Classrooms are microbial stews. Especially when both parents must work, feverish kids come to school because the school nurse’s office feels more comforting than an empty house. Kids come to school because they want to play afternoon soccer, ignoring the pain in their joints and throat. Kids come to school because they feel fine in the morning and don’t expect yesterday’s fever and aches to return later in the afternoon. If nobody’s home, the school will be providing healthcare as the nurse or a secretary searches for parents or an emergency contact.

Or nobody will be providing healthcare because the kid knows his parents have to work, doesn’t want to go to the nurses office, and is just hoping to slip by unnoticed.

Eduhonesty: Shell out the $$ for that supersize bottle of hand sanitizer. If you have a few dollars to spare, Bath and Body Works carries fiercely fragrant little bottles of scented sanitizers. A bottle of Lemon Buttercream or Black Cherry Merlot hand sanitizer provides cheap aroma therapy as you walk aisles and check classwork. Kids light up in smiles sometimes when you share a few drops of that Lemon Buttercream, too.

I am back on hand sanitizer (some longtime readers may be thinking yada, yada, yada) because of those cheap hand dryers and no paper towels from my post yesterday. I’ve run the math for bathroom stops during passing periods and I KNOW that many students are skipping the drying portion of that stop, and some of those will skip washing if they can’t dry their hands. Bottles of hand sanitizer become pure self-defense in the absence of soap and water.

Many of the school windows that still open will be closing in the next few weeks. While planning, meeting, professionally developing, grouping, grading, regrouping, testing and creating data spreadsheets for administrations, swamped teachers necessarily let small details escape. For your own sake, move hand sanitizer from the “C” list to the “A” list. Then remind students to use that sanitizer, especially the ones who keep visiting the Kleenex box. If your class uses the sanitizer responsibly, bottles in front and back of the class will encourage use.*

It’s also time to get a flu shot.

*Recent example of irresponsible hand sanitizer use: While subbing, a student in my class squirted hand sanitizer into the pencil sharpener. In some classes, that sanitizer simply has to be in the teacher’s line of sight and away from certain kids.