Dealing With Childhood Conditions – Tips For First Time Teachers
When you enter your school your entering a battleground of all sorts of germs and potential diseases. It’s such a communal area that viruses of all kinds can spread around easily. It’s good to know the symptoms for the most common ailments you’ll see kids have, so you can help prevent their outbreak:
Head lice – If you see a child that is itching their scalp non-stop you’ll want to send them to the nurses office. Lice live on the hair and feed on blood. They can’t jump and can’t fly so they can only be spread by contact with another host. You don’t want to inspect the kid yourself, first because you don’t know what you’re looking for or how to properly look, and second because you don’t want to embarrass the student by searching publicly. Just send them to the office and let them deal with it.
Ringworm – Don’t let them name fool you, it’s not a worm at all. It’s actually a fungus that will show up most often on the hands, face, and arms. It can show up in other places too, and when it does it takes on names like jock itch and athlete’s foot. Look for a blister that can resemble a hickey.
Pinkeye – You’ve probably had a case of this yourself, or seen someone with it. Most people wake up with the infection. It can take 3-5 days to work itself out of the system if it’s a viral infection. If it’s bacterial, it will take only 24 hours after the student begins an eye-drop regimen. Either way you’ll want to send suspecting students to the nurse’s office to avoid further spread.
Impetigo – There’s no mistaking this infection. It’s got really nasty sores, you can use Google Images to see some examples. This is a pesky disease as far as it spreading goes, you can even get it from using the same bar of soap as an infected person. Hopefully your school uses a hand pump for soap in the bathroom.
Scabies – You will usually see this infection on the student’s face, or around the hands and feet. The itching for this one is pretty severe, so look for a kid that just can’t sit still. They will need to be prescribed a lotion in order to treat it.
Chickenpox – The classic childhood infection. Identified by small red bumps at first that later become blisters. A headache and fever can accompany this one as well as an all-consuming desire to itch the infected areas. This one is super-contagious, but not too critical when it comes to children. You can get an immunization for this one if you haven’t gotten it already.