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gregor-samsung · 6 months

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" Canton e Hong Kong sono situate nella regione del delta del Fiume delle Perle (Zhu), con metropoli come Macao, Shenzhen (città dallo sviluppo molto recente), Foshan, Zhongshan e altre ancora. Il 16 novembre 2002 un quarantaseienne di Foshan fu colpito da febbre e difficoltà respiratorie. Secondo quanto hanno stabilito i segugi dell'epidemiologia, spetta a lui il titolo di primo paziente di questa nuova malattìa. Non si sono conservati campioni del suo sangue o del suo muco, ma un forte indizio di SARS è il fatto che l’uomo contagiò a catena un bel po’ di persone (la moglie, una zia che gli fece visita in ospedale, il marito e la figlia della stessa zia). Il suo nome non è stato tramandato ai posteri; di lui si sa soltanto che era un «impiegato del governo locale». Un dato interessante del suo profilo, col senno di poi, è il fatto che avesse cucinato in precedenza piatti che prevedevano come ingredienti pollo, gatto e serpente. Mangiare serpenti non è insolito nel Guangdong, una provincia abitata da carnivori impenitenti e non schizzinosi, dove i menù potrebbero essere scambiati per la lista degli ospiti di uno zoo o di un negozio di animali.

Tre settimane dopo, all'inizio di dicembre, un cuoco di Shenzhen accusò gli stessi sintomi. Lavorava in una friggitoria e non si occupava direttamente di uccidere e preparare gli animali, ma ne manipolava le carni pulite e tagliate. Andò a farsi curare fuori da Shenzhen, allo Heyuan City People’s Hospital, dove trasmise la malattia ad almeno sei tra medici e infermieri, prima di essere trasferito a Canton, a duecento chilometri di distanza. Il giovane dottore che lo accompagnò in ambulanza si ammalò a sua volta. Non molto tempo dopo, tra la fine di dicembre e l’inizio di gennaio, casi analoghi iniziarono a presentarsi a Zhongshan, città portuale situata un centinaio di chilometri a sud di Canton e poco distante da Hong Kong, che è dall'altra parte del Fiume delle Perle. Nel giro di poche settimane si registrarono ventotto casi. I sintomi comprendevano emicrania, febbre alta, brividi, dolore alle ossa, tosse forte e persistente con sangue nell'espettorato e progressiva compromissione dei polmoni, che si indurivano e si riempivano di liquido. La conseguente scarsa ossigenazione nei casi più gravi poteva portare alla morte. Tredici pazienti tra quelli di Zhongshan lavoravano nel settore sanitario e almeno uno era un cuoco, anche lui dedito alla preparazione di piatti a base di serpenti, volpi, zibetti (mammiferi di piccola taglia parenti alla lontana delle manguste) e ratti. Gli ufficiali sanitari della provincia si accorsero della concentrazione di casi a Zhongshan e spedirono in loco vari team di «esperti» che si occupassero di cura e prevenzione, ma in realtà nessuno di loro sapeva nulla di questa misteriosa e ingannevole malattia. Uno di questi gruppi produsse un documento ufficiale in cui il nuovo morbo era definito «polmonite atipica» (feidian in cantonese). La stessa formulazione di uso generico fu ripresa qualche settimana più tardi dall'OMS nel suo primo bollettino. Una polmonite atipica è una qualsiasi affezione polmonare non attribuibile ai classici patogeni, come ad esempio il batterio Streptococcus pneumoniae. Utilizzare questa espressione ben nota in medicina fu un modo per stemperare e non accentuare la stranezza e la potenziale pericolosità dei casi di Zhongshan. In realtà quella specie di polmonite non era solo atipica, ma anomala, feroce e spaventosa. Il bollettino ufficiale fu inviato agli ospedali e agli uffici sanitari della provincia (ma non fu reso pubblico). Conteneva anche una lista di sintomi tipici della malattia e una serie di raccomandazioni per arginarne la diffusione, che si rivelarono timide e tardive. A fine gennaio, un commerciante all'ingrosso di prodotti ittici, reduce da un viaggio a Zhongshan, fu ricoverato in un ospedale di Canton, da dove partì la serie di contagi a catena che di lì a poco avrebbe fatto il giro del mondo. "

David Quammen, Spillover. L’evoluzione delle pandemie, (Traduzione di Luigi Civalleri; collana La collana dei casi), Edizioni Adelphi, 2014. [Libro elettronico]

