Teachers know when cold and flu season hits schools are breeding grounds for germs. Many parents do not realize that hand sanitizer, sanitizing wipes, and tissues are all staff responsibilities, thank goodness for the warehouse stores! Where does your school stop cleaning? Teachers are left to fight the nasties? Hopefully, we all are in buildings were floors are swept or vacuumed daily, and bathrooms are sanitized daily. Remember clean doesn’t mean sanitized. Does your cleaning staff outsourced or in-house complete detailed training process to find the places germs hang out in schools? Let’s look at the facts and the tips.
Teacher's Classroom Responsibilities
Cleaning of chalk or white boards, door knobs, faucets, desktops, teacher’s desk, teacher lanyard, student passes, classroom manipulatives, shared crayons and writing utensils, classroom library, and the pencil sharpener are all the responsibility of the classroom teacher. The pencil sharpener and teacher lanyard were new, but not a surprise. One article suggests parents send their children to school with mechanical pencils to reduce exposure to germs by avoiding the germ infested pen sharpener. I will be wiping my desk, door knobs, window latches, faucets, lanyard, and pencil sharpener daily with sanitizing wipes. I will sanitize the boards and students material including desks weekly or directly after use by a student with cold symptoms.
Young Classrooms
Young classrooms can also limit passing of germs using the Clorox Program lesson plans for keeping preschool to grade 3 ready to fight germs. Instilling students with the habit of a 20 second hand wash with warm water and soap will make them a germ exterminator. Consider students adopting a hand washing song like Henry the Hand’s (45 second) theme song to guide them to germ free hands. Singing the entire song will hopefully yield a 20 second warm soapy wash. Henry the Hand doesn’t stop there, watch the 3.33 minute video on clean hands. Visit the Henry the Hand website for additional resources. There is also a slightly older audience video called, Protect! Don’t Infect: Germ Wars making germs, criminals that need to be stopped. Classrooms that use a reading or story rug should have students sit along the outside perimeter of the carpet preventing students from huddling close to each other and the reader.
Computer Labs
May 2008 ABC News medical unit reported, “Your keyboard: Dirtier that a toilet,” reported that one keyboard tested had 5 times the germs of a toilet seat. April 2009, The Eastern Progress Online afflicated with Eastern Kentucky University identified 5 places college students should watch out for germs and yes, computer keyboard and mouse is in the top five! The list for the top 30 home germ locations includes the home computer keyboard and mouse. Yes, I know that you get the point the computer lab is a wonderful place to grow germs and a difficult place to disinfect. Some bias exists as researchers were compensated by companies producing the products used to remove the bacteria. However, the cleaning instructions are acceptable.
What if public access computers required washable keyboards? Yes, hospitals and medical facilities have some high end washable keyboards but, some inexpensive silicone travel keyboards in a rainbow of colors for less than $8 a keyboard might be a good idea for public school and library computers with instructions for cleaning keyboards, mouse, and the desktop at each station. A group of students from the Prince George Community College (PGCC) performed a study focusing on germ prevention using hand sanitizer in open computer labs.
Bathrooms and Hallways
Backpacks and pocketbooks are also an issue on the germ radar as frequent although, temporary residents of bathroom floors. Students should always use bathroom hooks and not place any articles on the bathroom floor even for a second. Administrators, time to check bathrooms for availability of hooks to keep those heavy backpacks off the floors and germ free. How many high school students gather to check makeup in the bathrooms? Ladies please think before you put your pocketbook or makeup bag on the bathroom counter.
What do you think the germ count is on a public school bathroom counter? Maybe schools should be more like corporate retail restrooms cleaned and check every hour. I can’t see that being feasible in my building but I think cleaning the cafeteria bathroom at the beginning of each lunch period is a reasonable option since most if not all of our 2200 students attend one of the four daily lunch periods. Adding hand sanitizers to the beginning of each lunch line would also help reduce the spread of germs. Yes, lunchrooms are the most germ ridden area in any school with library materials high in germ counts too.
What do you think the germ count is on a public school bathroom counter? Maybe schools should be more like corporate retail restrooms cleaned and check every hour. I can’t see that being feasible in my building but I think cleaning the cafeteria bathroom at the beginning of each lunch period is a reasonable option since most if not all of our 2200 students attend one of the four daily lunch periods. Adding hand sanitizers to the beginning of each lunch line would also help reduce the spread of germs. Yes, lunchrooms are the most germ ridden area in any school with library materials high in germ counts too.
Have you ever seen the water bubblers sanitized? It is recommended that drinking water fountains be sprayed with sanitizer and scrubbed daily and recommend hourly checks for large events like a high school sports event. This involves disinfecting the bowl, mouthpiece, mouth guard, hand button, the outside casing, and the drain where germs are always present.
Who cleans the handrails in your building? I have never seen these things done once in the 10 years I have been teaching in my building. This is an issue for cleaning instruction as is the exterior doors, which frequently have more germs on the glass than on the handle. I guess many people know of door knob germs, avoidance causes transferring germs onto the glass which is not seen cleaned often either? Do schools have a cleaning hygiene checklist? One school’s staff avoided a particular bathroom because of odor, until one cleaning procedure killed the smell causing germs.
Germ fighting in public spaces
Cell phones are always near our faces, at our mouth to speak and ears to listen and held by hands that were washed, when? Germs can live on office, home, or cell phones for 3 days which could be days after the infected person has gone home sick. Shared newspapers, magazines, and money like phones are germ parking lots waiting for someone to pick them up and take them home without ever seeing the germs originator. It truly is the gift that keeps on giving.
You may want to take a tip from the musical group Subhumans’ video Germs, see lyrics below.
I crawl through your veins and I work my way in
I play with your health I destroy all there is
I m the germ in your mouth when you give her a kiss
And tomorrow they'll put you away
And the doctors all they will say
Is- You re gonna die
I am a germ under your skin
Like a hypodermic needle pushed in
I run in your blood and I screw up your brain
I've got a disease just to send you insane
And I got a feeling I m gonna win
It s no use believing in the national health
Cos when you are dead I'll destroy someone else
Very Interesting! Reading through the many places germs can be found in schools definitely made me think twice. Although I am not a teacher yet, I think that reading this will make an impact for when I do get into the classroom. I have a young son at home and being as germ free as I can be is not only good for myself but for him too! I want to try and avoid taking as much home to him as possible! I like the idea of the hand sanitizer at the lunchroom. Even if a hand sanitizer pump was put in the wall with a sign insisting students pump before they enter to get their lunch would greatly increase the number of students who do so. Accessibility of germ killers is sometimes a key factor in keeping germs away!
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