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Resources by the Division of Injury and Substance Abuse

General Support

A map and search bar that can be used to find inpatient and outpatient facilities throughout SC including birthing centers, home health agencies, midwives, and nursing homes.

Tobacco Cessation Support

A Quitline is a tobacco treatment support program that is available through the toll-free number 1-800-QUIT-NOW and through a web-based or text-based enrollment. The Quitline offers personalized quit coaching calls as well as other supportive services through the web, social media, text messaging, and print materials.

Phone: 1-800-784-8669

Pregnant tobacco users can get free help quitting and earn free diapers and wipes with help from the DHEC BABY & ME - Tobacco-Free Program™ team. This program is only available in certain counties.

Families, Children and Women Support

A designated DHEC hotline that helps connect SC women and their families with important services such as prenatal care, transportation to medical appointments, immunizations, Medicaid, and services for children.

Phone: 1-855-472-3432

A nutrition program that provides health education, healthy foods, breastfeeding support, and other services free of charge to South Carolina families who qualify. To apply, call the phone number below.

Phone: 1-855-472-3432

A list of useful childhood health resources such as how to prevent injures, choosing a childcare provider and infant sleep safety.

A list of special healthcare services for children with a chronic illness, disabling condition or developmental delay.

A list of pregnancy information such as how to prevent birth defects, nurse home visits, and oral health during pregnancy.

Best Chance Network provides breast and cervical cancer screening at no cost for South Carolina women who qualify. Covered services include clinical breast examinations, mammograms, pap tests, pelvic examinations, human papillomavirus tests, diagnostic testing, and referrals to treatment.

The goal of the program is to prevent and reduce injuries, disabilities, and death to children due to motor vehicle crashes by counseling parents and community groups on child passenger safety, providing technical assistance as needed and demonstrating and instructing the proper installation of the various child safety seats.

This page lists information regarding what newborn screening is and how newborn screening can be beneficial.

Phone: 803-898-3192

A service for new moms and their babies. DHEC provides newborn home visits to eligible families. Ask your doctor to make a referral or write an order for a visit.

Healthy mouth and teeth are an important part of a child’s overall wellness. Untreated tooth decay in children and teens can cause pain and infections that may lead to problems with eating, speaking, playing, and learning. Learn more on how to take care of your children’s health.

A family planning program that provides confidential reproductive health care services, counseling, and education to teens by caring professionals. Some services include birth control, emergency contraception, and STI screening.

Health Support

A webpage with links to a variety of healthcare resources such as how to find long term care facilities, and how to get help for people with disabilities.

A webpage with a variety of information on all types of vaccines such as childcare and school vaccine requirements, a HealthMap vaccine finder, and benefits/risks of vaccines.

COVID-19 testing provided by DHEC is pain free and free of charge. Results are emailed within 48-72 hours. Find a testing location near you.

COVID-19 vaccines are effective at helping protect against severe disease and death including from variants of the virus that cause COVID-19 currently circulating. Learn more about COVID-19 vaccinations and where to get one.

A list of symptoms and when to seek medical attention.

A list of public health clinics across all of SC. It includes hours, addresses, phone numbers, and services for each clinic in each county.

It is important to protect yourself from any and all sexually transmitted disease. This page explains how to protect yourself, what to do if you have an STD and numbers you can contact to get help.

This story was updated on June 9, 2020, to reflect that information initially attributed by Prisma as a statement from interim chief financial officer Michael Burke was not a direct quote from Burke.

Prisma Health, the state’s largest hospital system, has and will continue to eliminate jobs to streamline its operations in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic to better position itself for financial challenges facing the health-care industry, officials have told The Greenville News.

The news comes as the latest credit rating for the health system warns that the pandemic may affect Prisma's financial health into 2021 if a second wave of the virus hits South Carolina.

Two other Upstate hospital systems — Bon Secours St. Francis and AnMed Health — said they’ve not had to eliminate jobs, though each placed employees on furlough after Gov. Henry McMaster asked hospitals to limit elective procedures to keep hospital beds free in case they were needed to treat COVID-19 patients, an order that has since been canceled.

Coronavirus is placing tremendous pressure on Prisma and hospital systems across the country, according to an emailed statement from Michael Burke, Prisma's interim chief financial officer.

At the same time, the health-care industry is "undergoing rapid changes in a number of areas, including lower reimbursements, increasing numbers of uninsured and under-insured, escalating costs of pharmaceuticals, shortages of skilled workers, new technology and an increasing complex regulatory environment," according to the statement.