[ Edizione originale: Spillover. Animal Infections and the Next Human Pandemic, W.W. Norton & Company, Inc., 2012 ]

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teachablemomentsblog · 1 year

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Heart Map: My Sunfire Circle (Part One)

"I had no idea how to change a flat tire"

Midway through our personal narrative unit, even though they showed spurts of ambition upon hearing my exploits with Alexa, my student’s motivation began to severely diminish with their narratives. Students always found themselves “thinking” or, in other words, spacing out until I walked up to them. They then refocused their efforts to feigning concentration, usually by placing their pencil to their mouth or chin and staring at some distant inspiration they couldn’t quite make out. Once I walked away, they relaxed and continued staring into the void. Or maybe they were truly struggling. I had to be careful I didn’t always assume their confusion was bullcrap...since that’s what I did in high school.

Unfortunately, bullcrap or not, most students couldn’t think of a story. And if they did, it barely registered as a personal narrative with real meaning and purpose. Even if they thought of a story with meaning, they never had enough support to showcase it. For example, a conversation I had with Juan, one of my reluctant students.

“Mister...the only thing I can think of is that I mow grass on the weekends.”

“Okay, awesome! So, do you do that stuff with your dad or…?”

“No.”

“Okay, so is that your job then, or you do it at your house or…?”

“No.”

“Okay, then...I’m not really sure what other options there are?”

“I don’t know. I just like to mow on the weekends.”

“Okay. Well...sounds like it’s going to be a great story!”

Unfortunately, by the time my students started to truly grasp and develop their stories, we had already closed in on our first week of revisions. So, when they should have been fixing their drafts, they were actually starting them. Like always, I held back and gave them writing days, but breaking down the lessons for each student and their own pace and speed turned into one of the most daunting processes. And at some point, we did have to forge ahead. Adhering to a flexible deadline felt like the best way to allow a little freedom to work through the critical thinking process while still motivating them to keep moving forward with their narrative.

However, this year, I had a revelation. Maybe it shouldn’t have been all that revelatory and more common sense, but I realized the revising concepts were just too abstract for my poor students to grasp. They didn’t understand whenever I explained to add specific details for these certain effects, just like I did in the THREE DIFFERENT EXAMPLES I HAD EVERYONE HIGHLIGHT, UNDERLINE, AND LABEL. Everything geared towards creating juicier, higher interest paragraphs, stronger opening or body paragraphs within their narrative. But the independent, critical thinking overwhelmed them. They had been so conditioned to be told what to write and in what specific way, they didn’t know how to self-reflect and ask themselves, “Does this sound good? Make sense? Is this even English?” Hell, I even told them to follow the structure (Mister, what’s a structure?) or to copy (God help me if I used the word emulate) the style used by the author. A sea of confused looks immediately followed.

I averaged about two-to-three kids in each class who enjoyed writing and could follow more than a half a step at a time when working. This felt like the primary focus for my job. To grow my herded students to think for themselves. They needed something more concrete. They needed something they could look at and decipher (Haha! Learning!) what moves the person used to make it effective writing. My students didn’t need a story from a textbook written by some dated author they didn’t know. They needed to see the entire essay written out for them. By me. My model essay wasn’t difficult, especially after I had displayed my arsenal of anecdotes to detail whatever I wanted to write. I didn’t want to give them my entire story, which would result in a stack of eerily similar personal narratives. But, if I let them see the effect on a story when it followed all these “abstract” concepts, it would hopefully push them to “make their story good” or, at least, “legible”. So, with that in mind, I brought back out my Heart Map!

Like I explained from my IHOP story, I intended for my Heart Map to overwhelm, at least a little. Over the four years of Heart Map tweaking and revising, I’d had plenty of time to decide what stories to add, keep, and take out. Some stories I didn’t need my students asking about. Even though, “Leaving a girl stranded at IHOP” might have tread the line of appropriate, it at least energized and engaged them right from the start.

However, with my current revelation, next I needed to decide which story would have the most impact. And then push them to ask the same question about their own lives. What is the heart of this experience? What makes it meaningful? At this point, they had heard my IHOP story, and enjoyed a good laugh. They felt sympathy about crazy high school Alexa, but it hadn’t packed the emotional gut punch I needed. I had to use something that had the ability to change from a one-dimensional Mr. Rust Story, to something more meaningful. My eyes fell on my Pontiac Sunfire breaking down. A story that, at face value, seemed just about some car problems, but really, turned into so much more. A full circle story. My emotional gut punch. Painful and powerful. Perfect.

