mrken30

I now know why the American school system is broken. Just had this email from my kids teacher, take into account their education is 100% online. I don't think an hour of education is sufficient for an 8 year old. I have attached a 2nd grade Pacing Guide for the first quarter. Again, these are “soft” due dates.



A general guideline for scheduling your learning time:

An upper limit of 1 hour computer time per day! Make sure to be taking breaks in that hour--don’t do it all at once.

Do ELA and Math every day (20 minutes each)

Rotate Science and Social Studies every other day (20 minutes), leaving one day for “catch up.”



Attendance: If your child has logged on and worked on lessons, assignments, or quizzes, they will be marked “Present.” If you know you won’t be able to log on for that day, email me and let me know. I will mark your child “Present!”

Bob

One kid seems to be doing okay. The other has been a little on the hiccups. She had a class meet, logged on when the teacher said he was going to be there...Turns out the teacher turned up an hour later, so most of the class had buggered off to do the next class in their timetable.

First day of in person today. Seemed to go a little smoother. There's only about 6 kids in the youngest class, a couple more in the other kids. There was only a few kids on the school bus too.

Owen778

So, Anchorage School District have now changed their minds. They plan to have the kids go back to full-time in-person school with masks and social distancing (can't imagine how that will work) with staggered timing. Elementary kids mid-October, Middle mid-November and High beginning of January. The 14-day rolling average of positive cases has not dropped below their criterion for the high risk level, but they say that "guidance has changed". The fact that they're starting with the age range least able to maintain social distancing but with the biggest impact on parents' ability to work likely indicates what is driving this change. We'll just have to wait and see how it goes next month.

Our kids are actually doing pretty well with online schooling, after some difficulties at the start. The schools and school district are doing a much better job than in the spring, both of teaching and of motivating students to learn and complete their work. But we are also lucky we have high speed internet, plus a big house that allows everyone their own space, enough that our middle kid can play trumpet while the other two are on zoom calls.

Owen778

That reminds me of the communications we had from our district in spring, not wanting to put too much extra stress on students and parents, though the "you don't need to bother" message that sent was even worse. Thankfully, they learned from that, and the structure provided is now much better.\

moi

My 15 year old is back to in person 5 days per week in NJ. However, it is a private Catholic HS so they have more leeway than public schools. He misses the alternate days of remote and in person, which they had for the first 2 weeks. With in person he has to get up earlier so that is his reason. I personally much prefer the in person as I don't think remote cuts it. Overall, his school has done a great job with everything.
My 4 year old just missed the Kindergarten cut off by 13 days. I was initially upset about that before the pandemic, but now, I realize it was a blessing in disguise. I am lucky if he sits still for 15 minutes.

retzie

The town I where I used to live in Oklahoma has just sent the kiddies back in-person entirely due to parental pressure. The infections are sky-high and growing, and the pitchforks come out if any parent dare breathe a word of dissent.

It's one of the college towns where testing is low and the students have simply been asked to "take personal responsibility". The university remains completely silent

Bob

Two neighbouring towns have switched from hybrid to remote learning because kids had tested positive at one of them, another had a bunch of kids caught having a huge party and they couldn't verify everyone who was partying.

Rose tea

We have a first grader and it's 9 - 3 online every day for us. The earliest we could go back to in person school is January.

They have one hour for lunch, and they log in at the top of every hour to get a lesson that's anywhere from 10 - 60 minutes. When the lesson is over for the hour, we're supposed to supplement with reading or maths apps that don't work properly. I'm basically chained to the living room to help with iPad issues, as it's hard for children this age to be patient with technology.

It's already such an enormous amount of screen time that we don't even use the reading apps, we use real books. We play board games during lunchtime. Spouse was coming down at lunch to relieve me, but his job changed and now he's in meetings all day. It reminds me of the isolation and boredom of maternity leave. Neverending.

username.exe

I've got a first and third grader; between them they have eight online appointments throughout the coures of the day, and they're also meant to be doing a plethora of other learning platforms (iReady, Raz Kids, Epic, Lexis, ABC Mouse, Khan Academy Kids etc.). Frankly,it's exhausting. I'm meant to be working myself, but most of my day is spent reminding them to get online, doing tech support, and the weekends are now filled with homework catchup that we couldn't do mid week because I was working.

Such is life in 2020!

Rose tea

Sounds like we're in much the same boat, except you've got double the workload. This year has made me glad we stopped at one, I suppose.

