Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

That and attention seeking.

 

Telling students their grades can't drop is idiotic. I believe distance learning can be valuable. It isn't going to be as good as classroom instruction. Of course it isn't, but it doesn't have to be useless, either. Taking away any accountability for the students is not the way to make it useful.

 

My son's in fourth grade and they're not even doing letter grades for the fourth quarter. And we're in one of the five or so best districts in the state.

 

Now that we're a couple months into this it's really easy to see the consequences of Trump's incompetence and incoherent messaging.

People's absolute selfishness, ignorance and stupidity on the matter is heartbreaking. And enraging.

 

Define safe. Vaccine safe?

 

Well, most of them certainly can deal with it. Very very very few emergency rooms are being overrun at all outside of a couple of states and a couple meatpacking hotspots.

 

Yes as a teacher I want the kids back in the classroom for a number of reasons. My school especially where many home lives are not great, food is a real issue, technology access is a real problem and school is a way for kids to get access to social programs.

BUT

I'm not asking my kids to come in where they are in a room with 45 others for an hour and a half at a time plus their other classes and interacting with 300 plus other students to then go home to parents, grandparents, older care givers (all with varying degrees of health) and younger kids to potentially give whatever they contract from the 300 of them to times 3 or 4 others at home. And I'm at a small school. How about schools with 500 or 600 students? Schools with 1,000 to 3,000 plus students? The risk to the community is enormous. I want the kids back in the fall, but we have to be ready to not be because students with sick family or dead family are not learning much in class either.

We had half of our kids qualify for free computers to take home and half of them get loaner iPhones to get internet access. My brother-in-law's district had something like 6,000 computers for his district to send home to kids. We are trying hard at my school to give kids close to an hour's worth of history and English content (we teach a combined class) two days to go with math, science and PE the other two days. I know plenty of teachers working their asses off to give the kids what they need. We are keeping track of students who are not doing work so the school can reach out and offer services they might need. All to keep them safe. We want them back but we want them well too.

This "what about schools!?!?" is the same argument for "we need to open the economy, dang it!" We all want to get back to work but we don't want to have story after story of the South Dakota pork plant because we need to get valet parking again.

 

I didn’t say all students weren’t learning anything. But some certainly aren’t learning much at all. Especially if they don’t have good Internet and the kind Of tech needed to do remote learning.

 

Read an AP story today about "harried parents" who are going crazy or simply giving up after less than a month of trying to teach at home.

Ha. I thought teaching was a job anyone off the street could do, that teachers were lazy, overpaid, had it easy because of summer vacation, etc. Hopefully we'll never hear that stupid narrative again.

 

This is all fine, and I have zero doubt, none whatsoever, the teachers are working really really hard. There’s a reason why public schools exist in the first place, and why in person learning has long been preferred over remote learning. Throw in the fact That, at some point, parents are going to have to go back to work, and they’re going to have to take their kids somewhere - somewhere where the kids could pick up the virus just as easily as they could at school - and “wait til the vaccine” seems increasingly untenable.

 

I agree. Don't know where the accountability is. It works both ways too, so their grades also can't improve. There isn't any reason to do anything. And from what I've seen, while not as good as classroom work, it's still pretty solid. Luckily my kids are doing the work and they would even if they resisted, but it is a dumb policy.

 

Yeah but the parents aren’t teaching. They’re often working - at another job. On top of that, they’re trying to act as the go between with teacher and student, while making all their kids meals, while also trying to get their kids out of their hair, while also making sure their kids don’t do anything dangerous outside like...touch playground equipment or breathe on anyone.

And that’s for the parents who can stay home.

What parents are experiencing in that regard is nothing like what a teacher, who has kids for 40 minutes per day - and gets paid for it - experiences.