Anderson has taught in New Haven public schools for 30 years. Currently, she teaches sixth through eighth grade at Nathan Hale School — where she has spent most of her career, the school district said in a news release.

She represented the Connecticut Council of Language Teachers in the Northeast competition, and in November she will represent Northeast in the National Language Teacher of the Year competition.

New Haven Public Schools officials said Anderson is known for creating small-group stations that facilitate independent learning, and they said she teaches her students to be curious about people and cultures outside. of theirs.

In a statement, Anderson said her students’ lives had become “much more multicultural”.

“Like, they play video games with kids all over the world, and they think that’s a normal thing,” Anderson said. “One day after we had just learned how to give directions in Spanish, a student came in and told me that he had played Fortnite and that a kid somewhere else in the world had yelled at him in Spanish ‘Go Left! Go left!’ He was like, ‘I knew what he was talking about!'”

“I said, ‘At least I taught you something that you used in your real life! ‘” Anderson said.

Anderson is a graduate of the University of Connecticut and holds graduate degrees from the University of Bridgeport and Southern Connecticut State University.

Department supervisor Jessica Haxhi called her an “indispensable member” of the New Haven Public Schools World Language Department.

“Trudy is a role model teacher, engaging students in exciting lessons that build their real-world skills,” Haxhi said. “She graciously shares her time and expertise with her colleagues through mentoring, presenting and creating resources.”

To follow Seanna Adcox on Twitter at @seannaadcox_pc.

Many Americans have stood in long lines at free test sites since before the Christmas and New Years holiday rush. Many more bypass the lines and pay $ 20 or more for tests in. over-the-counter home sales – if they can find one.

Running out of options, some headed to overcrowded emergency rooms in the hope of getting tested, putting themselves and others at greater risk and potentially delaying emergency care for those ill. and injured.

“The current demand for testing far exceeds the available testing resources,” said Michael T. Osterholm, epidemiologist and director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

This was evident this week, as many people searched for tests to take before returning to school or work. President Biden addressed the issue last month by announcing that 500 million tests would be available for free starting in January. But his administration has not given a launch date for the program, and that number of tests won’t go far in a country of some 330 million people.

Jenna Zitomer, 25, said her family of five in Westchester, NY, spent around $ 680 on rapid tests in recent months. “It’s pretty crazy, especially since it’s well over half of a salary for me,” said research scientist Ms. Zitomer. “It sounds like something we have to start budgeting every month now, like groceries or utilities. For my family, not having access to the tests could mean exposing several severely immunocompromised people to Covid-19. It basically makes it life or death.

Ms. Zitomer added that at her local test center, “the lines have gotten so long that they have started canceling appointments and full test days because drive-thru lines are causing traffic problems.” .

Britt Crow-Miller, 35, a lecturer at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, said her family spent around $ 500 on home testing kits. With two adults and three children, a single ride costs around $ 100. “Who can afford that every time someone sniffs?” ” she said. “As someone lucky enough to be a good employee and have a partner who is also well employed, I am very aware that home testing is essentially a luxury.”

And yet, Mrs Crow-Miller, said that if one of the children “wakes up with a sore throat, I don’t feel like a responsible member of the community who sends him to school without giving him a call. first take a test “.

Elizabeth Sasser, 24, a network planning analyst living in Syracuse, NY, said her expenses for the tests – around $ 300 – were well spent. “My family has also had asymptomatic positives,” she said, “which probably would have led to more infections had it not been for the prior purchase of home tests.”

There have been gaps in testing capacity since the start of the pandemic.

In early 2020, researchers rushed to find the swabs and fluids needed to collect and store the samples sent to labs for polymerase chain reaction, or PCR, testing, considered the gold standard for detection. viral. Backlogs in testing in the United States continued that summer, in part due to a shortage of tiny pieces of tapered plastic, called pipette tips, which are used to quickly and precisely move liquid between vials.

The shortage of equipment is no longer the weak link in the supply chain, but new problems have arisen. The first is simply that demand exceeds supply.

There is also preliminary evidence that the home antigen tests that many Americans rely on – at least as currently administered, with a nasal swab – may fail to detect some cases of Omicron over the years. first days of infection. Researchers say Omicron replicates faster or earlier in the throat and mouth than in the nose.

This could complicate the strategy to fend off the current wave, in which the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention indicates that Omicron accounts for 95% of new cases.