I'm frustrated every day by the lack of work out there, but at the same time, not the worst time to have no job, as this online school this IS my job. My SIL quit her job to manage her kids' online schooling.

Hiro11

We have two daughters.

Daughter #1: sophomore at a Big 10 university. Currently hybrid learning (two classes in person, the rest virtual). The remote learning seems to be well organized, but she says she's having more trouble than usual keeping up with absorbing the material. It's not ideal, I've asked if she needs tutoring. She says no for now. She's proven herself able to work effectively alone, so I trust her to make that decision. Her workload is high as she has various needs for two different scholarships she has and she's preparing for law school. She has already had and recovered from Covid-19. She was entirely asymptomatic, thankfully. She was rush chair at her sorority and has an extremely, shall we say, active social life.

Daughter #2: junior at local high school. Last school year was a disaster: poorly organized, confusing communications, bad materials etc. This is understandable as they had to improvise. This year seems much better. They gave every kid a Chromebook (she has two other laptops as well), the material seems well organized and scheduling is better. We have supplemented with some focused tutoring. No word on ACTs/SATs or how college admissions will work this year. Her workload is very high, she spent most of the weekend studying which is typical. They are going back to some in-person instruction in about two weeks.

angelman

Here in LA - our school district (not LAUSD) has in retrospect done a pretty decent job. I have a 5th and 8th grader. They had a public consultation and despite a vocal group of parents campaigning to go back to school AND BAN THE USE OF MASKS, common sense prevailed and they went all remote. They kind of left it until the last minute and I would have preferred they spent more time developing a solid remote plan but I understand why they tried to hedge their bets and wait until the end. They gave the teachers quite a bit training in the technology, developing lesson plans etc. Middle schools were sponsored by Verizon and every student given a Chromebook and Verizon hotspot for free internet (only on that chromebook). Every student has the opportunity of getting a district chromebook (they even have surplus). Obviously this whole situation is incredibly challenging for so many. I do believe there are opportunities to find positives and benefits to this, opportunities to find new ways of teaching and try new things. It is interesting to see how different teachers are responding. Some teachers are really rising to the challenge others are really floundering. I think a rhythm has been established now and teachers are starting to push students more. The biggest issue is simply getting student to stay online and focused without anyone necessarily physically in the room (if parents are working). It continues to be a challenge but many students are really trying their best and rising to the challenge. I think it's important to realise that nobody wants this situation, nobody asked for it. I do believe it's more important to have consistency and despite the hardships of having kids at home it's better than hybrid models where at any time a student could test positive and disrupt the entire class and more. Our district does have some on site child care/tech pods. Kids of essential workers and parents who really need it can have their kids go onsite where they sit in a supervised room. They still follow the lessons the same as remote students and the staff on site are not teachers, they are merely there to monitor, check students wear masks etc. So far it's been working well and there have been no cases reported yet. If some adults in our district hadn't been such covidiots and even actively campaigning against mask wearing a hybrid model might have been possible but this is the safest alternative thus far. I hear though that LAUSD is not doing so great though it's a huge district and trying to roll out such a huge project in such a small time is an extraordinarily difficult feat. Screen fatigue is a real thing but I am interested how many parents who thought nothing of giving their kids ipads and iphones and consoles while their kids were not in school and at home are suddenly concerned about screen time. It makes me sad to see parents using ipads as babysitters, to see toddlers with iphones their eyes glazed over. So the whole screen fatigue argument doesn't really wash with me. I don't expect our schools to go back in person until maybe mid next year, maybe end of next year. We shall see

robtuck

You'd think the issues this reveals to parents across the Nation would highlight real issues around the relative value we place on the teaching profession - how many people have a giggle about Teachers having short days, or having such great Holiday time? The reality is a stressful job with the added pressure of knowing the people you churn out are supposed to be well educated and adjusted! The reality I fear is we'll all pop open the Champagne when the last school kids are back in person, take a sigh of relief and go back to how it was.

robtuck

Having said that, our youngest has a pretty crap PE teacher.

lansbury

We watched our grandson, a first grader, do his online school yesterday. His mum was there to instruct us, as we will supervise two days a week.

We thought it was a complete shambles, not the teachers fault. There appeared to be two unsupervised kids who were disruptive and wouldn't comply with the teachers requests to behave. It made it impossible to get our grandson to concentrate. He told us before it all started "You log on, teacher say hello, everyone says hello and then all hell breaks loose" Very insightful for a six year old.