Covid at Coe, week 5ish: learning new things I didn't want to learn

When Coe's administration was making plans to go back to in-person classes in the midst of a global pandemic, I predicted we'd have enough cases by week 4 or 5 that we'd have to go online.

I am happy to say that I was wrong! We are still operating on campus!

Why did I guess week 4 or 5 for a big Covid outbreak? That's about the time every semester when The Fall Semester's First Cold starts making its way around campus. So I figured the same thing would happen with Covid.

Yet neither Covid nor a cold have really been circulating much at Coe, and I'm relieved.

Though we haven't had the giant outbreak I'd feared, we have had some Covid on campus. 

The New York Times is compiling data on Covid in colleges, and shows that Coe has had 36 positive cases of Covid out of 1400 students, so 2% of the student body. The NYTimes chart lists all cases since the beginning of the year.

Above us on the list is Clarke University with 28 (they enroll about 1000 students), so about the same percentage as Coe. Below us is Cornell College, also about 1000 students these days, with only 3 cases! There was a writeup in the local paper about their protocol. For comparison, Iowa State University in Ames, has had 1247 cases out of about 35,000 students, 3.6%, according to the NYT chart. 

When students arrived on campus here at Coe, they were ALL tested with the swab-up-your-nose-into-your-brain test. Faculty got tested, too (ow), during the week before classes started. About 25 students tested positive at that point, so they were quarantined, and those who'd interacted with them were isolated. 

I don't know if all colleges were proactive, testing all students. Probably that's easier at a smaller college. 

Early during the semester, I was concerned when I saw students hanging out in groups outdoors without masks, or sitting very close together outdoors with masks. 

Others must have seen this, too, because right after classes started, two emails went out: one very sternly-worded email from the Dean of Students, telling students they'd be kicked off campus if they were not following Covid precautions! 

And the other from our mascot, Charlie Kohawk, telling students that he would be walking around campus, randomly giving out gift cards to students who WERE following Covid precautions. Our rule: wear a mask anytime you're on campus except when in your room or when eating. 

Here's Charlie in one of his "Protect our Nest" videos:

This Good Cop/Bad Cop approach must have been fairly effective; I haven't seen so much rule-flaunting these days.

I don't see students much at all, to be honest. It seems that they're pretty much staying in their rooms--to eat, to study, and to relax. That's good--for Covid mitigation. But it's really strange. 

We are all getting used to doing college in the era of a global pandemic. I teach one class online, and my Writing Center Theory and Practice classes in person, so I get to do both. I'm finding I like teaching online more than I thought. It does take a lot of work to consider how to divide up 90 minutes worth of material into segments (most of us do this anyway--it's just good teaching), and figure out what will provide active learning for students sitting and looking at screens (breakout rooms for discussions, quick polls and quizzes, using the chat function to get responses).

I'm starting some material that really requires discussion this week. I'm using online forums, breakout groups, and the chat function on Zoom to help facilitate discussion--whole-class, free-flowing discussion is weird on Zoom. It's hard to read nonverbal cues on Zoom. It's hard to think when all those faces are looking at you in a big block--or when you're staring at black squares if students have their videos turned off. . . 

And in the classroom, having students six feet apart makes group work challenging. Not impossible, though; I've done it. I also have to remember NOT to walk around when I teach! That's hard for me!

In other news, the city is still clearing up debris from the derecho, which was 7 weeks ago on August 10. 

Tree debris in our median. Our street has already been cleared once and there's still more to go.

Our roof still has a hole in it, and the rain was coming in today. We've had shingles and a dumpster trailer in our driveway since Thursday afternoon, waiting to be used, which has been a bit frustrating...hoping they'll work on the roof tomorrow.

This is where the rain comes in . . . .

Between Covid and the derecho, learning new things--ones that I really didn't want to learn.

I still remember talking to my mom after my dad was diagnosed with cancer--because of the nature of his cancer, they had to give up going to Elderhostels. Mom pointed out that that Elderhostels was what they did before--learning about history and nature and such in beautiful locations. Now they were learning about cancer at home. I thought that was a pretty awful trade-off.