Home testing, which can provide results within minutes, remains an important public health tool, scientists say. Positive results are particularly informative as it can take days to get PCR test results. But a negative home test should be treated with caution.

“Everyone wants these tests to do more than they can,” said Dr Osterholm.

DC charter schools are desperate to avoid teacher burnout, and a record number of departures from the profession are offering perks like yoga classes, spin classes, and mindfulness exercises.

Publicly funded private schools have turned to programs such as Stride K12 and Spark by Gabby to provide perks and perks commonly seen in large tech companies to help teachers deal with personal and professional stress in the midst of life. the coronavirus pandemic.

A DC State Board of Education survey in March found that DC teachers have a higher “intention to quit” during the pandemic, making them even more likely to quit than in previous years.

“Teacher burnout during this difficult time is real in DC and across the country,” said Kevin P. Chavous, a former DC Council member who is now president of online education company Stride K12. “We all need to find creative ways to meet teachers where they are emotionally located in order to keep them motivated. “

Mr. Chavous said his company’s program encourages teachers to step away from their screens to participate in offline “passion projects” like community service, yoga, painting and marathons. He said local teachers have felt pushed to their limits by online and hybrid education – and they’ve yearned for human contact again since outbreaks of the omicron variant of the coronavirus forced schools to return to virtual learning.

“The key is to directly involve teachers during this time, listen to them and offer them support that extends beyond the classroom,” he said.

Stride, the nation’s largest online education provider, works with more than 1,000 US school districts and nonprofit chartered boards to provide blended online and classroom instruction. He currently runs a blended learning program for Friendship Public Charter School in Northwest Washington.

Meanwhile, 11 schools in the Center City Public Charter, Capital City Public Charter, Digital Pioneers Academy, and KIPP DC’s New Teacher Cohort networks have purchased institutional subscriptions to Spark by Gabby, a virtual wellness program that costs around $ 2,000. by school.

“We offer a space entirely [teachers] with an opportunity to reset, grow stronger and take responsibility internally, ”said Gabby Lubin, a former preschool teacher who founded the program.

The 11 schools participating in the Spark by Gabby live broadcast and recorded video workouts: Petworth, Brightwood, Shaw, Capitol Hill and Trinidad (Center City); Congress Heights and Lower School (Capital City); Higher and lower schools (Academy of digital pioneers); and the cohort of new teachers from the graduate school and KIPP DC on several campuses.

Several schools are also running informal Apple Watch contests, a monthly day for teachers to get home early, Sweetgreen stations on campus that allow employees to order healthy salads with no delivery charges, and food trucks.

DC Public Schools recently offered an Educator Welfare Technical Assistance grant to public and charter schools that applied by the Oct. 29 deadline.

The $ 500,000 grant tackles ‘root causes of educator stress’ during the pandemic through a four-tier wellness program that requires teachers to build trusting relationships with school leaders, to cope with difficult professional expectations, to exercise autonomy in school-level decisions and to develop emotional learning skills “which” better manage stress and well-being “.

The two-year grant program, which interviews teachers to identify the wellness needs of each participating school, began on November 15 and is scheduled to end on September 30, 2023.

At its monthly meeting on December 15, the DC State Board of Education hosted a panel discussion by educators and health experts to “better explain the dimensions of teacher well-being issues in the district, identify the best practices used in schools and how the state board can support and expand these practices to promote better well-being and retention of educators.

The board reported in March 2020 that the 25% pre-pandemic turnover rate for teachers in the district was above the national average of 16% between the 2014-15 and 2018-19 school years.

The board has yet to say how many teachers resigned in 2019-20.

But the survey of council teachers in March noted that “teachers in the district were also noted as having a higher ‘intention to quit'” during the pandemic. On a scale of 1 to 9, with 9 indicating “strongly agree”, the survey found that DC teachers had an average response of 6.73 to the statement “I find teaching stressful” .

In the 2018-19 school year, the DC public school teacher turnover rate was 21% and the public charter school rate was 26%.

Nationally, a survey by Rand Corp. revealed that 25% of U.S. teachers said they would likely quit after the 2020-21 school year.

New teachers are particularly vulnerable: A landmark 2018 study by Richard Ingersoll at the University of Pennsylvania found that 44% of all teachers left the profession within the first five years of their careers even before the pandemic.

