Korean Job Discussion Forums

[I'm no Picasso]

Swine flu has come to my school. Confirmed our first case this morning.

By the way, the student hasn't been abroad, doesn't go to hagwon and hasn't had any time around foreigners (other than me). I know all of this because these were the questions the other teachers asked (in order) when they heard the news at the lunch table.

It took my co-teachers about ten seconds to go from that information to asking if I had, by the way, gotten my med check results back from re-signing my contract.

[cdninkorea]

Out of curiosity, what else has happened? Is the student at home or in quarantine? Are there handwashing stations (with proper soap) in the school, or is there even running water (when I worked in a public school, very often the water to the sinks were turned off)? Etc.

[I'm no Picasso]

Nothing else has happened, that I'm aware of. Today was an exam day for the third graders so the teachers were pretty busy. Obviously not an excuse, but....

I don't have many more of the details, because this was all in Korean and my Korean is not that good. I don't even know if the kid was actually in school the last three days or not. I'm assuming he probably was on Monday, at least. You know how they are about taking off sick. And he wouldn't have been on quarantine because he didn't go abroad. I'll keep you posted if I find out more tomorrow, though.

[I'm no Picasso]

And in regards to hand washing... ha. I work at an all boys middle school. I would imagine that even if they hung a bar of soap around every boy's neck, it still wouldn't help much.

There was another virus going around at the end of last semester and they were pretty good about hand sanitizer (big bottle by the office door, every teacher given a little bottle... don't know about the students) and disinfecting the classrooms after every period.