…

Even though this story is titled “My Sunfire Circle”, it really begins with an interview. One of my first ones. At that point, life had quickly spiraled out of control. In May of 2013, my girlfriend, Christian (now my wife, woot!) and I found out about her pregnancy. While dating, I had always figured she was THE ONE anyways, but this news still shocked both of us. (Note: I also would like to mention here that I’m still extremely proud of my reaction when she told me. We were at my old college apartment in Huntsville, Texas when she slowly came out of the bathroom with her PLUS SIGN. I jumped up and hugged and hugged and kissed and hugged and kissed. I finished with a “Baby, I love you! I could freak out later, alone.) However, this news did change everything. After the unforgettable experience, no matter how much I try, of telling her parents and attempting to line everything up for our extremely unexpected life as a family, the next step involved me finding a job. No, not my sit back and relax job at the YMCA, where I currently worked. A real job. Something with a thing called Benefits (?!) and Life Insurance Policies (?!?!) and options for retirement (Retirement? Uh, I’m 24?). I had neglected finding a real teaching job for as long as I could, since I never understood the rush in finding one. But now, I had officially found my rush.

I started by applying for teaching positions at nearby schools in the area so we wouldn’t have to move too far away. However, without Christian working and our first baby on the way, we needed a teaching job that would prove sustainable for our little family. Which nixed a lot of open positions in surrounding areas. For example, when I looked at teaching positions in Huntsville ISD, I believe they listed the starting pay at roughly $30,000. $30,000?! I might as well sit on my butt at the Y! Factoring in job availability after my first round of inquiries easily showed I needed to make a strong push for a job with Conroe ISD, and, on a less aggressive scale, Montgomery and Willis ISD. None of these worked out, except for (what felt like) a pity interview with Conroe High School. But, hey! I still tried it! After my first wave of home run swings leading to strike outs, I realized I had to broaden my search. This pushed me further towards Houston, into Aldine ISD. While growing up in Montgomery, Aldine had quite the undesirable reputation, which made me hesitant to apply. (Based on my teaching experience with Aldine, (spoiler!) I did not find (most of) the rumors to be true.) But I didn’t have very many other options. And I didn’t have the time to be choosy.

I researched the district and narrowed my schools to Nimitz High School, Carver High School, and MacArthur Ninth Grade Campus. Right away, a red flag popped up. After I pressed SEND on my applications, BOOM, I quickly received three adamant, almost desperate responses. Okay, so maybe they weren’t RIGHT away, but still...30 minutes? 45 minutes? Still feels like a BOOM-worthy turnaround from applying!

“When can you come in? Tomorrow? Yeah, let’s get you in tomorrow! Two o’clock work? Three? Four? Whenever! Come in! Interview!”

Within a day of applying, I’d heard back from each school. I was quickly leaving my comfort zone. I had only really known the YMCA for the past six years, which had been my safety net occupation since my freshman year of college, so three professional interviews felt like completely foreign territory to me. The night before my interview, I stayed at Christian’s parent’s house, who lived in Porter, closer to Houston. I brought my three rarely-used button-downs I owned with my one pair of nice pants so I could rotate through the shirts and see which looked the most professional. No matter which shirt I wore, I felt like a fraud. Christian’s dad also helped teach me how to tie a Windsor knot, to even further compound my deer-in-the-headlights feeling. At least I didn’t settle for a clip-on though, right?

In my haste during my three different phone calls with the Aldine schools, I found myself with three interviews, ALL ON THE SAME DAY. I had Nimitz at noon, Carver at 2PM, and MacArthur 9th at 4PM, giving myself two-hour intervals to interview and drive from school to school. But I did enjoy feeling so adult, especially since I needed this professional teaching job to provide for my soon-to-be wife and unborn child. I had never adulted quite like this before. Exhausting, but exhilarating.

Nimitz quickly scared me away. As the assistant principal walked me into the front office for our interview, a group of large students glared at me from across the vinyl tile entryway. I vaguely remember the assistant principal’s gross understatement, “These kids can sometimes be a handful.” Later on, that same year, a report came out of a student throwing a substitute teacher across a desk because she had confiscated his cell phone. Yes, OVER HIS CELL PHONE. I dodged a dangerous, angsty teenage bullet there.

