Simpson's Paradox

Boston’s early voting began at 11:00 this morning, so I was in line outside the polling station at 10:40. We’d requested mail-in ballots, but they mysteriously haven’t arrived, and I’m not taking chances with the fake dropboxes and the mysteriously delayed mail. The line was already out of the school and down the corner when I got there, everyone masked and 6 feet apart.  Poll workers counted off how many people could enter the building to stand in other masked, distant lines, roped off from the school.

You don’t have to show ID to vote, but the shortest line was the one to have my license scanned without my touching the scanner or the poll worker touching my license, and the shortest line is extra important now that being indoors with other humans is a good way to catch the plague. Then I got a sterilized pen to mark my ballot and a sterilized glue stick to seal it. Then I voted for the guy who kinds sucks but isn’t a literal white supremacist, dropped my ballet in the box, and handed my marker and glue stick back to be re-sterilized, careful the whole time not to accidentally stand close to anyone.

My local polling station is in the school where I taught ESL night classes last school year, until we went home for a few weeks of online classes last March. When I used to get to work about 5PM, there’d always be little kids getting picked up from aftercare. I think a scout troop met there too, and at least one crafting class. There was pretty much always a bake sale in the lobby, and always something to chat about in the school’s main office.  I mean, I don’t want this to sound idyllic, I was usually in the main office using their copier because because the night school’s copier was broken again, but still. It was a busy, friendly community school.

The adult ed office is right off the gym/auditorium/general community space that’s used for voting.  Of course I couldn’t just go in, it was closed off and there’s no casual visiting in covid anyway. But I know that just off the voting area, behind the locked gate, there are a couple sets of vocabulary matching cards that I left on my desk in the before times.

These are taken over a few years, and you can tell that by my friends’ clothes and my hairstyles. But my outfits? Apparently I wear my space scarf and purple cardigan to every class day, and I wear my BostonFIG shirt and red flannel to every event outside school. Ok, fine, these are most on-brand outfits, but I swear I own more than 2 sets of clothes.

Central photo: Gabe and I are holding tupperware at a school party to sneak some extra dumplings home for Sydney and Harold… but when the Chinese moms who’d cooked everything found out we wanted to take some home, they piled more and more dumplings on. So much food!

Top right: My second-grade babies. Little Bonnie was one of my sweetest second-grade students, and then I helped tutor her in reading the next year. One day, she wrote her homework in invisible ink to prank me, and I almost died. Her mom’s my FB friend now so I can keep watching her grow up.

Bottom right: A few years ago, one of my students, Carol, absolutely KILLED this clue in classroom Taboo, with “in Meg’s favorite city, the big monkey climbs this.” It was just perfect. I remember it so clearly because it such an amazing use of context and limited vocab.  Anyway, Carol is a student services officer at our school now.  I guess she remembers that day too.

Space background.

1. This person who said coronavirus was fake got coronavirus and died.

I don’t want to read this as a snarky tragedy-in-two-acts quoting their social media conspiracies and then their covid obit.  I don’t want to read this as an impassioned hospital-bed or graveside plea for others to take covid19 seriously.

By now, what’s the point? If Americans weren’t convinced by the first or the first dozen or the first hundred of these stories, who’s the audience for these?

2. Another article on how masks really do prevent covid.

I don’t think there’s anyone left maskless because they haven’t yet been told that masks slow covid and protect our communities.  A group in NC are burning their masks for Murica and freedumbs. It’s not like they’re waiting for a peer-reviewed study on masks effectiveness, with a large sample size and accurate control group to start believing in science and wearing a mask.

Again, if Americans weren’t convinced by the first dozen announcements that masks slow the spread of covid, or weren’t willing to wear a mildly-annoying mask when we first heard it probably keeps our parents safer, why would this article be any different?

3. A group of X got together and now they all have covid.

We’ve been in quarantine since March and pretty much every day since then there’s been a story about a choir rehearsal or summer camp or football practice that met up and now everyone has covid.  At first, I was deeply saddened by these stories, it seemed to really remind me of life in the Before Times, and all the things we took for granted, but now I think, yes, we know coronavirus spreads in groups.

WorkBro ran Zoom trivia the other night, and he made a category called “Literature” which was just posting one-star Amazon reviews and asking us to identify which classic novel was being reviewed.

Obviously, I got them all, plus the bonus for knowing the authors.

Today is June first, and my calendar alert reminded me to do my Free Donut Day class warmups. Every summer, I do a little activity with a coffee menu, a little counter vocabulary, and a roleplay conversation with directions to the nearest Dunks. I love setting up students to go eat sweets with their new friends.  Today is also the first day of the new session, and I usually run a smooth and solid into activity for new students.

You guys, I used to be so good at my job.

But this morning, I signed into my online classes, instead of doing any of that, I talked with students about racial tension and police brutality. We talked about the excessive force in the death of George Floyd that led to these protests, and the excessive force turning protests into riots all over the country. We also talked about staying safe from riots during a pandemic, with fairly low-level English students. There’s nothing in my teacher training or classroom experience to prepare for that. It was a dark version of the usual directions lesson, not talking about getting to Dunks for a free donut, but about where there were fires last night and which students live downtown.  My school said they’d be making a statement about tolerance and student safety, but didn’t actually send anything before classes, so I was 100% on my own.  We’re all on our own right now, looking for some kind of plan or way out, while our country’s president is tweeting from his bunker about not looking weak.

So today, my classes were just a place to talk a little bit, share a little information and get a little community, from our separate apartments. Maybe tomorrow I’ll teach some English.