‘In the Heights’ celebrates the resilience Washington Heights has used to fight the COVID-19 pandemic
This article originally appeared on The Conversation on June 11, 2021
With camera work that swoops from rooftops to street corners, the film “In the Heights” brings to life the dynamism of northern Manhattan’s Washington Heights neighborhood.
Directed by Jon M. Chu, “In the Heights” updates Lin-Manuel Miranda and Quiara Alegría Hudes’ Tony Award-winning musical of the same name. Set in a changing neighborhood defined by Dominicans and Latino immigrants, the film eloquently expresses the feel of a hardworking place where your block is your home and a 10-minute walk is a journey to another world.
For me, the film hit home. It brought me back to the years I spent researching and writing my book “Crossing Broadway: Washington Heights and the Promise of New York City,” when I interviewed residents, walked police patrols and dug into municipal records.
In Washington Heights, long home to a mosaic of ethnic groups, some people have recoiled from human differences and huddled up in tight but exclusionary enclaves – ignorant of their neighbors at best, nasty toward them at worst.
Other residents, street-smart cosmopolitans, learned to cross racial and ethnic boundaries to save their neighborhood from crime, decayed housing and inadequate schools. In the 1990s, their efforts turned Washington Heights, once known for a murderous drug trade, into a gentrification hot spot.
My book was released in paperback during the fall of 2019. Just five months later, COVID-19 came.
Could a neighborhood already grappling with the challenges of gentrification – a prominent theme of “In the Heights” – survive a global health disaster? And could a film conceived before COVID-19 emerged speak to a city that sometimes seems to be transformed by the pandemic?
So far – and even though Washington Heights stands out in Manhattan for its suffering due to the coronavirus pandemic – the answer is a cautious yes.
But that painful victory, won with vaccines, local institutions and local ingenuity, will be valuable only if enough can be learned from northern Manhattan’s solidarity and activism to build a healthier and more just city as the pandemic recedes.
A neighborhood rife with vulnerabilities
Like other immigrant neighborhoods confronting the pandemic, Washington Heights and Inwood – the neighborhood to its immediate north – faced serious vulnerabilities.
Immigrant labor and business acumen rescued New York City from the urban crisis in the 1970s and 1980s, when white flight, job losses, a withering tax base and high crime devastated the city.
But as my co-author David M. Reimers and I pointed out in “All the Nations Under Heaven: Immigrants, Migrants and the Making of New York,” the rebuilt city is marked by inequality. Rents are astronomic, so families in Washington Heights and Inwood often double up to make costs more bearable. In the face of an easily transmitted disease, overcrowded housing was a ticking bomb.
Residents in these uptown neighborhoods were also endangered by their jobs. In a city where many white-collar workers could work from home on their laptops, a disproportionate number of Washington Heights residents had to venture out to staff stores, clean buildings, deliver groceries and provide health and child care. As one uptown resident told me, her neighbors weren’t worrying about gaining 15 pounds – they were worried whether their next customer would infect them.
Equally troubling, many uptown residents had nowhere to run to. In more affluent neighborhoods, like the Upper East Side where I live, many people with country houses could decamp. In Washington Heights and Inwood, most people hunkered down in their apartments.
Bonds forged in mutual struggle
Nevertheless, Washington Heights and Inwood have strengths born in the hard experience of making a new home in New York.
The neighborhood has long been the destination of newcomers to the city, among them African Americans escaping Jim Crow, Irish immigrants putting behind them political and economic hardship, Puerto Ricans looking for prosperity, Eastern European Jews in flight from pogroms, German Jewish refugees from Nazism and Greeks expelled from Istanbul. In the 1970s, Dominicans fleeing political repression and economic hardship began to arrive in transforming numbers, along with a small but significant number of Soviet Jews escaping anti-Semitism.
For all their differences the German Jews, Soviet Jews and Dominicans had one thing in common: individual and collective memories of living with three brutal dictators – Hitler, Stalin and Rafael Trujillo. Such experiences were traumatic and could foster a tendency to stick to the safety of your own kind, but they also bred resilience.
Starting in the 1970s, and with cumulative impact by the late 1990s, significant numbers of these residents crossed racial and ethnic boundaries to revive and strengthen their neighborhood.
Thirty years later, when federal authority was absent and the pandemic surged, public-spirited residents – fortified by community institutions – stepped up again. In both cases, it was a clear example of what the sociologist Robert J. Sampson has called “collective efficacy.”
The community steps up
Back when the neighborhood was ravaged by the crack epidemic, Dave Crenshaw, the son of African American political activists, took action. Crenshaw set up athletic activities with the Uptown Dreamers – a youth group that combined sports, community service and educational uplift. The program gave young people, especially women, an alternative to dangerous streets.
When the COVID-19 pandemic erupted, Crenshaw built on his track record. He worked with The Community League of the Heights, a community development organization founded in 1952, Word Up, a community bookshop and arts space dating to 2011, and students from Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health. Together, they distributed food and masks, cleaned up grubby street corners, and got people tested and vaccinated.
Further north, the YM-YWHA of Washington Heights and Inwood, founded in 1917, built on its record of serving both Jews and the entire community. Victoria Neznansky – a social worker from the former Soviet Union – worked with her staff to help traumatized families, distribute money to people in need, and bring together two restaurants – one kosher and one Dominican – to feed homebound neighborhood residents.
At Uplift NYC, an uptown nonprofit with strong local roots, Domingo Estevez and Lucas Almonte had anticipated, during the summer of 2020, running summer programs that included a tech camp, basketball and a youth hackathon. When the pandemic struck, they nimbly shifted to providing culturally familiar foods – like plantains, chickens and Cafe Bustelo coffee – to neighbors in need and people who couldn’t go outside.
Arts and media organizations eased the isolation of lockdown. When the pandemic loomed, blogger Led Black, at the local website the Uptown Collective, told readers that “solidarity is the only way forward.” In his posts he shared his griefs and vented his rage at President Donald Trump. He closed every column with “Pa’Lante Siempre Pa’Lante!” or “Forward, Always Forward!”
Inwood Art Works, which promotes local artists and the arts, shut down a film festival scheduled for March 2020 and started “Short Film Fridays,” a weekly presentation of local films on YouTube. The organization also launched the “New York City Quarantine Film Festival,” which explored topics such as life uptown in the COVID-19 pandemic, the beauty of uptown parks and the life of an essential worker.
Dreams of a better life
Of course, Washington Heights suffered during the pandemic.
