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By thepostman
Registration Days Posts
#610055
So many of us have children. Some are young children. Are your kids in virtual school? If so, how is that going?

I'm working from home and so is my wife so we are blessed in that way but it is still a challenge.

Our daughter is in 3rd grade and is pretty self efficient but our son is 5 and in Kindergarten and it is something else.

Yesterday he answered a question and right afterwards he stood up (without muting himself of course) and yelled, "Oh man! I've got to poop!!"

Today my wife shared this:

"Just heard Judah's teacher say to a student, "you need to be in your chair with your shirt ON" so things are going well."

Virtual school is not ideal by any stretch. I am sure others have some stories as well.

I don't want this to turn into another Covid debate. Just focus on virtual school and how it is going and funny stories.

Also. What are the plans for your school districts for coming back to the school buildings? Right now our county doesn't have a set time table.

Interesting times to say the least.
User avatar
By Jonathan Carone
Posts
#610059
We did three weeks of 100% virtual. This week and the next two will be hybrid. We're allowed to go back full time October 5 and are waiting to see if our district will be ready by then or if we'll have to wait longer.

My wife's a nurse, so virtual kindergarten has been all on me.

Thankfully we're done by 10:30/11 every morning, but since they're just doing letters and numbers, my daughter is incredibly bored. She'll routinely get up and walk away to go get something from her room just because she already knows what they're doing. Or she'll want to tell me random stories instead of listening. It's quite the adventure.
User avatar
By thepostman
Registration Days Posts
#610061
Yeah, I wish that is how they did it here. It is from 9 to 11 in the morning and then 1 to 3 in the afternoon for our son. For our daughter it is 8:30 to 11:15 and then 1:15 to 3.

For our son, I wish they'd just do a meeting in the morning. 30 minutes tops and then have self paced stuff to do at home but I guess they are worried that some would fall behind because of their parents work situation or crappy parents but it is Kindergarten, I'm pretty sure it isn't that serious.

It is super frustrating that so many surrounding counties are coming out with their return timelines but ours don't seem capable of making decisions. I'm all for being smart about it but when Baltimore County can get their plan in order before us, there is a problem haha.
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By Jonathan Carone
Posts
#610062
The way our kindergarten teacher is doing it is a live call from 9-10 for those who are virtual. It's also recorded so kids can watch it later if parents' schedules don't allow them to have the kids available at that time. She goes over the basic teaching of the day. Then we have two 10-15 minutes we watch each day that build on the foundations, three worksheets, and then the special class of the day. Today was music so we watched a few videos from the music teacher. As long as you get your work turned in by the end of the day, you're counted present.

Most places I've heard are doing the more strict live things throughout the day. I'm so thankful we're not having to do that.
User avatar
By thepostman
Registration Days Posts
#610065
Yeah, there was a huge outcry about the lack of instruction last semester so the school board over corrected. For my daughter, it has been fine and she actually likes it for the most part. But for 5 and 6 year olds it is nearly impossible.
User avatar
By thepostman
Registration Days Posts
#610066
ballcoach15 wrote: September 18th, 2020, 12:10 pm When this pandemic is over, I never want to hear these terms again:

Zoom
Virtual
Webinar
Opt out
Those things all make life much easier for a lot of professions but for young school kids it is very difficult to manage.

I hope I never go back to working in my office everyday. We have proven to increase productivity this way. I'm hoping to go to telework 2/3 days a week post pandemic.

Of course this is about school and sharing your experiences with virtual learning so a bit off topic.
User avatar
By Purple Haize
Registration Days Posts
#610067
I cannot wait for all the Sociology Studies to come out about this. Perhaps the assumption of teaching to the lowest common denominator needs to be rethought. Mrs Purple is finding it not so challenging but readily admits most students get bored in a hurry. You all are making a great point that perhaps the curriculum (granted we are talking Kindergarten here) isn’t as rigorous as need be?
I’m going to keep an eye on any surge from outside traditional places for Vouchers School Choice etc. I have LOTS of friends who say the same thing you two did and their kids are waaaaay older than Kindergarten.
User avatar
By RubberMallet
Registration Days Posts
#610070
i work with schools and my product is directly integrated into the remote learning experience.

