Muh Muh Muh My Corona (virus)

I honestly don't see any way how online schooling works in the fall just for that reason. It's been tough for both teachers and parents and kids now, with teachers they already know. when you come in cold with someone you have no rapport with, the teacher doesn't know the kids, some of the kids not getting support at home, and it all becomes rather pointless. I'm not sure what the answer is, or how to do it, but having kids back in school seems kind of crucial.

 

Except when I'm out on my morning walk, when there's no chance I'm going to get within 40 feet of any other human, a mask is always on when I've left the house. All I care about is not encountering anyone or anything that's going to send me to the ER Before the week is over. I don't give a damn how anyone else views my decision.

 

An update on cats and the virus:

 

The quality of the distance learning would improve but, I mean, forget about it being any good. Naw. These are kids. Screens aren't gonna do it.

 

Watched Greta Thunberg last night. She showed up in the last 10 minutes of 2 hours, gave some halting boilerplate answers, and that was all. Feel for her. Anderson Cooper trotting her out for ratings.

 

Alma is right about schools in this sense: As hard as teachers are working during this time and as seriously as some families are taking this, we are doing kids a disservice right now with online learning. The benefits of having students in a classroom are enormous. The ability to give instruction to students and answer their questions and see where they're struggling and help. We can't do that where we're effectively doing triage. This came up faster and we got direction too late to make plans that were realistic.

That said, we absolutely had to shut down. We have the technology to do it so we can still do something. Too many of our kids live in multifamily households or are being raised by grandparents. The absolute thing we needed was students spreading Covid between each other and bringing it home to family members who would not do well. The toll on those students would be enormous and the disruption to schools would be too much. As much of a pain in the ass as distance learning had been, that needed to be our focus.

Will we come back in the fall? I don't know. I really hope so. I had a student we emailing me the other night feeling very lonely and trapped and needed something other than being cooped up in his house. He broke my heart. These kids need structure. But we need to keep them safe too. I really don't want to restart school in the fall (at this point, there's so little school left restarting the school year isn't fesable) only to have it shut down again a few weeks or a month later. We need a plan to keep kids safe, their families at home safe and teschers safe as well. Until those are in place, I don't want to rush to reopen.

 

Like having Iggy Pop on to discuss the political statements of Beethoven’s Eroica Symphony.

 

But the rest of you, go out into the world cuz everything's fine

 

The evidence right now tells us almost all the kids will be safe.

 

More like "But we don't need remote voting or vote by mail for a Presidential election. Get out there and be warriors for Democracy".

 

Do you have children? Do you truly feel safe sending them to sit in their usual classes?