"Teacher-- I heard that President Obama died of Swine Flu."

The above quote, from a second-grader at our school, well embodies the attitude of the students at my school this morning. Since three students in Park City School District are being tested (and they have closed their schools for two days accordingly), my school in a neighboring district was filled with nervous students all day.

When my fourth-graders walked in, several of them immediately grabbed a tissue and taped it over their noses. If they hadn't looked so worried I might have laughed. As it was, I asked them to throw away the tissues and ask me their questions.

We had a 35-minute conversation about what the flu is, what a vaccine really is, what anitbodies are, how many people there are in the US versus how many people in the US actually have the flu. I talked to them about the common-sense advise newspersons are giving about doing things like staying home if you have a fever (what a novel concept!) and washing your hands frequently. Talking about the epidemic which has been portrayed as a pandemic was good for my students this morning, and honestly, I don't think we would have been able to get past our morning board work if they hadn't had a chance to vent.

My favorite quote of the day (other than the one in the title) was this: after THOROUGHLY explaining how unlikely it was that my class would contract the swine flu, and after we all agreed that it was nothing to stress over, I let them chat for a few minutes to get it out of their systems.

Immediately, one of my boys yelled the following:

"We're all gonna die!"

If that's so, then I think I might die laughing. Today was pretty hilarious.

Check out this website (thanks adam!) to see if you might have the dreaded disease:
http://doihaveswineflu.org/