Gov. Jim Justice announced in a virtual press briefing Friday that outbreaks at West Virginia’s primary and secondary schools are defined as two or more cases that are connected to each other.
The West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources and the Department of Education are partnering to update the list daily.
West Virginia Superintendent of Schools Clayton Burch said he will be meeting everyday with DHHR to discuss the list.
“We will every day post the outbreaks that are active, the schools, the number of cases,” Burch said, “And we’re even going to post if that outbreak led to a school going to remote learning.”
Burch also noted the Department of Education is hoping to hire more school nurses. He said, right now, there are 450 school nurses employed in the state. New funding from the West Virginia Legislature could help hire more, although Burch did not specify how many new nurses would be hired.
The West Virginia Department of Education announced that eight counties will be remote-learning only for the week of Sept. 13. State officials rolled out updated data Saturday, Sept. 12 at 5 p.m.
Monongalia, Boone, Fayette, Kanawha, Logan, Mingo, Monroe and Putnam counties will not be open for in-person instruction this week.
The COVID-19 Data Review Panel has determined that Calhoun County will move from orange to yellow on the WVDE School Alert System Map. Calhoun County has had 13 cases which are linked and contained over the previous 14 days with no further evidence of community spread, according to the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources.
Red (Substantial Community Transmission): Remote-only learning mode. No extracurricular competitions or practices are permitted. Staff may report to their schools, as determined by the county. Essential support services, including special education and meals, will continue. Counties in red include: Monongalia.
Orange (Heightened Community Transmission): Remote-only learning mode. Extracurricular practices may occur, however, competitions may not. Staff may report to their schools, as determined by the county. Essential support services, including special education and meals, will continue. Counties in orange include: Boone, Fayette, Kanawha, Logan, Mingo, Monroe and Putnam.
Yellow (Increased Community Transmission): School may be held for in-person instruction. Extracurricular practices and competitions may occur. Health and safety precautions include, at a minimum, face coverings at all times for grades six and above. Please refer to your county for specific face covering requirements. Counties in yellow include: Berkeley, Brooke, Cabell, Calhoun, Clay, Doddridge, Grant, Greenbrier, Hancock, Harrison, Jackson, Jefferson, Lincoln, McDowell, Mercer, Ohio, Pocahontas, Raleigh, Roane, Summers, Taylor, Tucker, Upshur, and Wayne.
Green (Minimal Community Transmission): School may be held for in-person instruction. Extracurricular practices and competitions may occur. Health and safety precautions include, at a minimum, face coverings in grades three and above when students are outside of core groups and in congregant settings and on school buses. Please refer to your county for specific face covering requirements. Counties in green include: Barbour, Braxton, Gilmer, Hardy, Hampshire, Lewis, Marion, Marshall, Mason, Mineral, Morgan, Nicholas, Pendleton, Pleasants, Preston, Randolph, Ritchie, Tyler, Webster, Wetzel, Wood, Wirt and Wyoming.
All schools, both public and private, are expected to adhere to the WVDE’s re-entry map to guide in-person instruction and extracurricular activities.
Updates to the map will be announced each Saturday at 5 p.m. and will be in effect until the following Saturday at the same time, according to the WVDE. The only exception would be if a county turns red during the week.
If this happens, the change would be made immediately to the map, according to the WVDE, and all in-person instruction and extracurricular and athletic activities would be suspended.
As of Saturday morning, the West Virginia DHHR reports 12,521 total cases of the virus and 265 deaths. 3,031 cases are considered active.
As compassion training is becoming more popular in schools across the country, a school in West Virginia is taking on a pilot compassion curriculum project of its own. The goal is to improve student achievement and foster healthier communities by cultivating things like focus and empathy.
Science of Compassion
Dr. James Doty, a brain surgeon in California, is one of the world’s leading experts on the science behind compassion. Doty explains, the scientific definition of compassion is “the recognition of the suffering of another with a motivational desire to alleviate that suffering.” He theorizes that human evolutionary success is tied to our capacity to love and care for each other – and he’s proven that significant health benefits come with kindness.
“What we have found,” Doty said, “is that when you’re feeling as if others love you or care for you, then your physiology works at its best.”
