The COVID Diaries: A lot of people to care about

Writers always care about readers, and there are literally thousands of you that I care about. I also have two-day jobs: director of faculty development at the University of Houston and COO of Minerva Work Solutions...so there are several thousand more I care about and feel duty-bound to care for. I know none of this is easy. Especially, if you're a) on the margins of society and b) anxious about food, shelter, or health. There isn't a lot I can do virtually, but I can share these wonderful five kinds of free resources ... I hope they help. My ears are also open and I want to know what is going well with you (that others might try too) and what could be better (so we can all look for resources together to make it so).

1) The Society for Industrial-Organizational Psychologists dedicated webpage on working well from home:  https://www.siop.org/Business-Resources/Remote-Work

2) Lynda.com/ Linked In Training is also offering its working virtually curriculum for free to everyone:
· Working Remotely – 1 hr

· Time Management: Working From Home – 1hr 25 min

· Being an effective Team Member – 31 min

· Productivity Tips: Finding Your Productive Mindset – 59 min

· Leading at a Distance – 36 min

· Balancing Work and Life – 28 min

· Thriving @ Work: Leveraging the Connection between Well-being and Productivity – 41 min

· Managing Stress for Positive Change – 57 min

3) Free well-being resources:

• Harvard's How to Flourish Exercises and Guide: https://hfh.fas.harvard.edu/how-to-flourish
• Psychology Today's Handling COVID blogs: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/basics/coronavirus-disease-2019-1
• APA's self-care advice for healthcare providers: https://www.apaservices.org/practice/ce/self-care/health-providers-covid-19?_ga=2.96876509.335842848.1585244075-2072495769.1585244075
• CDC: Mental Health and Coping During COVID-19 https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/prepare/managing-stress-anxiety.html?CDC_AA_refVal=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.cdc.gov%2Fcoronavirus%2F2019-ncov%2Fabout%2Fcoping.html
• Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress: Caring for Patients’ Mental Well-Being During Coronavirus and Other Emerging Infectious Diseases: A Guide for Clinicians (PDF, 205KB) https://www.cstsonline.org/assets/media/documents/CSTS_FS_Caring_for_Patients_Mental_WellBeing_during_Coronavirus.pdf.pdf
• Center for the Study of Traumatic Stress: Psychological Effects of Quarantine During the Coronavirus Outbreak (PDF, 250KB) https://www.cstsonline.org/assets/media/documents/CSTS_FS_Psychological_Effects_Quarantine_During_Coronavirus_Outbreak_Providers.pdf

4) Cool Free Virtual Resources for Child Education and Educational Entertainment:

• Khan Academy is a non-profit with free courses online for kids of all ages: https://www.khanacademy.org/
• Funbrain is math, reading, problem-solving, and literacy. Content is organized by grade level and the site does not require you to enter logins, passwords or personal information. https://www.funbrain.com/
• Free STEM activities and guides: https://girlstart.org/our-programs/destember/
• Space projects and video for young kids: https://www.nasa.gov/stem/forstudents/k-4/index.html
• Minute Physics is a series of youtube ed videos: https://www.youtube.com/user/minutephysics
• Astronaut Don's Saturday Morning Science from the Space Station series: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL40A23EE2E2089525
• NASA learning games: https://www.nasa.gov/kidsclub/index.html
• PBS homeschooling guides and resources (including activities and games for emotional regulation learning): https://www.pbs.org/parents/thrive+ Chrome Music Lab enables students to explore music and its connections to math, science, and art. This highly visual tool is organized in experiments and it is quite engaging and easy to use. https://musiclab.chromeexperiments.com/Experiments
• GoNoodle is a free app and website with tons of active games and videos designed to manage kids' energy levels. It has a wide variety of activities available, from Zumba exercise videos to Wii-like sports games and mindfulness videos. https://www.gonoodle.com/
• Big History Project covers earth history (with some geo science thrown in) for free. https://www.bighistoryproject.com/home
• Field Trip Zoom is a site that offers such events for home schools. There is an annual fee for using the service, but it allows you to participate in as many field trips as you like during the year. The tours are really educational programs designed for specific grade levels. Options include visits to Ford’s Theater, the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, learning about DNA at the National Law Enforcement Museum, trips to the Space Center in Houston, or the Alaska Sealife Center. Users can watch pre-recorded events or register for upcoming events and watch live. During live events, students can ask questions by typing in a question and answer tab. Sometimes the field trip partner will set up a poll that allows students to answer in real-time. https://www.fieldtripzoom.com/
• NatGeoKids has activities, games, science videos and explains (including a good one on COVID science for kids). https://kids.nationalgeographic.com/
• Also, National Geographic’s Explorer Classroom. All you need to join in on these live-streaming field trips is access to YouTube. You can register and join in live at the scheduled time, or watch archived events on the Explorer Classroom YouTube channel. The experts leading National Geographic’s virtual field trips include deep-sea explorers, archaeologists, conservationists, marine biologists, space architects, engineers, etc. https://www.nationalgeographic.org/education/student-experiences/explorer-classroom/
• Finally, if your internet is bogged down or your kids don't have devices in the Houston Broadcast Area, then UH PBS on channel 8 (antenna or cable) is showing educational content for kids Monday through Friday according to public school curriculum requirements. Blocks of time are targeted to different age groups according to this schedule: https://www.houstonpublicmedia.org/education/kids/schedule/