At the same time, a study by the Brookings Institution found that while more teachers wish to leave the profession, they stay in the classroom for now until the economy improves, leaving it open. the possibility that schools can retain them.

Emily Allen, a literacy worker at KIPP DC, said she prefers more training-oriented programs for her mood and stress management: this pandemic. “

Jordan Daugherty, a dance instructor at Center City’s Petworth campus, praised the “whole body perspective” of virtual workouts.

“As a dancer, I had tried virtual fitness classes throughout the pandemic, but I missed the community and the integrated competition of in-person classes,” she said.

Kelly Sloan, educational policy researcher for the Centennial Institute think tank at Colorado Christian University, said the more creative approach tends to reduce stress better than the traditional public school approach to ongoing discussions. employment of teachers funded by grants.

“I think this shows that the benefits of charter schools and other avenues of school choice extend beyond students to include teachers as well,” Sloan said. “It’s hard to see something so innovative and potentially useful coming out of the stilted environment of the public system. “

Health services – exhausted after several virus outbreaks and now stretched again by a growing number of Covid-19 patients – are also already feeling impacts. The University of Maryland Capital Region Health this week joined a growing list of state medical centers to activate emergency protocols after a surge in cases fueled staff shortages and overwhelmed emergency services .

“The current demand for care is draining our available resources, including staff,” UM Capital Region Health said in a statement Friday.

In Ohio, Governor Mike DeWine on Wednesday announced the deployment of about 1,250 National Guard members as hospitals grapple with staff shortages.

“Prepare yourself. We have to remember that in the coming weeks there is going to be an unprecedented number of social disruptions,” Dr Peter Hotez, dean of the University’s National School of Tropical Medicine, told CNN. Baylor.

These also include flight disruptions, he said, due to absences of TSA agents and aircrews.

Previous virus rules are “out the window”

The virus is now “extraordinarily contagious” and previous mitigation measures that were helping now may not be as helpful, CNN medical analyst Dr. Jonathan Reiner told CNN on Friday.

“At the start of this pandemic… we were all taught that you have significant exposure if you are within six feet of someone and are in contact with them for more than 15 minutes. All of these rules are by the way. window, ”Reiner said. “It’s a hyper-contagious virus.”

Now even a quick and transient encounter can lead to infection, Reiner added, including if someone’s mask is loose, or if a person quickly pulls their mask down, or if a person walks into an elevator in. which someone else has just coughed.

“This is how you can get this virus,” Reiner said.

The transmissibility of the variant helps explain the sheer number of infections reported worldwide, including the United States. Over the past week, several states reported new records of cases and hospitalizations, shattering previous records.

“Our hospitals are currently at about the same number as they were on the worst day of the wave last winter,” he added. “The problem is, right now, we’re not seeing any signs of slacking off.”

Other states, including Arkansas, Maryland and New York, have also reported new record high numbers of cases.

And a sharp rise in infections – especially among children – could soon lead to an increase in hospitalizations, said infectious disease expert Dr Jeanne Marrazzo.

“The explosive increase in the number of cases is really fueling what might normally be a relatively small proportion … of children who experience these serious consequences,” she told CNN’s Amara Walker on Friday. “But you associate the gigantic number of cases with the small number affected, plus the proportion of unvaccinated, and I really fear that we are facing a tidal wave of admissions, especially for children in the weeks to come. to come. .”

Concerns about going back to school

With the virus spreading, some staff and experts are expressing concern about what reopening schools could mean.

“There will be pediatric hospitalizations,” Hotez said. “And what will be the other difficult element over the next few weeks, keeping the schools open, because of this high transmissibility – especially if you start to see absences of teachers, bus drivers, cafeteria staff.”

The Massachusetts Teachers Association, New England’s largest public sector union, urged the state’s education commissioner this week to keep schools closed on Monday, except for staff Covid-19 testing .

“Using Monday as a day for testing and analyzing data will allow our school districts to make prudent decisions about staffing needs so they can continue to learn in person for students if it is safe or develop plans for it. emergency if a district deems it necessary, “President Merrie Najimy, president of the association, said in a statement.

The state’s executive education office said on Friday that schools will be open on Monday, despite a request from the teachers’ union.