Beloved local businesses vanished. Foremost among them was Coogan’s, a bar and restaurant that was the unofficial town hall of upper Manhattan, whose life and death were chronicled in the documentary “Coogan’s Way,” which is now screening at film festivals.
Families were forced to live with unemployment, isolation and fear of infection. As the social fabric frayed, loud noise levels and reckless driving of motorcycles and all-terrain vehicles raised alarm. Worst of all, the neighborhood’s residents died at rates greater than in Manhattan overall.
In Washington Heights and the rest of New York City, the coronavirus pandemic exposed long-brewing inequalities. It also illuminated character, community, strong local institutions and dreams of a better life. All these receive loving and lyrical attention in “In the Heights.”
We live, I believe, in an era when it is important to see the strengths that immigrants and their institutions bring to our cities. This film could not have come at a better time.
Professor Emeritus of Journalism and American Studies, Rutgers University - Newark
This article originally appeared on The Conversation
How to Support Teens’ Mental Health During COVID and Beyond
Teens are struggling during the pandemic. Here's what they need from us right now.
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
It’s been more than a year since the COVID-19 pandemic changed life as we knew it. Many families across the country have been living in “survival mode.” Tweens and teens continue to experience a range of emotions, including sadness, anger, and fear. If left unresolved, these feelings can take a toll on health and well-being.
Parents of teens share similar struggles. According to Lauren, a mother of two teens in Woodland Hills, California, “My daughter has a hard time spending so much of her day on screens. She says having to do so makes her feel more anxiety than she already was feeling.” Nancy, a mother of two teen boys in Chevy Chase, Maryland, says, “Junior year is supposed to be a key year in high school before college. But my son has shut down.” And Rafaela, whose daughter attends high school in New York City, says, “My daughter is completely stressed about having to go back to school in person because she worries she’s going to get coronavirus.”
Sound familiar? In a survey of more than 4,600 people in Canada last spring, more than a third of families said they felt “very or extremely” anxious about family stress resulting from the pandemic.
When it comes to teens’ emotional and mental health, they are experiencing a crisis, says Dr. Edith Bracho-Sanchez, a primary care pediatrician and assistant professor of pediatrics at Columbia University Irving Medical Center. Even before the pandemic, more than 16% of youth in the United States dealt with a mental health disorder, according to a 2019 study in JAMA Pediatrics.
Bracho-Sanchez, who often treats families in Latino and Black communities that have been disproportionately affected by COVID-19, says the pandemic created the perfect storm of emotional turbulence. “Families are experiencing a lot of stress. Many have lost jobs. They’ve fallen behind on rent. The rates of food insecurity have skyrocketed. All of these things are really hard for everyone in the family—teens included.” Add to these issues virtual schooling, fear of family members getting sick or dying from COVID, feeling isolated and disconnected—it’s no wonder doctors are seeing higher levels of anxiety and depression in teens.
As parents, we can’t control the course of the pandemic. But we can help teens by modeling good coping skills, encouraging healthy habits, and working to understand and relate to what they are going through.
Understand what teens are going through
The first step toward supporting young people through this challenging time is for caring adults to have empathy for the teen experience. And to work to understand how their developmental stage impacts their emotional well-being.
Adolescence is a time when tweens and teens are supposed to be stretching their boundaries and testing limits. That means getting out of the house and trying new things. Figuring out their place among peers and within their communities. Making mistakes and learning how to bounce back. But during the COVID-19 pandemic, as a matter of safety, tweens and teens are limited from many growth opportunities. And that flies in the face of typical teen development.
For teens, peer relationships are a big deal. Their brains are designed to feel rewarded when they socialize, in some ways more so than adults. Spending time with friends helps them discover their identities and gives them the courage to move away from the family and into the larger world. Being restricted from exploring this aspect of themselves may leave them feeling lonely and bored, and it goes against the messages their brain’s reward centers are sending.
And let’s not forget the missed milestones. From birthdays to graduations to religious or cultural celebrations of growth, adolescence is also a time of important rites of passage. But these celebrations didn’t happen or looked dramatically different in the past year. Teens feel a true sense of loss for missing out on important affirmations that remind them they’re growing up.
On top of all that, the pandemic has diminished teens’ support systems or eliminated some altogether. Besides parents, teens often get support from other caring adults, including extended family and kin networks—grandparents, aunts and uncles, cousins, and others. Caring connections may also stem from teachers, coaches, after-school staff, or religious leaders. In normal times, schools also play an important part in providing mental health services for adolescents; research finds that just over a third of teens who get mental health services get them only at school. With these support channels disrupted, parents have an even bigger role to play in supporting teens’ mental health
Strategies to support teen coping
Start with yourself. One of the most important strategies for parents looking to help their teens is too often ignored: self-care. Parents must take care of themselves. You know, the whole “put your oxygen mask on first” concept. When parents show teens the hard but productive work it takes to cope with stress, they’re teaching them how to face challenges.
Children haven’t fully developed the ability to regulate emotions, so they need to co-regulate with the important adults in their lives. They look to see how their parents and other trusted adults are coping to figure out how they should react. They “borrow” our calm and gain a sense of safety by watching us. But they can just as easily “borrow” our frenzy or catastrophic thinking.
Dr. Ken Ginsburg, director of the Center for Parent and Teen Communication, cautions it’s not as simple as just acting calm around your kids. “Looking like a duck calmly gliding on water is not actually the answer. While it may lend stability, it doesn’t teach strategy. As parents, we want to look like the duck moving through the water but also let our children see that our feet are paddling quickly underneath to help us stay afloat.”
Bracho-Sanchez says when she’s working with teens, she often first considers where the parents are in their own mental health and self-care journey. “I think we sometimes forget that until the parent has enough food, a safe place to live, a stable income . . . it’s really hard for them to help in a way that is sustainable. And until we have provided the parents with resources to care for their own mental health, it will be difficult to create the healing environment that we so badly want for all of our kids.”
Ways for parents to model good self-care for their teens include spending time with others (in a safe way), healthy eating, exercising, getting enough sleep, and making time to relax. Consider relaxation techniques such as meditation, yoga, reading a book, listening to calming music, or enjoying a hobby. Encourage your tweens and teens to de-stress and take part in self-care routines, as well. Let your teen know these are important tools to take back control of their bodies and minds.
Check in with teens. Amid all the changes and chaos stemming from the pandemic, how do parents learn how their teens are really doing? Ginsburg stresses the importance of listening and taking cues from what teens are saying. And if they’re not saying much, ask open-ended questions that show you care about their well-being. For parents struggling to find the words, try saying, “This is a tough time. I want to know how you’re experiencing this. What are you finding that’s helping you get through it? How can I support you?” Parents don’t have to offer immediate solutions—sometimes kids just need a sympathetic ear.
