood Funder Collaborative, 4-CT, and other philanthropic groups – and financial support continues to grow.

Discovery Ed: App for kids to measure social distance, learning resources for parents and educators

Discovery Education has created a free app that helps children understand social distancing. The app allows users to point a device at another person or object and see if it is an appropriate social distance. The app, called Social Distancing Training, helps young people grasp the abstract concept of social distancing in a concrete manner. The app includes info from the World Health Organization and the Centers for Disease Control. The Social Distance Training app can be downloaded on an iPhone or Ipad in the @Apple App store.

Discovery Education has also created free resources for parents and caregivers. Five weeks of resources are organized by grade, with offerings for K-2, grades 3-5, grades 6-8, and grades 9-12.

Keeping our students creative at the intersection of arts, education and technology

As we have noted elsewhere, Carver staff (mostly daytime certified teachers) is reaching all our K-12 students through our virtual after school programs.

For children, art can be so important in the expression of loss and sadness, of being cut off from friend groups and just how long this time must feel to them. It can be really valuable for them to visually represent those emotions, to put them to music, to dance, to drama.

MIT students painstakingly recreated their iconic campus in 'Minecraft' — take a look

The coronavirus ended their semester early, but MIT being MIT, students knew they could figure out some kind of technical workaround.

A group of MIT students built a server in "Minecraft," where they've been building the campus in stunning detail, working on recreating places that are especially meaningful to them. The project follows other schools like UPenn and Brown, who have similar virtual campuses in the works. 

MIT students are recreating their Cambridge, Massachusetts campus on "Minecraft" after COVID-19 ended their semester early.

Events including graduations and weddings have been moved online to "Minecraft," "Animal Crossing," and other online games since the coronavirus spread throughout the world.

Read the entire article here.

Virtual NPS celebration of Excellence in Education

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This week, NPS kicked off a virtual celebration of Excellence in Education, featuring our teacher honorees in a series of videos on our Facebook page in honor of Teacher Appreciation Week. Next week, we'll feature our Educational Support honorees! Follow us on Facebook to see the daily features.

To view the compiled video of the full series of teacher honorees, visit our YouTube channel by clicking here.

Congrats to all of the 2020 Excellence in Education honorees! We are proud to have these teachers and support staff represent all of the hard working staff members throughout the district.