The past couple of days were hermit-like, in as much as I did not set foot out of the house, well, maybe I stepped outside onto the back patio or the front patio. I had to water the plants. Cocooned in my study, I focused on my students and making sure that those that were new to being online could manage and those who had done it before remembered,
I need not have worried. The adaptability of kids is underestimated. Learning online will and, to a great extent, has become an integral and essential part of education. Some schools and families have embraced this concept, while others are playing catch up. Nevertheless, I observe that the vast majority of my students continue to benefit from learning how to integrate digital skills into their learning.
Self-imposed extraction from the world outside means you digest more news. Well, I do. So, on chancing across an article entitled: Form your own social bubble and stick to it to keep your family safe from Covid-19: NCID director in The Straits Times (Singapore), my first reaction was, I need to order a Zorb for the family.
But, then on a serious note, it struck me how sensible these words were. While the new restrictions limit social gatherings to two people, and only two visits of two per household, I have a niggling voice in my ear. That annoyingly clichéd phrase, "it takes two to tango"; I suppose it only takes for one of those two visitors to infect a whole family. Or some such logic. All it took was colleagues in Changi taking their masks off to eat, to infect each other. Likewise, an unsuspecting tuition teacher working with her students in a tuition centre sparked cases across primary schools.
There really is something to be said for wearing masks, and not going to crowded places.
Reading last Monday that the virus is considered to be airborne, rather than transmitted via contact and touch, goes some way to explaining transmission in a hospital ward, at the airport and in schools.
Consequently, this revelation caused me to re-evaluate my mask strategy. And from the reports, many other people were re-evaluating theirs too. Shelves were stripped, not only of rice and toilet paper, but masks. The infographic provided by the national newspaper, plainly lays out the facts that not all masks are equal - we knew this from seasons of haze - however this is a virus. If you want to stop a virus, you really do need to "mask up" properly.
Enough of my attempt at a quasi-scientific lecture, I need to go and order a family Zorb, and get on with some lesson prep.