I then made my way to Carver, which seemed like a very nice school. The principal interviewed me by herself and carried herself very professionally. Carver seemed like a nice starting spot for my teaching career. I secretly put them in my MAYBE pile and made my way to MacArthur 9th.

When I first walked into the school, the whoosh of the air conditioning blasted me across the face. What a relief after the drive over in my Sunfire which, recently, had been prone to overheating, in Texas’s smoldering summers. I had driven all around North Houston at the peak of the heat. The air conditioning quickly became a necessity if my button-down shirt had any chance of making it through the day, even with the assistance of an undershirt. I hesitantly walked to the receptionist to check in, but, before I had made it halfway, Ms. Ivory in all her overblown glory barged through the office door.

Now, Ivory has many endearing qualities, but she definitely has her own unique style of doing things.

“Rust? Are you Rust?”

“Um...yes ma’am, I am.”

“We talked on the phone. Come on, we’re ready for you. Well, actually, hang on. I’ll be right back.”

Poof! She disappeared. It all happened so fast I wasn’t sure if it had happened at all. I looked to the receptionist, who had already reimmersed herself in her work, and sat back down. Just as I started making myself comfortable, she burst through the door again.

“Okay, Rust, we’re ready.”

She led me through the reception area, down a long hallway, to a large conference room. She opened the door for me, where I came face-to-face with the entire ninth grade team. Now, at the time this terrified me. I had never known an interview as anything more than a one-on-one conversation, so gathering my thoughts to try and sound professional in front of five other professional educators, let me say my button-down didn’t quite make it.

The saving grace of this intimidating process was that my interview happened to fall on casual Friday, so, even though my Mac 9 interview consisted of questions from five other adults, the formal meeting didn’t pack as much of a punch since my interrogators questioned me while wearing basketball shorts, baseball caps, and flip flops. I specifically remember Lawshe’s Houston Cougars hat and shirt along with the distinct possibility that she wore Cougars shorts as well. (So, Ms. Lawshe, where’d you go to college, again?)

The department chair also caught my attention. His shaggy hair and thick-rimmed glasses sat atop an overweight frame. While everyone else tilted their clipboards towards their midsection, his lay flat on the table, showcasing his worn Pulp Fiction shirt. Oddly enough, it comforted me to stare down Samuel L. Jackson and John Travolta pointing their .45 and 9mm at me while I answered interview questions. I instantly liked the department chair. His name was Charles.

The questions themselves breezed by and they started to show me around the school. (Note: If you are interviewing and they start showing you around...that is DEFINITELY A GOOD SIGN!) And, of course, because she just couldn’t help herself, Ms. Ivory introduced me to the principal, in typical Ivory fashion.

“Dr. Minchew, this is Gannon Rust. He’s going to be our new English teacher this year. Right, Rust?”

“Uh, ye-yes! Sure!”

Even though I'm positive I would have picked MacArthur Ninth over Nimitz and Carver, this wonderful, on-the-spot introduction sealed my fate. I would work at Mac 9 for my first year of real teaching!

They instantly threw me into the jaws of first-year teaching. The school year mercilessly moved forward like molasses. As a first year, we are told to just survive. If we make it to May, we can make any other year! The lack of tools and veteran instincts turns every day into a thousand small fires to douse with a water supply. And yet, I survived, but barely. (Believe me, once the bell rang at 2:35 for student dismissal, if I didn’t have a reason to stay, I bolted out of the building faster than anybody. In fact, most days I beat the buses, leaving to rush home to my pregnant wife. And, after early December, my wife and newborn baby. (Woot!)

I’m bypassing a year of successes and failures during my first year of teaching, but they don’t serve much of a purpose to my Sunfire breaking down. I swear the rest has relevance to the initial onset of this story. That’s enough exposition.

The week before our final week of school, I needed to stay at the school to finalize grades. By 4:30, the school and parking lot were empty, minus my Sunfire and one other car. It belonged to Charles. As I fumbled with my keys, I looked down at my car and its giant flat tire. Of course. And I’ve already stayed late. That’s what I got for being proactive. And to make matters worse, at the ripe age of 24, I had no idea how to change a flat tire.

(Note: Upon hearing this, my students destroyed me, Edmund found it particularly hilarious.

“Oh my god, mister, are you serious? I learned how to do that when I was in like 2nd grade!”

