How much you can see of a picture depends on how small you make your frame.

Time to be honest about what’s happening in #bced with #covid reporting & cases because there is an eyebrow raising attempt right now to hide what’s really happening & we will have none of this nonsense.

As @freespiritus rightly points out, we have quietly moved goalposts about #bced terminology. Before school started, outbreak was two or more cases. Now we have whole set of terms so people can say, “Oh, no, that’s not an outbreak, silly. Relax, that’s a multi-exposure event.”

Also, when schools have “exposure” one notification can in reality mean multiple cases. #bced staff, students & parents scramble to make risk vs benefit decisions on very limited info. Were 2 or 8 people in class infected & if so should my child stay home today? Nobody knows.

Exposed students, who studies have now shown can be asymptomatic #Covid transmitters, are often not tested. Instead, students are told to self-monitor & attend. At best they are told to self-isolate. Even when presenting with mild symptoms students are discouraged from testing.

What this does is keep #bced numbers artificially low. Keeping exposed students from being mass tested, having them continue going to school or telling them stay at home instead, means our student exposure numbers stay low. If we test less, we have less #Covid, right?

Moreover, anybody who has ever been in 21st century #bced class knows there is movement, collab work, breakout rooms. No one is contacting adults to see who has been exposed in close quarters with whom. The seating plans & alternate spaces, library, movement notes. Not accessed.

Cohorts share spaces like libraries. There is never just one cohort in a gym, and in particular this is a space with aerosols and shouting and no masks. The same with weight training and drama and musical theatre and band. All still going on. #bced

The kicker is that when students transmit to each other, if they have seen each other out of school, if they are friends, for example, it is viewed as a community transmission, not a school one. Tricky tricky. They shared vapes at school but I am sure they did that at mall, too.

Sadly, when classes in #bced get notification to self-isolate/self-monitor, colleagues are not informed. Not only can we not offer support to colleagues, but we are left in void of guessing why 8 students are no longer attending in this “cohort” or that one. So unnerving for all.

If an entire class has to self-monitor? We find out by accident or because a student or parent tells us, or we happen to run into the traumatized “self-monitoring” teacher who still has to teach maskless students in class for hours. Trauma-informed practice? For whom? #bced

So it is past time to get #bced house in order. We have growing number of numb, trudging, traumatized #bced staff, students & families. Sooner or later, we will make our voices known with our feet, however we are able. No other profession has been treated like this. It’s gross.

#bced needs more transparency, less obfuscation. Dr. Tam has stated schools contributing to Covid spikes, yet accurate & timely data elusive in BC. Did you know MoH refuses to release figures of # of school children among active cases & those #Covid isolating like Alta does? Why?

Time to widen that very small frame to show true #bced picture. This will ensure that students, families & staff feel safe, we can keep schools open safely as long as possible & at the end of this, we don’t have mass exodus from profession & a bitter bunch of those who remain.

Yes, @Jilliankirby79 thanks. How many of us have seen notifications to inform us of “exposure” 10,12 days ago? So it only goes up on website for couple of days. Way too little, way too late. No fault of contact tracers who are overwhelmed. This is due to systemic flaws. #bced