“The Ministry of Elementary and Secondary Education has been working hard this week to make rapid home tests available to all teachers and staff in public schools in light of testing shortages the country is experiencing. Massachusetts is one of the few states that provides rapid testing. tests to its teachers. It is not an obligation for teachers to return to work, nor necessary to reopen schools after the holidays, ”said Colleen Quinn, spokesperson for the office, in a statement.

“It is disappointing,” the statement added, “that once again the MTA is trying to find a way to close schools, which we know is to the extreme detriment of our children.”

Meanwhile, a growing number of colleges and universities across the country are making changes at the start of the 2022 spring semester due to the increase in the number of cases.

“I realize that students prefer to be in person, and so do I,” said Samuel L. Stanley Jr., president of the university, in a statement. “But it’s important that we do it in a safe manner. Starting the semester remotely and de-densifying the campus in the coming weeks may be one solution to slowing the spread of the virus.”

Correction: A previous version of this article misrepresented the number of records broken this week in the seven-day average of daily new cases of Covid-19. The most recent average figure has also been updated to reflect the latest data from JHU.

Sally Smith Levy

Middlebury – Sally Smith Levy, 91, of Middlebury and South Burlington, passed away peacefully on November 29, 2021. Sally was born on May 8, 1930 in Saranac Lake, NY, daughter of Sarah A. and Elmer W. Smith.

Sally grew up in Saranac Lake and attended Saranac Lake High School. She received her Bachelor of Science in Education from Plattsburgh State University in New York; her certification in Teaching ESL from Columbia University Teachers’ College in New York City, and her Masters in TESL from St. Michael’s College, Colchester, Vermont.

Early in her teaching career, Sally was a kindergarten and first grade teacher in New York City and Long Island, NY. She later consulted and taught English as a Second Language at HO Wheeler School, Essex Junction Public Schools and the Vermont Refugee Resettlement Program. She has been a private tutor for elementary, high school, and graduate students and worked as an English and Maths tutor at the Vermont Adult Education Center, where she taught the GED program. Sally was also a member of the League of Women Voters, where she served as president of international relations for many years.

Sally loved the world of people, ideas and exchanges. She and her husband, Art, have enjoyed raising their children, spending time with friends and family, and traveling. Sally and Art lived in Okinawa, Japan, and London, England, and traveled extensively throughout Europe. Sally and Art spent their summers at Lake Saranac and Lake Champlain.

Sally was a wonderful conversationalist and listener, as well as an avid reader, writer, painter and photographer. She had a strong connection to nature and the Adirondacks and Green Mountains – lakes and wetlands were often the inspiration for her work. Sally enjoyed Nordic and downhill skiing, canoeing, boating, and hiking through New York and Vermont.

Sally was predeceased by her husband, Dr Arthur M. Levy. She is survived by her sister, Sandra Smith; and his brothers, David Smith and Robert Shelley; his daughters, Susan Guran and Lynn Bosworth (David); and his son, Alan Levy (Deana); her grandchildren, Andie Guran, Burt Guran, Aileen Bosworth, Trey Bosworth, Tucker Levy and Emma Levy; her nieces, Debbie Volusher, Lisa Wells and Katie Smith-Barry and her nephew, David Smith.

The family expresses their sincere gratitude to Addison County Home Health and Hospice, Stephani Stoddard, Dr. Diana Barnard and the staff at the residence at Otter Creek for their loving care and support. The family will be hosting a private celebration of Sally’s life.

The biggest news in education in 2021 has undoubtedly been the reopening of schools during a pandemic.

When schools abruptly closed in March 2020, many believed they would be open again in a few weeks, or certainly by the fall. But the pandemic raged as school leaders sought to reopen school buildings safely while spending money on masks, hand sanitizer, outdoor classroom materials, and more. Students at most of Oakland’s public schools continued distance learning during a dangerous winter wave of COVID-19 cases in Alameda County. The promise of vaccines for teachers and school staff became light at the end of the tunnel in early 2021, and more recently, students have also become eligible for the vaccine.

Here’s how the rest of the year went in Oakland.

Families, teachers and the school district debated how to safely reopen schools

In an effort to get schools to reopen earlier, health officials in February prioritized teachers and school staff for the COVID vaccine in February. Although the vaccination allayed the fears of many teachers about returning to class, some still worried about their unvaccinated students and their families.