When this happened, I had two ways I could handle it. I could have taken the high road and moved on, which sounded like a perfectly viable option. But, since Edmund had his particularly obnoxious temperament on full display, I went in a different, more immature and manipulative direction. “Well, my parents divorced when I was really young so I never had a dad growing up to show me how to do those things.” Annnnnd Edmund had nothing left to say. Classy move.)

My mom had always paid for me to have coverage on her AAA account, which I don’t like telling my students, since then, to them, I’m an overprivileged, unrelatable adult. This was not the impression I wanted to leave. As I thumbed through my stack of superfluous cards in my wallet, desperately searching for the number to call, who else but Charles sauntered out the heavy back doors of Mac 9 to his vehicle, glinting in the afternoon sun, complete with its four inflated tires. He noticed me helplessly digging in my wallet, and since he knew my tendency to drag race with the buses out of the parking lot, this surely was an odd sight.

“Hey, man. What are you doing here? Everything okay?”

Thankfully, the rapport Charles and I had created throughout the school year helped me to not blow off his concern with an “Oh, I’m fine! Thanks!” or “You know how it is! Just hanging in the parking lot!” or “I just don’t feel like I’ve been at school long enough yet, so, here I am!” He had always attempted to help me as a floundering new teacher, so I didn’t feel the crippling shot at my pride to reveal I had no idea how to change a flat tire. (Although, don’t get me wrong. I still had to swallow the large lump in my throat to tell him this. Even now, reciting this story over and over again, I still have to move past my shame that comes with the memory of potentially waiting an hour for roadside assistance to change a tire for me.

“Eh, not really, man. I’ve got a flat tire and, well, I’ve never changed one before.”

I waited for the smirk, waited for the mocking comment about not knowing an essential piece of adulting. But, rather than saying anything derogatory, Charles set his messenger bag on his trunk and walked over to my Sunfire.

“Man, I remember being 18 years old and getting a flat tire on the side of the road. A cop came up behind me and, instead of changing it for me, he stood there and walked me through every step to change my tire. It took forever, but I learned. I guess I should do the same thing and maybe you can pass it onto someone else whenever they need it.”

And maintaining the master patience that characterizes an amazing and effective teacher, Charles walked me through all the steps to change my tire, including little tips and tricks to make it easier each time I had to do it. Since this incident, I have changed my tire approximately five times and, everytime I do, I think back to this moment and what Charles instructed me to do. If only what I teach my kids in my English class stuck this much. In all his calm and collected glory, Charles rummaged through the avalanche of garbage in my trunk to find my donut, laid on the concrete with me, scuffing his white button-down and sweating through the rest of his clothes in the process. And in the heat of 4PM, we mercifully tightened the last lug nut on the donut and threw the flat tire in the backseat. With my wife and newborn daughter waiting for me at home, and probably a beer or two, I couldn’t express my gratitude enough.

“Man, how can I ever make this up to you? Thank you so much.”

Charles wiped his hands on his decimated work pants and put the rudimentary jack back beneath the floorboard of my trunk.

“Well,” he said, now smirking at me. “How about this? So, you know how every Friday me and a handful of people from the school go to Carlo’s Mexican Restaurant for Happy Hour drinks and every Friday we invite you and every Friday you say you can’t go for whatever reason you have that week?”

“...yes…”

“Well, we have two Fridays left in the school year. And you have never gone. So, to pay me back, I want you to come out next Friday for Happy Hour.”

That sounds silly, right? Isn’t it sad that THAT’S how he wants me to pay him back? By hanging out with my coworkers? My first year of teaching and living with my pregnant fiance, and then my fiance and newborn baby in a foreign part of North Houston in a tiny apartment off a busy street roughly compared to a flaming can of garbage. And yet, for some reason, I always struggled to do anything social. I originally blamed it on the nightmarish traffic on Fm1960 if I came home too late. It added another hour to my commute. Yuck. So, my social interactions with coworkers definitely left much to be desired. Not to mention the different social environment that comes with seeing these people outside of work when we don’t have the safety net of the work day to fill in the gaps in our conversations. Even though the traffic didn’t help, my introverted tendencies secretly spurred on my reluctance. I didn’t know what I could possibly have in common with these people OUTSIDE of school. But I wanted to show my gratitude so, reluctantly, I agreed.

Part Two Coming Soon!

#education #teaching #students #learning #life lessons #mindset #sunfire #covid 19 #covid pandemi #adulting #cringe #awkward #funny

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