Re-establish routines. My daughter is in high school, but during the pandemic it has felt like she (and many of her friends) have adopted more of a college-age lifestyle. Staying up late, talking to friends at all hours, sleeping in, snacking throughout the day instead of eating at regular mealtimes. There’s been a loss of structure. Social media and blog posts confirmed my suspicion that parents across the country are witnessing similar things happen with teens in their homes.
It’s essential for our teen’s mental health to get back some structure. Routines offer a sense of order that is calming in the midst of uncertainty. Help your teen re-establish bed- and wake-up times. Encourage them to get dressed in the morning, eat regular meals, and spend time away from screens.
Set the tone. Parents and caring adults can adopt an attitude that is honest, future-oriented, and hopeful. This doesn’t mean denying problems exist. These may be challenging times, but it is also an opportunity to demonstrate how to manage uncertainty. A time to find creative ways to re-connect. And a chance to build resilience.
While it may be difficult to keep a positive mindset, focus on what you can control and remind your children things will get better in the future. Part of this viewpoint includes looking at the reality of the situation and teaching them to believe that their actions (or inaction) make a difference. For example, if watching television news about the pandemic all the time is adding to your teen’s stress, remind them that while they can’t control what appears on the news, they can determine how much they watch. Choosing to turn it off, watch less, or vary the source of programs can impact their ability to maintain a more positive outlook.
Don’t forget joy. As the number of vaccinations continues to rise, Bracho-Sanchez has been encouraging families to (safely) find joy in their lives once again. “Families have been in survival mode for a while now. And when you’re just surviving there’s so much that you don’t allow yourself to do and feel. Families have so much culture and tradition that they can bring to their young people.” She focuses on joy because it’s a powerful emotion for getting through hard times.
For example, my daughter and I have been enjoying putting our own spin on old family recipes. Quincineras, bar and bat mitzvahs—often large, extended family celebrations—are alternatively being enjoyed with immediate family at home as friends and other family members take part “virtually.” Some families are creating new rituals. A friend now works with his kids to come up with “reflection and gratitude” prompts that they write down on slips of folded paper. They open one at dinner to start conversations about things they have to be grateful for and happy about.
Seek help. Sometimes it’s beyond our ability to help teens improve their emotional and mental health. Seeking help from others is an act of great strength. If parents feel unstable or if their own mental health is challenged, there is power in seeking help for yourself and modeling that “I don’t deserve to feel this way. I want to take the steps needed to feel better,” says Ginsburg.
There are many places to reach out for professional help. Find a psychologist near you from the American Psychological Association or ask your personal doctor for local counseling service providers. There are also professionals trained to help children and teens get through tough times. The family pediatrician or a school counselor is a good starting point. You can also reach out to someone you trust in the community for local resources.
Moving toward a new normal
As the pandemic wanes, Ginsburg, who is also author of Building Resilience in Children and Teens: Giving Kids Roots and Wings, says there’s a real opportunity for families and communities to better support teens’ emotional well-being.
Many parents wonder what’s going to happen to this group of teenagers after living through these unprecedented times. What they want to hear is that kids are resilient and will bounce back to normal in no time.
But Ginsburg has a slightly different answer. He says adults first must intentionally work to ensure teens have the support systems in place to help manage the enormous amount of stress they are still under. He adds, “I hope things don’t go back to the way they were before the pandemic. Every generation is shaped by what it’s exposed to during adolescence, and this generation has been exposed to an understanding that human beings need each other. This could be the greatest generation ever if they are shaped by this essential truth.”
Award-winning journalist, writer, and blogger
Executive producer and director of digital content at the Center for Parent and Teen Communication at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
How the media may be making the COVID-19 mental health epidemic worse
This article originally appeared on The Conversation
Since the pandemic began, anxiety rates in the U.S. have tripled; the rate of depression has quadrupled. Now research is suggesting the media is part of the problem. Constantly watching and reading news about COVID-19 may be hazardous for your mental health.
We are professors who study the psychological effects on people caught up in crisis, violence and natural disasters. COVID-19 surely qualifies as a crisis, and our survey of more than 1,500 U.S. adults clearly showed that those experiencing the most media exposure about the pandemic had more stress and depression.
It’s understandable. The intimations of death and suffering, and the images of overwhelmed hospitals and intubated patients can be terrifying. COVID-19 has created an infodemic; members of the public are overwhelmed with more information than they can manage. And much of that information, especially online, includes disturbing rumors, conspiracy theories and unsubstantiated statements that confuse, mislead and frighten.
Stress worse for some than others
A June 2020 study of 5,412 U.S. adults says 40% of respondents reported struggling with mental health or substance use issues. This finding did not address whether respondents had COVID-19. Since then, some people who had COVID-19 are now reporting mental health issues that appeared within 90 days after their illness subsided.
Taking care of a relative or friend with the virus might result in mental health problems, and even just knowing someone with COVID-19 can be stressful. And if a family member or friend dies from it, anxiety and depression often follow the grief. This is even more likely if the individual dies alone – or if a memorial isn’t possible because of the pandemic.
Essential workers, from hospitals to grocery stores, have a higher risk for COVID-related mental health problems. This is particularly true for health care workers caring for patients who ultimately died from the virus.
Black and Hispanic adults also report more mental health issues, including substance abuse and thoughts of suicide. Having access to fewer resources and experiencing the systemic racism running through much of U.S. health care may be two of the factors. The COVID-19 pandemic also intersected with episodes of police violence toward Black Americans. This alone may have exacerbated mental health problems.
Children, young adults and college students also show comparatively worse mental health reactions. This could be due to the disconnect they feel, brought on by the isolation from peers, the loss of support from teachers and the disappearance of daily structure.
Setting limits essential
Staying informed is critical, of course. But monitor how much media you’re consuming, and assess how it affects you. If you are constantly worrying, feeling overwhelmed, or having difficulty sleeping, you may be taking in too much COVID media. If this is happening to you, take a break from the news and do other things to help calm your mind.
Parents should frequently check in with children to see how they are affected. Listening to and validating their concerns – and then providing honest responses to their questions – can be enormously helpful. If a child is having difficulty talking about it, the adult can start with open-ended questions (“How do you feel about what is happening?”). Reassure children that everything is being done to protect them and discuss ways to stay safe: Wear a mask, socially distance, wash hands.