Prisma was formed, in part, to help address those challenges, Burke's statement said.

Prisma cut jobs as Greenville Health System and Palmetto Health merged

In January, Prisma announced it would eliminate 327 jobs and leave 200 positions unfilled in a streamlining of its organization after the merger of the Greenville Health System’s eight hospitals and Palmetto Health’s four hospitals in the Midlands.

When the two health systems merged, the combined organization had 32,000 employees.

When the coronavirus hit, Prisma furloughed 1,850 employees and reduced hours for 2,200 more employees, according to Fitch credit rating service. The health system delayed elective procedures to prepare for a potential surge in COVID-19 patients, and patients canceled appointments out of fear of catching the virus.

Now that Prisma has resumed non-emergency care activities, “we are gradually recalling furloughed clinical staff where possible or increasing hours for those team members whose hours were reduced,” Sandy Dees, Prisma’s spokesperson, said in an emailed response to questions.

But, Dees said, the health system anticipates managers will continue to streamline their departments as the health system continues to experience “significantly lower revenues and patient volumes.”

“This streamlining, which includes the reassignment of personnel and the elimination of jobs, will be an ongoing effort as health care, including Prisma Health, rebounds from the COVID-19 pandemic,” she said.

As Prisma lost revenue, it also saw increased costs. The health system converted the entire North Greenville Hospital to treat COVID-19 patients and treated 42.5% of all hospitalized COVID-19 patients in the state by May 25. The hospital system lost $144.5 million in net patient revenue in April alone, Burke said.

That loss was only partially offset by $79 million in grants given to the hospital system as part of the federal coronavirus stimulus package.

Bon Secours says recovery depends on social distancing, wearing masks

Bon Secours hasn’t had to lay off any employees but did furlough and reassign employees, especially in primary care, outpatient and surgical services, said Jennifer Robinson, Bon Secours spokesperson. Robinson didn't say how many employees were affected.

Bon Secours St. Francis had 3,452 employees in the Upstate in 2017, according to tax filings.

“Some of those associates have returned to work as we have resumed some of those services,” Robinson said in an emailed response to questions. “Associates who are furloughed are eligible for unemployment benefits and receive restorative pay through the Bon Secours Mercy Health Associate Emergency Fund.”

The hospital system expects finances to improve over the next few months as patients feel comfortable seeking non-emergency health care again, Robinson said.

Bon Secours has delayed some of its capital projects but hasn't stopped its growth plan in Greenville, she said.

But a full recovery is dependent on community members feeling confident they can safely re-enter the health-care setting, and it's also dependent on the public’s willingness to help in the continuing fight against COVID-19, including by social distancing and wearing masks in public, she said.

Masks:1.5 million masks flown from China to GSP Airport for Prisma Health hospitals

AnMed Health says there is uncertainty ahead as cases increase

In Anderson, AnMed Health furloughed some staff and reduced hours for many, but the hospital has not had to lay off employees, said Lizz Walker, AnMed spokesperson.

The hospital system has more than 3,600 employees. Walker didn't say how many were furloughed or faced reduced hours.

Glitches, delays:SC's overloaded unemployment system during pandemic

AnMed did reduce salaries for management and many of its salaried employees for 12 weeks beginning in April, she said in an email.

AnMed has restarted some elective procedures and surgeries, but its patient volume and revenue hasn’t bounced back to pre-pandemic levels, and it also has had additional expenses from its pandemic response.

“The remainder of the year is uncertain as the number of COVID-19 cases in the community and state is increasing,” Walker said. “We have delayed many capital projects in this year's plan, with the strategy of conserving cash to offset losses in operations.”

Credit agencies dock Prisma for instability of finances

Prisma took out a $299 million cash advance from the Medicare Accelerated and Advance Payment Program to offset losses brought about by the pandemic, according to the credit ratings agency Fitch Ratings. The money represents six months of hospital Medicare payments and three months of Medicare revenue for the system’s physicians, according to Fitch.

Prisma didn't do as well as expected financially in fiscal year 2019, which ended last September, and was in the midst of its acquisition of three Midlands area hospitals when the coronavirus hit, Fitch said.

That left the system “less able to deal with the current operating disruptions” from the coronavirus, Fitch said April 23 when it affirmed Prisma’s existing “A-“ rating but downgraded Prisma's outlook from "stable" to "negative."

Fitch warned that Prisma's profit margins could decline this year due to disruptions from the coronavirus.

But Fitch said Prisma had emergency reserves on hand to last for 140 days of operations, and the agency expected Prisma could get “close to break-even operations” by the end of the fiscal year on Sept. 30.

The negative bond outlook comes after Standard & Poors Global Ratings gave Prisma a negative outlook in mid-March before the pandemic hit South Carolina. Moody’s, on March 10, had downgraded Prisma to A3 from A2 on its scale while also providing a negative outlook.

A lower credit rating can affect interest rates on future bonds as investors see more risk that an organization wouldn't be able to make its debt payments.

"Prisma Health’s finances are fundamentally solid," Burke said. "We are confident that our long-term strategies will work for better and affordable health care for South Carolina."

Many of the financial challenges Prisma is facing are due to being the only safety-net hospitals in the Upstate and Midlands, which means it provides lifesaving care for patients regardless of the patient's ability to pay, Burke said.

40 days of COVID-19:AnMed coronavirus patient gets one step closer to home

Prisma’s share of uninsured patients could grow if the pandemic lingers

Prisma has the largest share of the healthcare market both in the Upstate and the Midlands, but it has strong competitors, according to Fitch. Prisma's hospitals are in growing markets, particularly in Greenville, which grew by 9% population in five years, according to Fitch.

And Prisma had set a 2020 budget to improve its margins before the coronavirus outbreak, Fitch said.

But since South Carolina hasn’t expanded Medicaid, Prisma also has 8% of its patients pay out of pocket, considered high, according to Fitch.

Longer-term, increased unemployment from the pandemic in a state without Medicaid expansion can result in more patients paying out of pocket, according to Fitch, meaning more people will be left without health insurance. That can make it more difficult for the health system to receive payments quickly and in full, and some patients would be unable to pay at all.

Like other safety net providers who take care of all patients who need lifesaving care whether they have insurance or not, we experience a greater financial burden than others, but it is our commitment to the communities we serve, especially in rural and under-served areas of our state, according to Burke's statement.

Two and a half years ago, my nose stopped working.

That’s when I realized how often smell comes up in daily conversation: “That Uber smelled weird,” or “that woman was wearing way too much perfume,” or “someone’s definitely smoking weed nearby.”

I have anosmia, a symptom of long COVID. I caught the virus early in the pandemic and had terrible symptoms, but after a week of bed rest, I was ready to resume my life. My nose wasn’t.

With the pandemic now well into its third year, anosmia — once an obscure problem — has become increasingly widespread.

Roughly 5% of people who experience smell loss during COVID-19 will develop long-term anosmia, according to Dr. Bradley J. Goldstein, an ear, nose and throat doctor at Duke University Hospital.

The impact is more drastic than most people realize.

“The sense of smell is one of our key sensory systems that is constantly providing information about our environment, about the world around us, to the brain,” Goldstein said. “A lot of that is happening sort of passively to us. We’re not always intentionally thinking about sniffing, but we’re constantly getting a lot of input.”

I’m now a junior in college, and I have no idea what my campus smells like. I am constantly afraid that I smell bad, that the food I’m about to eat is rancid or that my dorm might be on fire. I can’t remember the last thing I smelled.

“We tend to rely on vision and hearing perhaps a little bit more directly, but smell is still a really important sensory system. And when it’s not working, people really do realize that there’s something major sort of missing,” Goldstein said.

Column One

A showcase for compelling storytelling from the Los Angeles Times.

People love to tell me that having a dysfunctional nose can be good at times. And sure, I can cook broccoli in my studio apartment and use public bathrooms without gagging. I was unfazed during a 14-hour car ride from North Carolina to Louisiana with four boys (and their Moe’s Southwest Grill orders).

But then there are the other times. Like the gas leak in my dorm building — I was oblivious to the odor, watching TV, when my RA pounded on my door shocked to find that I had not already evacuated.

The sudden increase in the number of patients losing their sense of smell has had a major impact on odor researchers, as well.

“It really radically changed the lives of many smell researchers that were doing something else and are now studying the effects of COVID,” said Dr. Danielle R. Reed, associate director of the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

“It was really astonishing to suddenly be the focus of worldwide attention.”

Reed and her colleagues knew before the pandemic that viral infection could cause smell loss, but there wasn’t much attention paid to how or why. Now, answering those questions is paramount — and researchers have been thrown into the limelight.

Early on, Reed’s lab developed a test to try to standardize smell-loss diagnoses at doctors offices. It asks patients to locate smells on a sheet, rate their intensity and attempt to identify them. This way patients can know the severity of their conditions, and their doctors can easily measure improvement.

Now the lab is working on taking cells from tissue in the nasal cavity and growing them in a petri dish. They plan to expose these cells to SARS-CoV-2 and other viruses to learn why COVID-19 has a unique impact on smell.

“There are biological processes that we are working to understand. And if we can understand it, we can hope to correct it,” she said.

Researchers in Goldstein’s lab have undertaken similar work. Starting in 2020, they began to biopsy the nasal tissues of patients with post-COVID anosmia to see if they could uncover what was responsible for the loss of smell.

“We’re still learning more about what exactly is damaged or where exactly the damage is,” he said.

Still other researchers study how the virus attacks the olfactory nerve, which conveys smell sensations to the brain.

While researchers look for a cure, the internet has filled with suggestions — sometimes well meaning, but mostly ineffective.

People love to tell me about the latest cure they saw on TikTok. I’ve tried them all: the burnt orange trick, the flick to the back of the head trick, aromatherapy with essential oils and a daily nasal steroid. I went to Goldstein’s clinic to take a smell identification test and get a nasal endoscopy.

So far, there is no cure.

But there are ways to cope.

Early on, I’d smile and nod when people who didn’t know about my anosmia would ask me things, like to confirm that their candle from Bed Bath & Beyond smelled good. I was embarrassed to tell them that I really didn’t know. Like it somehow made me seem lesser.

“Oh crap, I’m sorry,” my Dad started saying every time he instinctively commented on a passing aroma.

But I actually like when people bring up surrounding scents.

“It’s OK, just describe it to me,” I’ll respond.

I want to know that the Subway sandwich shop across the street from my apartment still emits wafts of warm, strangely sweet bread. Or that the pasta my sister ordered for dinner made the whole table smell like truffles.

Sometimes when walking into a restaurant or store for the first time, I’ll say out loud, “What’s that smell?” just in case there is one for someone to tell me about. I don’t want to be left out.

I’ve learned that the English language is lacking in scent descriptors. Most of the time people just default to “good” or “bad.”

If they’re really trying, people will add a ‘y’ onto the end of another word. Earth-y. Mint-y. Fruit-y. These are better than “good,” but still hard for me to wrap my head around. (Tropical fruity and wild berry fruity are two very distinct scents — that, I remember.)

At some point, I started saying “compare the smell to something” rather than “describe it.” It’s much easier for me to imagine a scent when someone likens it to, say, a wet dog or strawberry Jell-O.

My close friends understand the need to say that bakeries we pass smell like caramelized sugar, and that college parties we attend smell like sweaty boys and old beer. Those are smells I know.

Luckily my sense of taste has not been dramatically affected. I’ve done blind taste tests with different potato chip flavors to confirm this.

A person can taste with a dysfunctional nose, Goldstein said. Sensations from tastebuds in the mouth are just one part of how we experience flavor. The mouth feel from sensory nerves and the airborne substances that find their way to olfactory cells in the nose “give you a lot of information about the chemical qualities of food,” Goldstein said.

“If someone totally loses their sense of smell, they’re missing a lot of that input,” he said. “Yes, they can still taste salty or they can still taste sour or bitter, but some of the other qualities that are mediated by the olfactory sensation are kind of missing.”

In my case, while I’m sure my taste is less refined than it was before I got COVID-19, the eating experience has never become a chore. I never had to rely on texture more than flavor or douse my food in hot sauce to feel something.

That sort of loss is just one of the additional problems that some people who have lost their sense of smell deal with. For some, the impact can include depression and anxiety, Reed said.

“Nobody really wants to talk about the mental health aspect of it,” she said. “But that is definitely something that comes up over and over again.”

Chrissi Kelly, now an advocate in Britain for treatment of smell disorders, lost her smell following a sinus infection in 2012. Soon after, she began to experience intense depressive effects.

“I was unprepared for that and didn’t really know where to go for advice,” Kelly said. “It really did change my life. It was just a very, very dark time for me.”

Kelly founded AbScent shortly after her diagnosis, when anosmia was not as well known. The organization, which provides support and information to those affected by smell disorders, has seen rapid growth with the onset of COVID-19. Before the pandemic, it had around 1,500 members; now it serves more than 85,000 people worldwide.

Explaining the condition to those who are unaffected is one of the most challenging parts of advocacy, Kelly has found.

“You just don’t even know where to begin,” she said. “I think it’s because smell is so elemental to all organisms. And therefore, imagining life without that is just unthinkable. It’s like saying, ‘OK, I’d like you to imagine a life without gravity. Or how about you imagine a life without time?’”

It’s hard to describe “how weird it is, how suffocating it is,” she said.

“Recovery is chaotic,” Kelly tells AbScent members. Anosmia can change from day to day and requires patience. In her case, recovery took eight years.

As for me, I’ll catch whiffs here and there. A hint of my dog’s food when I pour it into her bowl or a whisper of smoke from a passing cigarette.

Whether they are phantom scents, I can’t say. But they make me hopeful.

Recently, I was sitting in bed with my computer when something made my nose wrinkle. I ignored it at first. Then I remembered two slices of bread I had put in the toaster 15 minutes earlier.

When I ran into the kitchen, I found two smoking, charred squares. A few expletives later, while tossing the slices in the trash, I audibly gasped.

I hadn’t jumped out of bed because I saw the burning bread. I hadn’t heard the machine beep. I smelled the smoke. Or perceived it with some other developing sixth sense.

Either way, it was the most excited I’ll ever be about burnt toast.

EDGEFIELD, S.C. (WRDW/WAGT) - A tank full of bad gas left a woman in Edgefield County stuck with a $1,600 bill after her car broke down.

Some Edgefield residents stopped by a local gas station for their normal fill-up but didn’t realize the gas they put in their cars was bad.

“I was getting a traction control light. I was getting a check engine light. I could push the pedal all the way down to the floor, and RPMs just kind of stayed in right under 1000 and wouldn’t give it any more power than that,” said Brittany Jolicoeur, Edgefield resident.

The South Carolina Department of Agriculture tested it and showed the gas had water or sediment.

She says it caused her new truck to break down.

“It was kind of scary. I had both of my kids in the car. They were freaking out. They didn’t know what was going on. Obviously, I was upset,” she said.

MORE | Elderly neighbors grapple with mail issues in McCormick

She works in an auto parts store, and she found out her car wasn’t the only one.

“Several of my mechanics were coming in telling me they’re replacing fuel pumps. They’re having to flush systems. They’re dropping gas tanks. They are doing all of these things due to the bad fuel that everybody got from the same fuel station,” said Jolicoeur.

She says insurance told her they wouldn’t cover the costs.

MORE | Augusta leaders unanimously OK stopgap ambulance deal

She says the station bagged the pump, and she saw changes being made. The gas station owner is paying for her damage.

After a three-week battle with pumping bad gas, it makes her question every time she fills up.

“I’m scared to get gas anywhere because I even said to the insurance company, you know, I was quite upset. This is my main means of transportation and when they started speaking on negligence I said, ‘what am I supposed to do? Test the gas before I put it on my vehicle,” she asked.

We spoke with the owner of this gas station, and he says he recently bought this station, and once he heard of the problem, he fixed it. The Department of Agriculture was on site Tuesday and they confirmed fixes have been made.

Copyright 2023 WRDW/WAGT. All rights reserved.

Most teachers don’t think twice about the sacrifices they make every day in order to ensure the well-being of their students.

But with schools across the country closed as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, teachers are facing new challenges and demands that they’ve likely never encountered before.

Teachers across South Carolina are communicating with students via social media, managing online classrooms and converting dozens of lessons to new and creative formats suitable for long-distance learning, all while juggling the added stresses and responsibilities of their own personal lives.

COVID-19

Wando High School English teacher Patrick Martin was forced to leave his scheduled paternity leave two weeks early so that his 150 or so students would be able to successfully learn from home.

“It was just no way to continue on with a long-term sub and meet the needs of my students,” Martin said.

Now, as he and his family adjust to work and life from home along with a new baby, Martin also faces the challenging task of teaching students virtually.

“I think the hardest thing with the balance between professional and personal right now is trying to find the time to meet your students where they are,” he said. “Some of them have been struggling with access, some of them have been struggling with illness, some of them have been struggling with things that we may not even know about.”

Christy Brown, an upper elementary teacher at Charis Academy, has also learned how to juggle teaching from home while taking care of a young child. She and her husband are currently fostering their first child, a 20-month-old boy that they eventually plan to adopt.

“I’m learning how to be a mom, being in my mid-40s. And being able to teach and be a mom has been a very rewarding thing,” she said. “I couldn’t see being able to do one without the other without the support of our administration.”

During the first few weeks of the shift to long-distance learning, Martin and many other teachers across the state worked around the clock to make the transition as smooth as possible for students.

It’s now been a month since Gov. Henry McMaster ordered all public schools statewide to close their doors to reduce the spread of the coronavirus, and, much like the students they teach each day, many teachers across the Palmetto State have since settled into some form of routine. But long days tied to a computer screen, the digital demands of remote learning and the added stress and worry that accompanies living during a global pandemic can take a major emotional toll.

According to a survey conducted by the Yale Center for Emotional Intelligence and the Collaborative for Social Emotional and Academic Learning, teachers were asked to submit the three most frequent emotions they felt each day since being out of school. Feelings of anxiety, fear, worry and sadness were the most mentioned. Anxiety was by far the most frequently mentioned emotion teachers reported, EdSurge reported.

“If you thought a teacher burnout was bad in a traditional classroom, all this has exacerbated that,” said Summerville High School history teacher Charly Adkinson.

COVID-19

Always on call

It’s not uncommon for Adkinson to get messages from her students at 10 or 11 p.m. They were given Google phone numbers so they could reach out for help. Adkinson also has a separate Remind account set up for her students if they want to message her there.

“They’ll text me and say, ’Hey how’s your day going,” or, ‘I got a letter of admission from a college I applied to.’ They just want to talk,” Adkinson said.

But Adkinson doesn’t mind. Hearing how her students are doing makes life feel a little more normal, and it’s comforting to be able to check in on them.

School is often a safe space for students, Adkinson said, and she constantly worries about how her kids are doing now that she doesn’t see them every day.

“That’s always on the back of my mind,” she said. “There’s really no detaching yourself from it. There’s no shutting off that part of your brain.”

In Dorchester District 2, where Adkinson works, students were not issued technological devices. Teachers are still posting assignments online, but students have also had the opportunity to get paper-and-pencil learning packets from a drive-thru line in the school’s parking lot. The district has also allowed the teachers to set standard office hours each day when they’ll be on call to help.

“It is easy to feel like you are stuck to your desk, but at least in DD2, they’ve given us the ability to create space if we feel like we need it,” she said.

Gretta Corning, a high school science teacher at Laurence Manning Academy, has also been forced to adapt to the challenge of constant communication with students.

Every morning, she’s up at 6 a.m. She fixes her coffee and then hops on her computer, where she checks assignments, schedules virtual parent conferences and answers student questions. Even after her students have logged off for the day, Manning usually continues working until around 6 p.m. or so.

“It was very difficult to begin with. I still spend about 10 hours a day on the computer. And of course, we’d much rather be in the classroom,” Corning said.

Students deserve compassion and understanding during these challenging times, Adkinson said, things that also should be extended to teachers as well.

“Most of my friends have little kids, so they’re trying to manage their families, they’re trying to make sure their kids are doing what they’re supposed to be doing online for their classes in addition to holding their own classes,” Adkinson said.

COVID-19

Challenges at home

Pinewood Prepatory School English teacher BJ Ruddy has to plan his days so that his kids can have access to the computer when they need it.

But one of the biggest challenges for Ruddy and the thousands of other teachers across the state is missing the in-person classroom connections with students. He misses being able to talk with and host lively student discussions during his lessons.

“Now, it’s a whole new world,” he said. “You do something for 17 years in one world and then, all of a sudden, it switches.”

Elise Shelton, a middle school history teacher at Pinewood Prep, has two elementary school students learning from home during the closure.

“We did end up with all three of us in live sessions at the same time last week, and that was a little chaotic,” Shelton said. “Eventually I had to pick up my laptop and walk to the other room because we were all kind of reverberating off of each other.”

But having younger students at home helps Shelton remember to take a little time for herself and her kids each day away from the computer.

“Since I have kids, they ask for recess time, and I think that actually really helps me,” she said. “It reminds me that my students don’t need to be staring at a screen all day. And at the same time, it also helps me step away from it because it’s really easy to get sucked into it here.”

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Contact Jenna Schiferl at 843-937-5764. Follow her on Twitter at @jennaschif.