About a week ago, we had a kid or two diagnosed with Hand, Foot, Mouth Disease. Saying ‘diagnosed’ makes it sound so official and fatal, but it is the farthest thing from it. Sure it is kind of gross because it is a virus that is passed through sharing bodily fluids, but it is barely anything more than a rash and a sore throat. Millions of preschool age kids get it every year. Let’s be honest, the kiddies refuse to share anything but germs. It is highly contagious, but they get it, they stay home until the rash is gone, return to school and life goes on. I have actually never heard of a school closing because of HFMD, but as I have stated at least a thousand times, China is completely backwards from the rest of the world.
So anyway, a couple kids got it a week ago and they were sent home… no big deal. Well Chinese Government regulation states that if two or more children contract HFMD in a single class in less than a week, then the class must close for two weeks. Additionally, if a school has 10 or more reported cases in less than a week, the entire school has to close. It sounds a bit extreme right? I mean, Chinese schools didn’t even close when H1N1 was going around and that was much worse! I guess there was a really bad strand of HFMD a couple years ago and it actually did end up fatal in a couple cases, so since then, they have very strict policies.
At RBIS, it pretty much started in a Preschool class, who then passed it to her little brother in the Toddler class, who passed it to the other Toddlers, then to Early Years and so on. On Friday alone, there were 12 reported confirmed cases and at least 30 other children sent home with rashes on their hands. Of my 16 children class, there were only 11 in class on Friday, and of the 11, 5 were sent home because of a rash just to be extra cautious, but most likely caused by the sudden increase in bleach and cleaner to their toys.
Thankfully within my class, only one child came back as having HFMD confirmed, but nonetheless, our school was maxed out and the government said that all classes had to be closed. Again, you would think I would be happy about this, but it has been a nightmare kind of. First of all, parents are outraged! They pay a lot of money in tuition to send their kids to international school so they expect a refund for the two weeks. However, refunds are against the school policy, so the parents are irate. Then, parents don’t know what to do with their children during the time off. They are blowing up our emails asking us for stuff they can do to occupy their children… really? As a team, the early years have compiled a list of activities that families can do at home to keep the learning going over the two weeks, but parents don’t seem to appreciate it much and I doubt that any of them are doing any of the activities that we have suggested!
Then there is the boredom… I literally sit in my classroom alone all day long – from 8:00 to 4:00. Sure I have things that I can do, and I have been working hard on my portfolios, but I just cannot sit alone at my computer all day without going crazy, so then I find myself wondering around and bugging other teachers just to move. Only the Early Childhood portion of our school closed, of course, so all my elementary friends are still with students so I can’t go bug them. Fortunately, I plenty of time to clean and rearrange my room, and put together some really BOMB portfolio for conferences in two weeks, but I could probably complete all of those things in just a couple days… not ten days!
Anyway… I shouldn’t bitch really. I am just glad that everyone is healthy (or getting healthy) and I am thankful for a little bit of relaxation and rest J
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