Finally, you can model and encourage good coping skills for your children. Remind young people that good things are still happening in the world. Work together to list healthy ways to cope with COVID-19 stress. Then do them. These activities will help your children cope – and it will be good for you too.
Associate Professor of Communication and Public Health, University of Missouri-Columbia
University of Tennessee, College of Social Work, University of Tennessee
This article originally appeared on The Conversation
Gaming and the COVID-19 Pandemic
As an avid gamer, I’m very familiar with the all-too-common phrases from parents about my gaming habits. From Mom telling me to “put my Nintendo away and go outside” to Dad worrying that “I should be spending more time with friends.” Their concerns were similar to most parents with teenage children, worrying about the effects of video games on my social health and academics.
But with the novel coronavirus setting the entire world into a time of uncertainty, where social isolation is prevalent, we turn to media and entertainment. Video games provide comfort and support as we battle a social capital standstill. While parents of teens worry about video games negatively impacting their children, they can find comfort in research that shows how collaborative video games positively influence individuals. Online gaming could prove to be a great source of social support, as well as a means to create prosocial environments (social behavior that benefits society or other individuals other than the individual themselves) both on-screen and off-screen.
Games such as ‘World of Warcraft’ (WoW), ‘Among Us,’ and even ‘Call of Duty’ encourage group play through collaborative tasks, adventures and characters that naturally compliment different players’ abilities. These Massively Multiplayer Online-Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) allow thousands of individual players to come together to play in an immersive and detailed environment filled with adventures and quests. In games like these, prosocial behavior is encouraged and rewarded. Players have a sense of obligation towards other members of their ‘guild’ (groups of players that play games together) as they go through quests and raids, offering a social structure in which prosocial behavior is essential to success. These types of collaborative and social games can be particularly useful for users with physical disabilities that hinder their movement outside the home, or in the current socially isolated state of the world.
These MMORPGs are highly social environments that allow for strong friendships to form and many of them utilize chat features and messaging boards to connect players. The “Social Side of Gaming” expands on the benefits of collaborative gaming on video game players, stating that sharing online space within games enhances the formation of social capital and fosters friendships offline. Some researchers attribute this type of gameplay to the idea of being “alone together,” which in times of social isolation and social distancing can be a positive psychological and cognitively clinical advantage. In simpler terms, gaming can reduce the stress of isolation and help facilitate social interaction and friendships in teens.
Being alone together within games allows players the autonomy to choose their gameplay while also providing a rich social environment. Many players utilizing MMORPGs indicate that a very social environment is their primary factor for choosing to play these types of games. The academic research also suggests that the “gameplay within these virtual worlds is enhanced because players not only use them as the game originally was intended to be played but also as arenas in which to explore new relationships, new places, and themselves.” Online gaming also contributes to a higher social capital amongst groups in games with more interactive play, thus creating social ties that extend outside of the game itself. This shows us that online gaming creates bridges for social networks that then create outlets for social support and social capital.
Many of these online interactive games allow players to be “more of themselves” than they otherwise would be as their offscreen self, adding to the enjoyment of the games and creating a social benefit for those who may not be able to do so in real life. In these uncertain times, it seems to be reasonable to relax on video game restrictions and allow teens the ability to connect in whatever way they are able to. The social atmospheres and ability to collaborate with other individuals just might be the key to this new online world we are collectively experiencing. It might not be a good old-fashioned hangout with friends, side-by-side, but for avid gamers it feels just the same.
Parents reading this might still be a little skeptical, and content creators might wonder “so what next in gaming creation?” So, here are some tips for parents to help relax their minds and even bond with their gamers a little more, and some advice for content creators on what to include in your next game.
Actionable Insights
Here are Actionable Insights for Parents on Video Games and their Teens:
Not all games are created equally. Check the age rating on any games you might get your kid.
If you are able to, play the game. Understanding the dynamics of the gaming world will help you understand the social world your kids are in.
Take an interest in what your child is playing. Ask about the characters, the narratives and objectives, and if there is a multiplayer option, play the game with them. The more invested you are in their play, the more information you get about your child’s social needs.
Use content restrictions on games for younger children. Many MMORPGs have filters where you can designate the age range of other players that your child can interact with. (i.e. only players between the ages of 13-16 can interact on the game)
Here are Actionable Insights for Content Creators of Video Games:
Write diverse characters that rely on interaction and prosocial behavior to succeed in the game.
Create reward systems that increase the likelihood of helping behavior and punish antisocial behavior.
When writing NPC (Non-player Characters), take a special interest in developing side quests that encourage everyday helping behaviors (i.e. an older woman asking a character to retrieve her chickens or deliver her mail for her).
Create info guides for parents on your game to help facilitate communication between players and caregivers.
Michelle Leccese, MA Psychology
Supporting Science in an Age of Denial
As the world grapples with the ongoing devastation of climate change coupled with a global pandemic, it’s more important than ever that we turn to science for answers and solutions. Unfortunately, political agendas are clouding objective scientific data, making it increasingly difficult to protect our most vulnerable populations and preserve the planet for our youth.
In the United States, this problem runs all the way up to our highest office. During a September meeting with California officials to discuss the recent scourge of wildfires – one of many spikes in natural disasters that scientists have definitively linked to climate change – the president disregarded the scientific data presented to him.
“I don’t think science knows, actually.”
As a concerned citizen and a professional writer, I find it deeply frustrating when politicians engage in fictional storytelling – weaving narratives to bolster their personal agendas at the expense of those they’ve pledged to serve. Even though many of us content creators are engaged in crafting works of fiction, I believe that it’s our civic responsibility to practice what Ernest Hemingway preached.
“The writer’s job is to tell the truth.”
In order to do that, let’s check in with what science actually does know about climate change. NASA recently compiled a vast collection of international studies from peer-reviewed scientific journals, reporting that 97% or more of actively publishing climate scientists have come to the same consensus, with over 95% certainty. The destructive impact of climate change is “the result of human activity since the mid-20th century and proceeding at a rate that is unprecedented over decades to millennia.”
With such overwhelming scientific data in our hands, why would anyone, particularly those with the power to mitigate humanity’s role in this accelerated planetary destruction, deny that climate change exists? To answer this question, we need to take some advice from the 1976 film All the President’s Men.
“Follow the money.”
After compiling data from every country, Statista found that the world’s top oil producer – the United States – was also home to the world’s most climate change deniers. “Other countries with high rates of deniers were Saudi Arabia and Australia, two more countries reliant on oil products for exports or use at home. Scandinavian countries also ranked highly, with oil nation Norway recording the second-highest rate of people believing in climate change not caused by humans.”
