LYSOL and GERM-X

Today's blog is inspired by my experience thismorning with one of my students in Omaha. If any of you reading this blog have children (of any age), I need you to teach them a couple of very important things:
1) when they cough, sneeze, wipe their nose, etc. teach them to use their ELBOWS! the hands have got to go -- they cough, sneeze, wipe their nose with their hands and then they touch ME! :-) although i LOVE the hugs, the germs are not my friends this summer.
2) if they are sick sick (not just faking), make them stay home for the rest of us even though they might drive YOU crazy.
3) off the subject of germs, required reading is a pain in the *** , and often pointless, but necessary. they need to do it in the beginning of the summer so they aren't reading in my class at the end of the summer :-)

I have to tell you that I LOVE MY JOB. I love kids of all ages and my students across the country are 3.5-65. how cool is that??!?!?! When you go to a place every summer, you get to see kids grow by leaps and bounds and get to see them progress as dancers and more importantly as people. today was a day. well, yesterday was worse, but today was a day. teenagers sick as dogs (yes multiples) breathing on me, borrowing my kleenex, and one was actually laying down on the mats watching. so the whole class is sick, touching the barres (ballet barres), coughing, sneezing, breathing shared stale air, and i'm finally realizing why i'm still sick after 3 weeks! yes, three weeks! i decided to go no anti-biotics this time for my sinus infection and i'm still not over it. and it keeps morphing into new things by the week. so i'm sure after today, i'll be into a new sickness by next week. i should own stock in KLEENEX by now. the first class was bad, but the 2nd and 3rd were the same! we all needed tissue which was long gone, and the cepacol tablets were in the front of the room, as well as the choloraseptic spray. uggh. i lysoled the mats the barres, myself (hahaha) and went through lots of germ-x today. let's hope that i have some sort of immune system by the time this summer is over!

PS the required reading came up b/c one of my students here is grounded b/c she hasn't done hers. i don't blame her - i love to read and the book looks totally boring. but I had to set a number of pages for her to accomplish by the end of tomorrow! i guess if she listens to me, it works. she's grounded for not reading. talk about co-parenting (and i'm in another state) -- it really does take a village.