A) Google and Amazon have had massive cloud overload issues and basically 95% of school utilize google/amazon in some way shape or form. As well as programs heavily rely on google and amazon to function. zoom is one of them. many schools are struggling with this.

B) there is a chromebook shortage. schools trying to do remote can't because they can't get chromebooks into kids hands until like november, AND many students have little to very poor internet connectivity at home.

C) many teachers are not up on the new fandangled stuff. Schools will likely see large chunks of money invested in these products go wasted.


I just talked with a school today that is rural that basically said they have to do onsite learning or just be done all together for this semester. Another school i talked to just had to order new toner cartridges because their older teachers are basically running the copy machines dry of ink because they've had it with online and are just printing off packets for their students. He said one of the teachers was like, it took us 40 minutes of the clase each day for the first week to take roll. leaving 12 minutes for actual learning. So they just aren't doing it at all now. who knows who's there or who's not!

Another school i talked to that is a affluent HS has had 40% of their students not even log in one time. Because the students have essentially figured out ways of disabling any of the management on the chromebooks.
Purple Haize liked this
User avatar
By Jonathan Carone
Posts
#610071
One of my hopes through this is that it's going to make us look at having high speed internet more available. Chattanooga moved to a publicly owned city wide internet a couple years ago and have had massive success with it. High speed internet is an infrastructure issue at this point.
User avatar
By thepostman
Registration Days Posts
#610072
Yeah, our school district has provided chromebooks to 95% of the students and the ones who don't have one indicated that they have devices they are able to use so luckily that isn't an issue. The internet thing is an issue but mainly because the info on free/low cost internet for low income families is so hard to find. It is buried on our county's website and not publicized in the way that it should be.

I do hope l when we come to the other side of this thing schools will be better prepared from a technology stand point. Technology is a huge part of education now and the schools/teachers who refuse to embrace that do themselves and their students a disservice.

I do feel for all of the teachers though. What an extremely difficult time. They are being asked to take on so much, so fast and are extremely underpaid.
By ballcoach15
Registration Days Posts
#610088
Granted it's not same as school for kids, but I have "lost out" on trips to New Orleans, Virginia Beach and Roanoke for conferences, and maybe Las Vegas.
User avatar
By Jonathan Carone
Posts
#610089
We were able to get Chromebooks for our entire district thankfully.

We were originally going to do two weeks of virtual school then go hybrid. A week before school started, our district announced our PPE and cleaning supplies supplier weren't going to be able to get things to us so we'd be hybrid until October 15. Then two weeks into virtual they said they were able to get supplies and we could start hybrid this week. Yesterday our governor announced October 5 as a full-time option for elementary students if districts can do the safety things necessary.

The amount of adapting administrators, teachers, and parents have had to to do is crazy. I'm in awe of our admin and teachers and how they've handled it all.
thepostman liked this
User avatar
By Purple Haize
Registration Days Posts
#610095
I know that there’s a huge teacher shortage
The technology aspect is tough. You literally cannot have a successful class online with 30 kids live on a Zoom type format. It’s impossible. Mrs Purple is seeing about a dozen and that’s stretching it. The audio delays are real yo. Talking over each other all the time. Ugh. Kids spacing out and a lot of Wait, what?
The other dirty little secret is the bloated administrations. There are a lot of Administrators Job Justifying by creating more work for their Teachers and Staff
I’m convinced now more than ever people just need to bite the bullet and open the schools.
flamehunter liked this
User avatar
By Class of 20Something
Posts
#610099
It is baffling that anyone thought it would work to begin with. Anyone with a kid could tell you even in person classrooms are spread too thin before this. Trying to do it online is absurd.
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