When you look at this data alongside the fact that just 100 fossil fuel companies are responsible for 71% of global emissions, and then factor in a recent study showing that oil and gas companies give more money to congress members with voting records against the environment, some clear motivations come into focus behind the false narrative of climate change denial. The same people who deny climate change also claim that solutions like the Green New Deal are too expensive, even as Scientific American reports that “such policies are now more urgent than ever” and “offer a timely framework for future fiscal stimulus.”
Naomi Oreskes, a Harvard historian of science, pointed out the familiar ways in which the COVID-19 crisis has echoed the steps of climate change denial. “First, one denies the problem, then one denies its severity, and then one says it is too difficult or expensive to fix, and/or that the proposed solution threatens our freedom.”
The threat-to-freedom narrative invoked against scientifically proven life-saving masks rose to a new level when President Trump himself contracted COVID-19, along with several others in the White House. In the aftermath of these diagnoses, which arose following a largely maskless political gathering, the administration affirmed that there would remain no mandatory mask mandate in the White House because wearing a mask is a “personal choice.” This declaration came hot on the heels of a Cornell University study that analyzed over 38 million news articles about the pandemic and revealed that, “the president of the United States was the single largest driver of misinformation around COVID.”
President Trump has continuously pushed to reopen the economy, even when COVID cases were peaking in July and a senior scholar with the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security reported, “It’s very clear that the increasing caseload is due to premature relaxing of the containment measures.”
This rush to reboot the failing economy in a reelection year has coincided with a campaign to reopen schools so that parents can return to work. At a September rally, President Trump claimed that the virus affects “virtually” no young people – a direct contradiction to a World Health Organization report from a month earlier citing that the proportion of young people with COVID-19 had tripled in five months.
Indeed, when it comes to both climate change and the COVID-19 pandemic, the health and prosperity of our youth are in immediate and existential jeopardy. But even as they face overwhelming climate grief and anxiety over an uncertain future, our younger generations are not standing by and letting their elders destroy their world without a fight.
UNICEF reported an uptick in youth activism online in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic; and youth-led organizations like The Sunrise Movement have gained swift momentum in the fight for a climate revolution. As young people work to shift the narrative from apathy and despair towards action and revolution, professional storytellers should follow suit.
Actionable Insights
In the face of false narratives that disregard science and threaten our planet’s future, here are some actionable insights for content creators:
Avoid treating climate change or COVID-19 data as a subjective or partisan issue. Stick to objective scientific facts and call out unfounded lies for what they are.
Show the roots of science denial in the fossil fuel industry and the motivations of politicians who accept money from such interests.
Depict the ways in which youth are impacted by the destructive politics of older generations, including the very real emotional toll of climate anxiety.
When depicting the devastating impact of climate change in your stories, combat apathy and despair by highlighting real-world solutions, offering hope for a reimagined future.
Rather than showing social media as a corruptive scourge of our youth, authentically portray the young people who are using it to spread accurate information and rally social movements.
Depict Gen Z and Gen Alpha characters not through self-involved stereotypes, but rather as a civically involved group fighting for their own future.
As Susan Ostermann wrote in her article “Why Politicizing Science is a Problem” for Notre Dame University’s Keough School of Global Affairs, “integral human development in the coronavirus era requires us to consider the dignity of the individual person, whose health and safety in this case depends on the availability of accurate information, expert guidance and responsible political leadership.”
In the absence of such responsible political leadership, let’s use our platforms as storytellers to uphold accurate information and expert guidance, promoting health and prosperity for all. The fate of the human race is our story to tell, but only the truth will ensure us a happy ending.
Brian McAuley, MFA
WGA Screenwriter
Adjunct Professor, Columbia University
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers
Disclaimer: The views, thoughts, and opinions expressed in this blog belong solely to the author, and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers.
Mining 21st-Century Skills at Home with Technology
This article is part of our #LearningAtHome2020 series with the Child & Family Blog and BOLD
Just one year ago, the phrase “learning at home” may have conjured different images for parents and educators, unless home-schooling was already the norm. Families the world over have experienced disruptions to daily life and the challenges of distance learning brought on by the pandemic. Teachers with a reluctance for technology in the classroom have had to make an abrupt shift to reach their students. Parents who have chosen to limit their children’s time with digital devices have been challenged by the inevitable increase in screen time as education went virtual. The line between work and home life has blurred, just as the line between screen time and simply, time, is ever-blurring.
I’m sure your family could use a break from the math or literacy talk, so I’m going to give you some ideas on how you can encourage your children’s development of 21st-century skills such as critical thinking, communication, and creativity through digital play. This is not nearly as daunting a task as it seems. After all, parents and caregivers are children’s first educators and the home environment is their first classroom. Children learn, develop, and make sense of their world through play. But just as screen time and “time” are increasingly intertwined, our use of digital media as tools for learning needs to evolve. We need to literally think outside the TV or touchscreen box and not be constrained by it.
An example of a playful, open-ended digital world is the video game, Minecraft. In Minecraft, the sky is the limit--within this world, players are bound by their own imaginations. For this reason, Minecraft presents many opportunities to foster a number of 21st-century skills.
The 4 Cs: Communication, Collaboration, Creativity, and Critical Thinking
Video games abound with opportunities for social connection and collaboration. Collaboration involves two or more people in a shared effort to learn or solve a problem together. Susan Danby and colleagues provided detailed accounts of children helping each other succeed in various digital environments, and in various regions of the world (Norway, Sweden, and Australia). They provided an example of Australian siblings, ages 4 and 7 years old, traversing a shared digital world (Minecraft) as they acquired resources and combatted zombies. Even though the two children were on their own devices, they engaged in play that demonstrated communication patterns indicative of collaboration and instruction. Children who play games together learn perspective-taking and must consider each others’ shared knowledge.
While the potential to learn and develop 21st-century skills in massive multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG) such as Minecraft exists, transferring these skills to the real-world is less straightforward. When I was the lab manager at the Swinburne Babylab in Australia, I remember entertaining a sibling of one of our research participants. I say “entertaining,” but in reality, I provided him with scrap paper and colored pencils and his imagination took care of the rest. I was so impressed as he explained that he was drawing and planning a building that he would later construct in Minecraft. This is just one example of how the digital world and the physical world can connect to encourage the transfer of skills, such as creativity.
