What we are learning during the pandemic

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We have many friends and allies. We are grateful. As we meet the demands of this moment, we appreciate the primacy of relationships, including with our students and families.

Here are some other lessons. As much as our staff (daytime certified teachers) are trying to keep our students current with school work and learning, after-school our students mostly need our checking in with how they are feeling and doing in general. Knowing students well is the foundation of teaching. It’s these relationships that matter most.

Our families and teachers are teaming up to create supportive learning plans for students. There is more input from families and caregivers than ever, because they are more actively involved in learning than ever. In situations in which families are unable to provide support, our educators are stepping in all the more to help and to bridge the home and school learning environments.

There is recognition that we are living through a slow-motion collective trauma. There is also a new openness that our society has resisted before now. Carver is investing more resources and planning into providing social-emotional support that will continue no matter what school looks like in the future to support our students’ well-being. During this pandemic, some students have lost family members or friends; others are experiencing economic instability. Now that students have lived through this, we can’t stop having conversations about these hard things.

Our students are sacrificing their performances, traditions, and celebrations for other members of their communities, and they’re going to see that their actions have helped others live. We can help them understand the connection between their actions and the health of members of their communities. It’s now undeniable that we are all connected to each other, that actions matter, and that we can have a dramatic influence on the health and well-being of others.

We now have a once-in-a-lifetime chance to course-correct, to take what we have experienced and learned and create a vision for education that is more inclusive, responsive, and purposeful than it has ever been.

Connecticut begins to reopen today amid caution and uncertainties

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U.S. and state flags in Connecticut return to full-staff today; the flags have been flying at half-staff since early April.

914 people are currently hospitalized for COVID-19, a drop of six people from Monday.

Connecticut’s continuing decline in the number of daily hospitalizations, as well as an uptick in testing capabilities, has both state officials and federal health experts confident that today’s Phase 1 reopening plan will be successful. This is the first of four phases.

According to new research and data, the hot summer months will likely bring down the number of new COVID-19 cases. But we are to expect a resurgence in the fall when the weather turns cold and seasonal influenza picks up. There remain many uncertainties for schools and colleges reopening in the fall. Students applying to the University of Connecticut, for example, won’t need to submit SAT or ACT test scores for the next three years. 

Meanwhile, Carver staff (certified teachers) are serving all our students with virtual after-school academic, enrichment, sand social emotional support. We are planning for both virtual and (while adhering to new public health rules) physical summer programs in July.

Severe food and financial needs remain for many of our families, a growing crisis wrought by record unemployment. Carver has been providing financial assistance to as many families as we can. The Brookings Institution has reported that more than one in five households nationally were food insecure by the end of April.

Thanks to you, Carver is here for the youth and families who need us. Thanks for being with us as we strive together to support our community’s well being while enduring the continuing crisis.

NASA names newest space telescope for pioneering female astronomer

Read the entire article here in The Washington Post.

NASA is naming its newest space telescope for pioneering astronomer Nancy Grace Roman — marking the first time in the agency’s 62-year history that one of its major, billion-dollar programs has been named for a woman.

Roman, who overcame obstacles that women faced in her male-dominated field and at NASA to become the agency’s first female executive and its first chief astronomer, is a “fitting” eponym for the project, astronomer Heidi Hammel said Wednesday. Her championing of space-based observatories gave her the nickname “Mother of Hubble.”

With the new telescope, NASA is “taking her child and making it even more powerful,” Hammel said. “It’s widening the Hubble vision.”

Until Wednesday morning, the Roman Space Telescope had been named WFIRST, for Wide Field Infrared Survey Telescope. Still under development at NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Md., the telescope — identical in scale to the Hubble Space Telescope — will study dark matter, dark energy, distant planets and the evolution of the universe. Its launch target is the mid-2020s.

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

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

• Mayor Rilling’s daily briefings for the number of cases in Norwalk

• CT Department of Public Health for statewide numbers

• Frequently Asked Questions about Norwalk COVID-19 Data

• Business resources, including reopening guidelines, links to request personal protective equipment, and information about financial assistance 

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.

See the entire op-ed here at The Hour.

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.

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.