In March, The Oaklandside set out to answer some of the important questions surrounding the school reopening debate: What safety measures do schools need to be safe to reopen? How do teachers and school staff reach missing students? What did it take for private schools to open with little to no transmission of COVID among students? What impact has the pandemic had on the mental health of students?

Before teachers could return to class, they spent weeks negotiating with the Oakland Education Association teachers’ union with district leaders to determine their working conditions. Their biggest concern was assessing how safe it was to return to class given the level of the spread of COVID in the community, and teachers wanted to tie the reopening to the state’s colored tier system. In March, the district and the union landed on a hybrid, staggered schedule that offered students the option of coming to school a few days a week, for a few hours. Kindergarten to Grade 2 students returned to schools that month and older students began returning to campus in April.

When OUSD welcomed elementary school students to their campuses part-time, many were delighted to see their friends, teachers and school staff. While the school schedule didn’t leave as much time as some had hoped, it did allow students to get out of the house, interact with their peers, and run around a playground. “I’m happy because I love school,” said a 5-year-old Madison Park Academy elementary student. A teacher at the school said, “COVID-19 has taken something from us which we are recovering today. “

The reopening of schools posed all kinds of new challenges, from safety protocols to immunization warrants and distance education

But just because local schools were starting to reopen didn’t mean students were rushing back to classrooms. Oakland Unity High School, a small charter school in East Oakland, was one of the first high schools to reopen locally. But principals quickly realized that it would take more than just opening the doors to get students back to class.

In August, Oakland Unified was one of the first Bay Area school districts to return to school, this time for a full school day, five days a week. While many parents and families worried about safety measures and whether children could keep their masks on, nerves faded once they saw their children delighted to be returning to school.

At the OUSD’s first board meeting of the school year (and the first face-to-face meeting since March 2020), school board members faced heckling and disruption from teachers. community members demanding that the district increase testing, provide adequate ventilation and ensure student safety. . The first week of school saw more than 100 cases of COVID among students and staff. Experts attributed these cases primarily to community spread, but that has not allayed the concerns of some parents, teachers and others.

In early September, as youth vaccination rates in Alameda County showed large disparities between students by race, the school board began considering a mandate for the students. While much of the board agreed with the idea, some members feared that such a requirement could disproportionately harm black and brown students, who had some of the lowest vaccination rates. Nonetheless, the council voted later this month to enact the mandate. In October, the school board ruled that all students who had not been vaccinated or had not been granted an exemption would not be allowed to continue attending in-person classes after January 31.

Hundreds of families who still weren’t comfortable with returning to in-person learning this year signed up for OUSD’s Sojourner Truth independent study program. Unfortunately, this overwhelmed the school which previously had less than 200 students. State law required independent study programs to undergo changes to accommodate these families, and what was once a flexible, in-person program primarily for high school students has become a virtual academy for over 1,000, leaving Sojourner Truth’s original families with the dilemma of whether to stay or transfer. “Now it’s basically a regular school, but online. This is no longer an independent study, ”said a mother whose son was enrolled in the Sojourner Truth program before the pandemic.

That’s not all that happened in 2021. Here are three stories that could have significant impacts on Oakland’s educational scene in 2022.

In an explosive announcement, the president of Mills College wrote in March that the 169-year-old women’s college would stop awarding degrees and enrolling undergraduates, and would become the Mills Institute. The college had struggled with declining enrollment and precarious finances for years. Several months later, the school announced it would merge with Northeastern University, a Boston-based university, which drew mixed reactions from students and alumni at Mills.

In November, hundreds of students from Oakland Technical High School rolled out of their classrooms and walked down Broadway, heading to the OUSD central office in downtown Oakland, protesting against sexual assault and misconduct. in their school and demanding that the district address their concerns. The students submitted five requests, which the district leaders said they were making progress on. The protest was part of a wave of similar actions by students in San Francisco and other Bay Area cities.

And finally, OUSD budgetary problems continued to threaten the educational mission of the district. While more than $ 250 million in COVID relief funding avoided some budget cuts in 2021, the district still faces a deficit of more than $ 40 million for the 2022-2023 school year, to which the school board must remedy in the coming months. Alameda County Superintendent LK Monroe sent a letter to OUSD last month warning it will step up its oversight of the district if the council does not take important critical steps to close its deficit, including possibly the consolidation of schools. Some community groups and elected officials in Oakland are pushing back on Monroe and protested in December against what they see as outside interference in OUSD’s educational affairs.