5) There are several free virtual instructional resources available to faculty around the world, that UH has described how to use in simple how to's:

• Kahoot (for playing games/ making games for students to use): https://www.instruction.uh.edu/knowledgebase_category/kahoot/
• Zoom (for teaching and lab management meetings, bonus tip you can create a phone number for students to use to call into a lecture when they don't have computer/ internet access): https://www.instruction.uh.edu/knowledgebase_category/zoom/
• Microsoft Teams (for meeting with students and hosting a class): https://www.instruction.uh.edu/knowledgebase_category/microsoft-teams/
• Microsoft Stream (for uploading and posting videos to share with students): https://www.instruction.uh.edu/2020/03/01/microsoft-stream-for-hosting-videos/

Please comment and add more that you know about (or contact me to do so if you're shy)!

Free resources and ideas to help us care for each other like these two, who don't fight like cats and dogs.

The COVID Diaries: I miss my housekeeper.

I miss my housekeeper. I suppose most people do. Especially those with kids or coinhabitants who don't pitch in. But that's not why I miss my housekeeper. Laura and I are neat to a fault and eager to do mindless cleaning chores that give us a mental break. Our house is as clean and organized as it always is. There is no change there.
The change is that I don't get to see Jacinta once a week. I don't get to joke with her about the weather or ask about her daughter and grandson and their latest adventures. I don't get to visually verify that she is okay and the world is going on as it does. I don't have the luxury of knowing someone even more OCD than me is taking care of me, sorting my shoes by size and color and aligning them perfectly in my closet after sweeping and mopping the floor underneath them. I don't get to share these small, concrete, daily decencies with someone I've known for nine years.
I lost some of my best friends this year. That brought home how much these small decencies change us for the better, and how shocking and demoralizing it can be when you know one node of your decency exchange network has winked out of service. It feels like your back is exposed.
Today I miss my housekeeper because my back is a little more exposed.
One day soon I know my wife will head to the healthcare frontlines. We are each other's biggest stars. For that node to wink out would irrevocably cripple our network. That is the worst-case scenario, that one of us will leave the other alone to keep fighting for humanity, half-mauled. The thing is that this worst-case scenario is always true. No virus or war changes it. It is always the worst-case threat. Maybe just a little more probable in the next year than average. It doesn't change our resolve. If it did, it would fundamentally change who we are. We are the ones that help. We are the ones that put those small decencies first and above all else. We take care of ourselves, so we can take of each other. If this network does go down, if one of us winks out, then our web of love is gonna sparkle the holy shit out of the darkest night first.
It isn't heroism, or even courage, that fuels this resolve. It is desperation to keep alive the only thing we have learned endures beyond all deaths: compassion.
Compassion is the thing that has compelled us to socially isolate from our families so that Laura cannot possibly carry any illness into the ICU, and so that Laura can stay healthy enough to work when her colleagues are first up and first ill. Compassion will compel us to isolate from each other as soon as she treats her first patient--so I stay unexposed long enough to care for her when she acquires it and we don't burden resources simultaneously. Compassion compels us to think ahead and figure out what we need to do today to ensure we can perform some small, daily decencies tomorrow and maybe the day after too, if possible. Compassion compels us to pay attention to the small decencies we have today: the kiss over a cup of tea one brings the other, the hug in the laundry room between loads, and the virtual happy hour with our family that we still get to have sitting next to one another, for now.
Maybe compassion is courage.

My favorite coffee cup at work. I miss that too. Maybe compassion is courage.