As a teacher during Covid, I've learned more than I ever wanted about Zoom and about effective teaching online. As a homeowner during a weather catastrophe, I've learned about insurance, contractors, and positioning buckets under a dripping hole in the roof. I didn't really want to learn those things, but what are you going to do?

I've also learned that I can be flexible. I can deal with things I never even guessed I'd have to deal with. 

Anne and I went to the Farmer's Market in Hiawatha today--I bought sweet corn, a watermelon, apples, beets, and peppers. Burgers, sweet corn and watermelon for dinner tonight: a summer meal before the weather turns cooler next week. That's my reward.

Our derecho in photos

I've been working on a new craft project, a tiny basket made of pine needles. 

I learned how to do this from watching a YouTube video that appeared in my Facebook feed a few days ago. After I watched the video, I knew I needed to make a basket.

The needles came from the huge white pines that used to stand along the eastern side of our home, the pines that were snapped off about ten feet up their two-foot diameter trunks in the derecho that passed through Cedar Rapids one month ago. I consider the basket to be a small memorial to those pines.

It's been exactly one month since the derecho, and I haven't posted on this blog the whole time. I've been a writer not writing, which seems odd for me. In most times of stress in my life, I've used writing as a way to process what's going on, to ease my mind, to sort through my own thoughts. But I haven't been able to write since the storm, even though I kept thinking I should.

By now, the story of the August 10 derecho has been shared by many people, reporters, bloggers, photographers. And at this point, it's probably been eclipsed by the story of Hurricane Laura and the California wildfires. But we're still living the derecho here in Cedar Rapids. More than 1000 homes were placarded as unsafe to enter after the storm. Businesses, already stressed from the pandemic, have closed. Some residents still don't have internet or landline phone service.

And our streets are still lined with debris: fences, insulation, pieces of shingles, and trees, trees, trees. Piles of branches, now crisp and brown. Eight-foot-long logs, chain-sawed at each end. Uprooted monsters with trunks at one end and slices of lawn and black Iowa soil at the other. It's hard not to think about the destruction when I'm reminded of it every time I go somewhere.

Here are some photos from the time of the derecho; I'm just going to park them here in this blog because I'm not sure I want to make a derecho scrapbook.

So here's a video of what the derecho was like:

Bruce and I were both working from home. We watched from the main floor for a while. I looked out, willing the trees to "bend, not break!" but eventually, the terrifying sounds of wind and of things hitting the house drove us to the basement. 

Eventually, we came out to this.

Our majestic blue spruce toppled over onto the house. Branches broke through the siding and roof. As of today, September 12, we still have holes in our roof, covered by blue tarp. Thanks to our friend Justin for patching the roof!

Our backyard in the moments after the storm passed through, August 10, 2020.

Cars were trapped in the garage for several days, but a bunch of colleagues and friends came with saws and pruned away enough branches to let us out! Thanks Jon, Wes, and Nathan!

Everyone said "don't get taken advantage of by out-of-town storm-chasers! Hire local people!" but that was impossible. Local crews weren't answering their phones--I'm sure they were completely overwhelmed. So we hired a crew from Atlanta, who took the trees off our house and garage.

At one point, the National Guard arrived! That's the view from our front door. Under all those trees is a power pole . . . 

Here's a photo with me for scale.

We were without power for one week, which was actually not bad. Robbie and Aubrey's outage lasted almost 2 weeks. So they stayed with us, which was a bright spot!

Playing Yahtzee and working on wood projects.

Our internet came back on after 2 weeks, and the insurance adjuster arrived September 3. Our contractor is ready to start working on the roof, but we've had rain all week, so they've been on hold while we worked on strategic placement of buckets in our leaking attic. Weather is supposed to be nicer this week, so we hope the roof will get repaired.

We'd already been working with a local nursery to redo our front plantings, and they plan to get them in this fall. 

Through all this, we've had to readjust work plans; the derecho put power and internet out at Coe, too, and many beautiful trees on campus came down. So the college postponed classes for a week. Oh, and that's right: there's still a global pandemic, so we got Covid tests and are teaching in socially-distanced ways. . . . overlapping crises: it's all so 2020.