In addition to creativity, researchers have also found that playing Minecraft encourages critical thinking and problem-solving; students who used Minecraft to accomplish various tasks commented on how the game-design forced them to think outside the box. This innovative and creative approach to problem-solving was also shown in a group of 13 year-olds who completed an 8-week workshop in which they were asked to create and explain their products in Minecraft. After the workshop, students’ scores on a test of creativity improved, and their teacher also observed improvements in the students’ creativity. Not only does Minecraft enable the user to have creative freedom, but it can also encourage players to seek information from outside resources, such as reading content on forums or watching or creating Youtube tutorials, etc. This multimodal literacy is referred to as metagaming.
Actionable Insights
Content creators can provide learning opportunities for children by:
Creating open-ended environments that lack an explicit goal, “freedom of play”
Providing opportunities to help characters. Prosocial content promotes prosocial behaviors such as helping and empathy.
Having more tools to choose from to encourage greater creativity in problem-solving.
Providing opportunities to interact with and explore the environment.
Encouraging replayability by making sure the game experience isn’t linear or the same every time.
Content creators can help parents create learning opportunities for their children by:
Providing a curriculum with suggestions on how to take the digital content to the real world and practice specific skills, depending on the goal.
e.g., plan a garden in Minecraft and then plant a real garden
Recognizing that the digital world extends beyond its intended medium, and children can create educational videos for others to improve their gameplay or participate in online forums to share ideas.
Happy playing!
Brittany Huber, PhD
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers
Supporting Parents with Children’s Distance Learning
This article is part of our #LearningAtHome2020 series with the Child & Family Blog and BOLD
If you’re a parent of a school-aged child - or know a parent - you know about the anxieties and challenges around children’s distance-learning. Earlier this year when many states shut down schools for in-person learning, teachers and parents scrambled to support kids in making the quick transition. Parents’ and caregivers’ roles shifted overnight, requiring them to be co-teachers and co-learners as they tried to support kids with distance learning. And this is just the parents who are able to stay home with kids. Many parents had to go to their job sites and leave their kids to fend for themselves. Months later, it is clear that distance learning is not going away. Many schools will transition back to hybrid learning, which means some will be in-person and some at-home. There have been, and will also likely be, more outbreaks that cause some re-opened schools to shut down again.
In March, Common Sense Media launched Wide Open School to support parents with distance learning. This new service curates the best-of-the-best free learning activities for kids and resources for families that make at-home learning easier through user-friendly daily schedules, activities to support children’s social and emotional well-being, digital citizenship, and materials that address learning and thinking differences.
So based on what parents and children are experiencing right now at this moment in time, what should children’s media creators do to support families? Consider the following tips on supporting parents with their children’s learning.
Address Character Education
Character Education and social-emotional learning (SEL) is in great need (and great demand) both by parents and schools. SEL content is some of our top-requested content on Wide Open School. With the combination of the coronavirus pandemic, economic downturn, civil unrest, police violence, and school closures, there are extreme pressures on the mental health of kids and families. Including characters, stories, and learning that develop characteristics for children such as community, perseverance, humility, empathy, and self-control helps build strong, resilient children. See Common Sense Media’s article Building Character Strengths with Quality Media and our report Tweens, Teens, Tech, and Mental Health for support in thinking about these issues.
Model caregivers and children learning together
Some parents may have rarely supported their children’s schoolwork. They may lack role models to show them how to be a co-teacher and co-learner with their child, or how to be a collaborator with their child’s teacher. Content producers can illustrate and normalize life-long learning as an ongoing and cross-generational practice, in which caregivers, older siblings, and children are learning together and supporting one another. Whether it’s providing advice or showing a parent sitting with a child engaging in their distance learning, or tips for parents such as the importance of having children follow their distance learning schedule, parents need to see examples of what their role could be. Moreover, parents are searching for high-quality educational content to supplement their child’s at-home learning. Suggesting exceptional, research-based apps, websites, and games for parents to use in conjunction with their child’s school learning will provide much-needed help.
Encourage media balance
Screen use has been increasing over the years, even before the pandemic hit. On average, daily screen/device use at home is about three hours for two through eight-year-olds, 5 hours for tweens, and 7 hours for teens (Common Sense Media, 2017, 2019). These amounts have increased due to the addition of distance learning time. Heavy media use is associated with physical and mental health problems. Though we know that not all screen time is created equal, we need to encourage media balance, which means balancing media use with other meaningful activities in everyday life. For example, in schools, Go Noodle is so popular, especially for 5-13-year-olds, because it gets kids up and out of their chairs and moving their bodies. Getting the body moving and taking tech breaks helps reduce stress and improves focus and mental clarity. Content creators might want to consider building these kinds of intermissions into their programming.
Foster digital citizenship
The importance of digital citizenship - thinking critically and participating responsibly online - has come to the forefront, especially as kids do distance learning. Parents are looking for guidance to help their kids make good choices about protecting their online privacy, being kind and civil communicators, and thinking critically about the things they see online (discerning misinformation). Companies such as Disney have run campaigns to address digital citizenship issues, including cyberbullying. But beyond social awareness campaigns, kids need to see examples of ways they could handle “digital dilemmas” that come up in their lives such as: What do I do if I see someone say something mean or hurtful online? What should I consider before sharing a photo or video? How can I tell if something I see online is true or not? Successful digital learning - both at school and at home - starts with digital citizenship.
Actionable Insights
Children’s media producers can serve the present needs of caregivers and children by:
Creating content that addresses character education and supports social-emotional learning.
Providing models for how children and their caregivers can best interact with one another and educators while engaging in at-home learning.
Encouraging children to take breaks from screen time in favor of physical and screen-free activities.
Fostering digital citizenship so kids behave safely and participate responsibly online.
Kelly Mendoza, PhD
Senior Director of Education Programs, Common Sense Education
Collaborator of the Center for Scholars & Storytellers
School Closures, Stay-At-Home Orders, and Screen Time
The Importance of Educational Television Programs to Children’s Learning During the COVID-19 Pandemic
We’ve all been there…whether it’s with your own child, a younger sibling, or the kid you are babysitting, we have sighed in exasperation while handing over our cell phones or turning on the TV so we can do our daily tasks without distractions. Turning to media as a form of a modern day “babysitter” is all too common when caregivers are in a pinch and need a last resort to keep kids busy and happy. Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, more parents and siblings are working from home while their young children attempt remote schooling and look for ways to fend off the boredom of quarantine.