His work is part of a growing body of science that shows cultivating compassion could help people become healthier, drive local economies and improve learning outcomes in schools.
Schooled in Compassion
“For any of us to do our best work,” Liz Hofreuter, head of Wheeling Country Day School, said, “we have to be in the right head space.”
Hofreuter wants to bring more compassion to her town, starting at her school. She hopes Country Day can develop best practices to be used by anyone who works with young children.
She plans to formalize existing compassion curriculum that’s been developing at the school for the past 5 years. The idea is to help students cultivate focus, resilience, empathy and level-headedness.
Credit Wheeling Country Day School
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Wheeling Country Day School
An emphasis on nutrition and things like avoiding processed foods spills out of the lunchroom into lessons, according to head of school Liz Hofreuter.
In practice, compassion training at Country Day looks like taking time between school periods to focus on the sound of a bell ringing out — an exercise designed to gently sharpen focus and listening skills and allow kids to more effectively transition between activities. There’s extra emphasis on nutrition. For example, demonstrating through school lunches how to avoid processed foods. It also means paying closer attention to the physical body by incorporating yoga or basic stretching and breathing exercises throughout the day.
Hofreuter said compassion training is basically physical and social-emotional intelligence training. The concepts are not new, but they are developing. She said students learn to self-regulate and identify emotions so that, instead of being ruled by them, emotions can be used as guides.
“You say to a child, calm down,” Hofreuter said, “but when do you teach a child what that means?”
Hofreuter’s compassion initiative also includes a variety of methods to learn conflict resolution.
“They need to be trained by age 10 how to deal with a hallway in middle school, and the city in high school and college. I feel pretty strongly about that. They need those tools the same way they need reading, writing and math.”
Conflict resolution, Hofreuter points out, is not avoiding conflict, but learning to manage it.
“Kids need problems,” she continued. “They need problems, they need failure, they need to overcome it because they need intrinsic motivation and they need persistence and they need to know they have the fortitude.”
Credit Wheeling Country Day School
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Wheeling Country Day School
Areas in the school like this one are reserved for conflict resolution.
Finding Emotional Fortitude
Alex Thompson is a grade-schooler who’s been a student at Country Day for 4 years who. When asked, he admitted to sometimes feeling overwhelmed at school.
“It’s probably because of the difficulty with always having your friends happy,” he said. “Because you can really never have all of your friends happy with you.”
Alex and his classmates have laminated cards on their desks numbered 1 – 5.
“A five is basically when you are full of outrage and anger — so much anger that you need to be sent home,” Thompson explained. “And a one is basically, you’re happy.”
One of Alex’s teachers, Joe Jividen, said students can use the cards to identify how they’re doing during a lesson. He said the feedback helps him know if he’s getting through with lesson concepts, or if he should make adjustments.
“It’s really cool to hear the language used of a student walking in a telling me at the start of a day, ‘Hey, I’m at a three right now.’ And you’re able to look at them and say, ‘Great, that’s good to know. It’s good for me and it’s good for your classmates.’ ”
Jividen said the cards are making language that’s really difficult to talk about — your emotions — easy for both kids and teachers and other adults.
Teachers like Jividen and kindergarten teacher Claire Norman said the compassion training they’re beginning to exercise is also having some unexpected consequences.
“We see a difference not only in the kids but in ourselves. As teachers, you kind of forget about yourself sometimes and focus more on the kids. Linda and I know how doing yoga makes us feel, so we can only imagine how it makes the kids feel.”
Hofreuter said she hopes that as the program takes off, compassion training will move beyond the classroom and into the home and community as well.
That’s the message from Sophia Mullins, first grader at Gauley River Grade School. She wrote to Senator Joe Manchin asking him for help:
Dear Sir, My name is Sophia Mullins. I live in Craigsville, West Virginia. I am in the first grade at Gauley River Grade School. All we do is work, work, work. I need a break. Can you please help? Thanks, Sophia
Manchin fielded a call to Miss Sophia while she was at school to encourage her and all her friends to continue to work hard in school. The senator told the first grader receiving a good education is the best way for all young students to succeed when they grow up.
Here’s video from Sen. Manchin’s office of he and Sophia speaking with one another on the phone:
