This makes it sound like "in person" learning will be more like the provisions being made for children of essential workers here in NY - where they've been providing supervised locations/school buildings for those kids to go during the day to do their remote learning so that parents could continue to go to their jobs. https://gothamist.com/news/doe-enrichment-centers-open-city-scrambles-care-kids-emergency-workers
Semester starts remote. Teacher trains their class on how to learn remotely, and they all get to know each other. When F2F instruction resumes, teachers have their students split between home and school. From school, teachers teach exactly the way they've been teaching during the first all-remote month. F2F students sit at their desks, with their ipad or computer, and learn remotely, just like their peers at home.
I'm not following, where is the teacher in this scenario? Why have the kids come to school at all?
There really is no need for teachers to be the ones providing the daycare function, under this model. With a little extra federal money and hiring of 20-somethings, you get really close to my vision of daycare pods for 2-4 families, all ages. It sounds like the NY model is pretty close to that, as well.
Here is an optimistic take, as I'm pathologically unable to do otherwise: Implement this model in the fall. Biden gets elected, and a big funding bill for schools comes through in January, and the spring follows my vision of safe pods of small groups, run by camp counselors, throughout the city, where students complete remote lessons, functioning as a WPA works program as well.
2: Teacher is in the room as a babysitter and facilitator, essentially. Just so parents can go to their jobs.
We're all remote now for the fall so it's moot. But what they seem to have been planning, at least for the lower grades, is that teachers who qualified to teach remotely taught the remote kids. And the teachers in person taught the in-person kids. And somehow the numbers would work out.
5: I would have had questions about what happens as kids go back and forth between quarantine and F2F. Do they switch teachers? Maybe so.
6: Who knows? I think they were making a distinction of some sort between kids who chose all-remote and kids who chose to try to be in person some days a week. But the district "pivoted" to all-remote before the details were clear. (And part of that may have been that they were having trouble staffing the in-person part, but that's speculation.)
Or they could just do the quarantines for entire classrooms, with the teachers. For the lower grades, where you've got 1 teacher per classroom, not lots of switching for different subjects.
What I wonder is how they will run high school football? Or prevent the riots that will start when current and future car salesmen are forced to be alone with thoughts of their own mortality on a fall evening?
But anecdotally what our town is doing is since the high schools are remote, high school students are providing most of the childcare in town, while managing their own studies. This will, I assume work extraordinarily well, since what could go wrong? Ordinarily college students would do a lot of the pick-up childcare, but the university is still planning in-person classes. And the daycares are trying desperately to expand and hire tutors, but lack space.
And now I'm off to a zoom round-table on childcare during the pandemic.
The best Zoom meetings are when there are nine people so you get a perfect Brady Bunch opening view and can compare if "Alice" is the same for everyone.
My kid's school got a grant to teach four weeks of remote summer school. It started last week and confirmed my suspicion that it has no value for us a (three days per letter; they are now up to the letter C). I now wonder why the kindergarten teachers are trying to teach. Isn't this Sesame Street's turf? Hasn't Sesame Street had resources and decades to work on this, and done it as well as can be done? Why pretend that any particular kindergarten teacher can do as well?
We are going to the mountains for two months, mostly so that Steadfast and I can get off the internet. I am not going to try for him to be a remote online learner. I'll try to arrange something with his teacher about keeping a journal or doing math worksheets or something.
We're officially all-remote for the time being as of a couple of days ago. An interesting wrinkle is that they're floating the idea of merging classes in a grade level - so there's no more Ms. X's 3rd grade and Mr. Y's 3rd grade, just 3rd grade, with the teachers doing live teaching, 1:1 meetings, or small groups as needed. Possibly just per-school, so there are 1, 2, or 3 classes of ~20 being merged this way; possibly some of it will be cross-school or district-wide.
Although they do keep insisting that "attendance will be taken", but when pressed, don't really know what that means.
Isn't this Sesame Street's turf? Hasn't Sesame Street had resources and decades to work on this, and done it as well as can be done?
HBO controls the rights, so pandemic summer school would be rolled out to the wealthy districts first, but then it would be publicly available to all after six months. With commercial breaks.
I went with our virtual rather than hybrid option, and we're informed that virtual will not mean the non-traditional instruction that was what we had after closure last year. I have no idea what that is going to look like and I'm not sure the school does either, but it's still frustrating not to have heard more yet.
14: Our district has said that "attendance" means "any form of engagement whatsoever". So opening up the recording later on that evening counts. Partially attempting an assignment online counts.
For remote learning in elementary school, my district is including remote students in a morning meeting with a regular classroom teacher, but after that it's all asynchronous... videos and assignments the school is putting together for everyone to use. I'd like to think they'll have more live interaction when the school inevitably closes?
https://twitter.com/Exploratek_Cat/status/852184926736838656
We unenrolled. There's no way they're going to learn anything in "school", and this way we control the schedule. They should convert schools to daycare for the kids of essential workers and leave it at that. If anyone else's kids happen to pick up a book while they're home, great.
My kids - one in high school, one just entering college - are going to be entirely remote at least until January, and this was settled weeks, maybe a couple of months, ago. If I have to live in the United States, at least I'm in the People's Republic of Maryland (where the Republican governor is still a worthless piece of shit, but he only complains a little when public institutions reject idiocy).
We will unenroll if they meaningfully enforce "attendance". But I'm pretty sure they won't, so we'll stay in in hope of an in-person spring.
I want to stay enrolled, 'cause I really like the school community and 'cause I want the school to get the attendance money. But I hope to work out a deal with the teacher and be gone 'til November.
Before Viagra, you had to go see a urologist and get an in-person spring.
Also I had visions of the remote kids staring at their ipads sadly, watching all their friends joyously frolic in person.
I don't remember much joyous frolicking in classrooms.
and 'cause I want the school to get the attendance money
This is us, too.
28: From the point of view of the street urchins, with their noses pressed against the windows, frolicking is percieved.
The eviction crisis is going to really mess up school if there's not more help.
My kid is a senior in college now, and *all* of his classes are going to be remote, including the labs. He's deeply upset, since he doesn't see how he's going to learn anything this way. We considered having him stay out for this semester, but that would require him to get a job, which, yeah, what jobs.
I'm not teaching this semester, since I'm on sabbatical, but I agree that very little learning is going to happen in "remote" teaching.
Durham County apparently has ponied up for Chromebooks for every student, as all classes are remote for at least the first quarter. Picked up Cassidy's today, Noah's next Tuesday. Everything is weird.
Chromebooks aren't that weird. They're basically iPads that don't work as well.
Here, students who decide to go remote are signed up to a statewide virtual charter school, which is reputedly way the fuck over capacity.
They call those "cyber schools" here. Our commitment to outdated terminology doesn't stop with using the word "speakeasy" to refer to currently operating illegal bars.
I'm sure that virtual charter schools won't turn into a giant grift or anything.
Durham County apparently has ponied up for Chromebooks for every student,
Same here, although k-2 get an ipad instead. The term I hear here is being a "1 to 1 district".
Yeah we get a chromebook for everyone 1st and up the first week in September. And something for the Kindergarten at some point thereafter. But reports from the summer school say they require an adult standing by for tech support.
I really wish our college would just go ahead and declare remote learning. We have to accommodate anyone quarantined (which sensibly means anyone who asks) and be primarily face to face and yet socially distant as we have discussions without getting close to one another. I'm pretty sure at this point they'd learn more all online. And if the college weren't bringing back 20,000 people, about a third currently living in hot spots, the elementary schools would have a chance of eventually meeting in person.
Funny how you don't see so many Bubba safari pieces in the mainstream press, now that hanging out with rural Trump voters is practically a death sentence.
I keep thinking about this tweet/discussion thread: "Nearly every academic friend I've talked to in the last few months is trying to figure out their escape plan." Apparently I don't know any academics figuring out escape plans, maybe because I dropped off the academic map (and the general social map, tbh) years ago, but I can't imagine morale is very high.
The virtual charter school referenced in 35 just backed out of its commitment to all the school districts in the state to take over remote learning. Oh well!
No worries, I guess, the local school board can figure all that stuff out at the last minute.
Our district:
- start Sept 16
- half days only until Oct 5
- 4.5 days/week after oct 5 (Wed afternoons off)
- 4-12 all remote to start except sheltered English immersion and separated special ed
- preschool-3 option for four days a week in person; 2-3 will be limited capacity and prioritized by need (homeless, special needs, English learners). Max 12 students per room.
- Next reassessment of plan end of October
- Quarantine rooms, air purifiers, 6 feet separated desks, all rooms must have windows that can open and sinks for hand washing; district has 230k masks, 5k face shields, and 1M gloves on order.
Since three of our kids will be home we're keeping the fourth home instead of applying for an in person spot.
I guess that means they have standards. Or the state has standards and the ability to enforce them.
It could mean the state made the mistake of paying in advance.
At least they didn't derail local planning for remote classes for the past six weeks OH WAIT THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT THEY DID.
We just passed our mask ordinance. A long time coming!
School Board just postponed opening day by two weeks. Good move!
Our options: full-time with masks, separate district-run synchronous online school, or pull Calabat entirely. Option 1 is not awesome. Option 2 will probably push me over the edge. Option 3 means he will know a lot about Pokemon.
My son is always looking down on me because I can never remember which types have advantages against which other types.
48/50: Our extremely defensive superintendent has been claiming that:
1. they didn't consult any teachers with their reopening plan because they didn't want to bother teachers during their summer.
2. Their plan is to delay for three weeks, for PD for teachers, and then to go remote for four weeks. All that sounds good. But it turns out that the three weeks of PD also includes "figuring out what instruction should look like for the first month, and thereafter"... because no teachers were consulted over the summer, so a lot of decisions were punted.
Brookings Institute says:
In reality, there is no relationship--visually or statistically--between school districts' reopening decisions and their county's new COVID-19 cases per capita. In contrast, there is a strong relationship--visually and statistically--between districts' reopening decisions and the county-level support for Trump in the 2016 election. Districts located in counties that supported Trump are much more likely to have announced plans to open in person. On average, districts that have announced plans to reopen in person are located in counties in which 55% voted for Trump in 2016, compared to 35% in districts that have announced plans for remote learning only. Unsurprisingly, the one remaining group in EdWeek's data--"Hybrid/Partial"--falls right in the middle, at 44%.
53.1 is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
Austin is delaying opening for 3 weeks, then starting online only. Supposedly students who don't have the technology to work at home can show up in person, but I don't know how that's supposed to work. Meanwhile, they're distributing computers and wi-fi hotspots.
54 is fascinating, if unsurpristing.
This is basically how it worked in at our kids' schools with iPads and it was ok. There was a morning checkin in some sort of class group chat. I'm sure it suits some kids better than others, but that's true of the traditional classroom theatre too. Curriculum still set by teachers, they respond on chat etc.
Basically it worked fine, but all the kids had access to devices. I can imagine all sorts of mess where that isn't the case.
Surpristine is a useful word. Like when you go to the beach expecting it to be covered with rubbish, and it isn't.
The beach I went to this morning with Pola was supristine.