Unsurprisingly, there has been a substantial increase in total TV usage in the US since the beginning of the pandemic, with daytime TV viewing for kids (ages 6 to 11) and teens (ages 12-17) both increasing around 300% on average. Throughout COVID, kids have been using media as their primary source of entertainment, information, social connection, and education. Young children and teens say their use of media is mostly due to boredom and other options being inaccessible to them. This is especially true of TV consumption, particularly for preschoolers who have less autonomy in manipulating technology but can passively sit in front of a television screen. As quarantine has stretched on, the attitudes of parents about limiting screen time, social media usage, and engagement with online entertainment in general have eased considerably, with many entirely giving up on trying to regulate their children’s media habits. How many hours a day your child is watching TV is less of a concern when you are trying to work from home and juggle the demands on your attention around the household. Now, with young children spending more time on screens during the day than ever before, it is the responsibility of adults and content creators to ensure that the programming available to children is approached with an understanding that the content is central to life as a kid during the pandemic.
Another area of a typical child’s daily life that has been drastically altered by the coronavirus is education and schooling. School closures and the rapid shift to remote learning have created gaps in access to social and educational resources, rendering many children vulnerable and struggling at home. Numerous K-12 schools and school districts, for example the Los Angeles United School District, have recently announced plans to remain closed for in-person instruction until January 2021. Educators have projected that students who remain enrolled in school this fall without in-person instruction will lose 3-4 months of learning, even with access to an average quality of remote instruction. The outlook is bleaker for those with connection to low-quality remote instruction or even none at all. As a result, glaring inconsistencies in educational availability and quality, both with regard to resources of schools and in the home, have made the gross inequities in the US education system difficult to ignore. With this in mind, what steps can be taken to facilitate the continued learning and development of children and teens during quarantine?
Here is the basis of what we know so far: (1) school-aged children are spending significantly more time watching daytime TV and (2) many children will not have access to in-person schooling this fall, which will result in unequal and exacerbated learning gaps. So, what if stations started broadcasting high quality educational media content created for children of specific age groups more frequently during the day while parents are busy working? Would this make the increased time children are spending watching TV during the pandemic worthwhile, by simultaneously increasing their opportunities for learning? As it turns out, the answer is yes!
Media technologies have positive effects on the social and cognitive abilities of children, provided that media content is developmentally appropriate and emphasizes active engagement. For example, engagement with PBS educational media content resulted in academic improvements across the disciplines, including English language arts, mathematics, and science. Additionally, popular educational programs such as Sesame Street and Blue’s Clues have been shown to improve academic achievement and school readiness of children. These educational TV shows designed around a narrative curriculum are successful in teaching children intended lessons about both cognitive and social skills. Storytelling is a crucial medium for children to keep learning through the pandemic, but it is the nature of the content that they are watching which determines which, if any, educational gains they are making.
The opportunity for learning through educational media is not limited to academic lessons, but also applies to the development of social skills. This provides a promising avenue to teach children about new norms and expectations during the COVID outbreak, such as wearing a mask in public and using hand sanitizer. Another feature of educational media that is well suited to the pandemic, is that it has been found to be most effective when it encourages children to be active rather than passive viewers, creating a connection between on- and off-screen activities. This connection could be established through supplemental activities inspired by the narrative of the media content, such as completing a hands-on, creative project or by encouraging outdoor exploration after watching an episode. Such activities and active engagement with media in general are not only beneficial to children’s academic learning through educational media, but also to the facilitation of enriching off-screen activities that can be done in the home during the current period of quarantine.
Actionable Insights
Here are some actionable insights for children’s content creators during the COVID-19 pandemic to keep kids who are unable to attend in-person classes learning by capitalizing on the large increase of TV viewing among children during quarantine:
Keep in mind that school-aged children are spending upwards of 3 times the amount of hours watching TV since the pandemic. Developmentally appropriate television content is even more important now that kids are spending more time at home in front of screens.
Don’t rely on parents to monitor and regulate children’s media habits during the pandemic. Ensure that the options available to them are high quality and support active engagement from the viewer.
Educational programming is successful in teaching viewers intended lessons, both related to cognitive and social gains. This suggests that new norms and conventions surrounding COVID-19 can be effectively taught to children through television content. Focus on incorporating simple language and easily understood examples when featuring the pandemic in storylines. Click here for our child-friendly COVID-19 Lexicon.
Children who watch educational television programs have greater academic success and higher levels of school readiness than those who do not. Therefore, incorporate educational content into narratives to keep kids learning during school shutdowns. This has the potential to help combat learning loss associated with remote instruction.
Educational programming should engage children with both the world on-screen and off-screen. Create opportunities for children to connect the narrative they are watching on-screen with the world they are living in.
Emily Raich
CSS Intern
How the Pandemic Can Teach Kids About Compassion
What if this crisis became an opportunity for children to deepen their sense of care?
As a homebound parent with a preschooler, I’ve felt an array of emotions over the past few months during the coronavirus pandemic. I’ve felt sadness and worry about how many people are becoming ill, while being confounded by trying to juggle homeschooling and my own work responsibilities.
But I’ve also felt a great deal of gratitude for the kindnesses that have punctuated so many of my days lately, like when a neighbor left herbs from her garden at my gate or when a faraway friend whom I haven’t heard from in years sent text messages of love.
These positive experiences have affirmed to me that when times are difficult, our common human response is not to show reckless disregard of others but to show compassion.
We often assume that emergencies automatically lead to panic, but research consistently shows that people tend to act in solidarity and turn toward each other with a sense of togetherness. They volunteer, donate supplies, and spread goodwill, strengthening social bonds and helping everyone be resilient together.
“Affiliative, supportive, prosocial behaviors are more common, where widespread sickness and debility evoke acts of mutual aid among members of a community in crisis,” explains Steven Taylor, professor and clinical psychologist at the University of British Columbia, in his book The Psychology of Pandemics.
Compassion—noticing others suffering and being motivated to provide relief to them—grows early on in life. Five-month-old babies prefer helpers over hinderers. When babies between eight and 10 months old see people bump their knees or hurt their fingers, they already show the seeds of empathy with facial expressions, vocalizations, and gestures that reflect concern and a desire to understand others’ distress. By 14 months old, toddlers help others by handing them objects out of reach.
How can parents help their children realize their instinctual capacity for compassion during the coronavirus pandemic? Scientists have suggested three ways that children develop compassion that are relevant to these times.
1. Show compassion to kids so they experience receiving it
During the pandemic, many of our children are feeling uncertainty and upheaval, just like us parents. They miss school, their friends, and playing sports like they did before. For young children who don’t have the breadth of words to express their worries and fears, or older children who don’t have the emotional agility to get through tough moments, it can be overwhelming.
As a result, our kids may be irritable or have more meltdowns and tantrums than usual. But rather than seeing children as uncooperative, parents can consider whether their behavior is simply an indication that they might be suffering, too.
If we offer children warmth and tenderness when their routines are turned upside down, we can soothe them in their own time of need. Parents can extend compassion by making space to help their children become better aware of and process their feelings. Acknowledging and being sensitive to our children’s emotions can act as a salve and help them to see that this moment of hardship will eventually pass.
Parents can also frequently talk to their children about all the members of their extended family and broader community who have cared for them both recently and in the past. For example, parents can tell and retell their children stories of neighbors who brought gift baskets after their pet died or dropped off dinners when a grandparent was in the hospital. These conversations serve to remind children that they are connected to a network of people who are a generous source of compassion from which they can draw strength during times of suffering.
Receiving compassion offers kids a firsthand experience of what it feels like.
2. Teach kids to practice self-compassion
In turn, just as children receive compassion from parents, they can also learn to offer it to themselves.
When children are having a hard time during the pandemic, parents can encourage them to listen and respond to their bodies and minds with greater awareness, acceptance, and kindness. For example, parents of older children can teach them to take self-compassion breaks to handle stressful moments.
For younger children, this might mean guiding them to first pause and notice their tense muscles, rapid heartbeats, and racing thoughts. Ask them to recognize that they’re having a moment of hardship and children all over the world are having these kinds of moments, too. Teach them to breathe deeply from their bellies and offer themselves words of tenderness like “May I feel calm.”
Parents can also encourage their younger children to cultivate self-compassion by planning enjoyable activities to look forward to after a hard day of homeschooling or after realizing summer vacation plans are cancelled.
Self-compassion allows children to process and cope with difficult emotions. Eventually, it can help them see their common humanity—that everyone suffers sometimes—and know that it’s all right to feel bad.
Tending to their intense emotions helps children be restored and renewed, which in turn prepares them to serve others. Overwhelming personal distress can make children singularly self-focused and less able to attend to others’ suffering. Self-compassion practices can help them be more able to orient toward others and extend compassion to them—which is the last step.
3. Encourage kids to extend compassion to others
During the coronavirus pandemic, even though children are inclined to help, it can be hard for them to know exactly what they can do.
Children can start with small acts of compassion as a family—sending kind thoughts to essential workers, regularly FaceTiming with isolated older or immunocompromised family members, or helping gather canned goods for the local food bank. Parents can also review these other ideas from Youth Service America to help inspire children toward compassionate acts.
Research suggests that small differences in language matter when we’re encouraging our kids to help. Parents can nurture young children’s motivation by inviting them to “be a helper,” which can instill in them a compassionate self-identity. But there’s a catch: When tasks are too difficult and children experience a setback, those who were asked to “be a helper” are less likely to try to help again compared to children who were simply asked “to help.” So, in circumstances when children might not succeed at helping with something, it’s better to just ask them “to help.”
Even young children have undoubtedly picked up on their radar that life right now is quite a bit different than it used to be. What if this pandemic became an opportunity for them to learn that being human during hard times involves transformation and resilience, and that compassion helps us all to thrive?
Maryam Abdullah, Ph.D.
This article originally appeared on Greater Good, the online magazine of the Greater Good Science Center at UC Berkeley.
Kids and COVID-19: The New Coronavirus Lexicon
Talking about coronavirus with children through media can be a difficult task. It may be tougher for them to understand what is going on in the world, given the new vocabulary that is now regularly used. Recent research has found that children (ages 9-13) who knew fewer facts about COVID-19 were more likely to report being very worried about the virus than those who were more informed (Götz et al., 2020). Young children would therefore benefit from receiving more age-appropriate information from both parents and media. In fact, 65% of children around the world reported wanting to learn more about the virus through children’s television (Götz et al., 2020).
It’s important to explain what’s going on in simple, accurate terms. To help you tackle this in your programming, here are some child-friendly definitions of widely used words related to COVID-19:
Click here to download this list as a handout for your writer’s room
Virus: A type of tiny germ that can make you sick if it gets inside your body through your nose, mouth, or eyes.
Coronavirus: A group of viruses that can make people sick. COVID-19 is the newest coronavirus that is making people sick.
A pandemic happens when a sickness spreads quickly between many people all around the world.
Wearing a mask helps stop germs from entering your body and making you sick. Doctors and nurses wear them because they work with lots of sick patients and it keeps them healthy. When you wear a mask, you are being a hero by keeping yourself and your friends safe from germs.
Social distancing: Also called physical distancing. Putting space in between you and others, because germs can spread between people if they are very close. Sometimes you can’t tell if other people are sick, so it’s important to stay far apart (6 feet) from people that you don’t live with, so that you don’t share germs or get sick.
You can social distance by standing farther apart from others, and by staying home from school.
Adults need to practice social distancing too, unless they work somewhere where they have to help people up close. Then, they need to keep as much distance as possible and wear a mask.
Quarantine is staying at home to help you and your family stay healthy. Stay home as much as you can to keep yourself and others healthy. If someone you know gets sick with COVID-19, they quarantine by staying at home and away from others.
Essential workers are people who need to work during the pandemic because their jobs help the world run. For example, we still need doctors and nurses, scientists, grocery store workers, people who make and serve food, police officers, and firefighters to do their jobs during this time.
Symptomatic, Asymptomatic: Someone who is symptomatic shows symptoms, or signs of, sickness (e.g., coughing, sneezing, having a hard time breathing). Someone who is asymptomatic does not show symptoms - even though you can’t tell that they are sick, they can still spread germs and make others sick.
Being immunocompromised means that someone’s body has a harder time fighting sicknesses when germs enter their body. They need to be extra careful so that they don’t get sick.
“Flattening the curve” means slowing down how fast the sickness spreads to other people. If the virus takes longer to spread to other people, hospitals will have more time and resources to help the people who get sick.
Think of taking turns to get help in class or to use a video game, because there are only so many teachers, controllers, etc. Or, only one family member getting the flu at a time, so that there is always a doctor to take care of the person who is sick (instead of everyone getting sick all at once and not having enough doctors to help them all).
CDC: Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The CDC is a large group of people that work to stop diseases from spreading in the United States. The CDC works with scientists and doctors to help keep everyone healthy (e.g., by sending information and updates about COVID-19, like wearing masks and washing hands).
WHO: World Health Organization. The WHO is a large group of people that works to stop diseases from spreading around the world.
Definitions derived from usage in widespread pandemic coverage and adapted for children’s understanding.
Page Spencer and Jane Lurie
CSS Interns