school year?
Luckily we live in a city school system so there are only 3 schools to worry about. School seems to be starting awfully early this year on August 12th. They have not released many details yet other than there will be traditional or online school options. What do y'all plan on doing this upcoming school year?
Both my kids have told me they want the online option, which will work fine for our family. They know that I work from home and am a type 1 diabetic so it makes sense for us.
What I worry about is interaction with other children, them missing out on their gifted classes. My daughter is going into 6th grade and wants to join the band but is not willing to go now. My son is in 8th grade and will still run cross country and has been working out with the varsity baseball team all summer and it is a year round program for our school. So he will still be around his friends, my daughter not so much. They will both do well grade wise but I worry about the emotional health and friendships. It is going to be a tough decision for so many families.
small classes with only 6 to 15 students per classroom. Distancing, mask, sanitary plan all set.
Daycare seems to be up and running. No parents allowed inside. Temp and wellness checks at the door. Teachers are masked. Food and naps are in classroom rather than in common areas. The only complication later in the year will be gym time since they won't be able to go outside.
My son's camp is similar and is at his school so I'm hoping this is a dry run. But the policies in place mirror the daycare - no parents, temps, teachers masked, little exposure to common areas.
I'm optimistic that there will be some type of school in the fall. Too many parents are fucked if it isn't.
HS is going to give the option of on campus or distance learning (my 2 kids are split on this). Our 8th grader's school is planning on in-school only and are requiring face shields (that seems dumb to me). So far Fall sports are a go. My soph and 8th grader play soccer. I coach the 8th graders. HS soccer practice has been operating with protocols in place.
Personally, I would prefer distance learning for the first Semester.
same as your situation, I'll miss coaching as much as the kids miss playing.
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You know better than I, but I think you mentioned that you live in Gulf Shores. Is there a reason you and a few other parents can't get together at least once or twice a week in the evenings on the beach or wherever and let the kids be kids as best as possible under the circumstances? Also, as much as possible, have your daughter use Zoom or Meet to talk to friends, rather than using Snapchat or texting. It's not the same as being in-person, but it's better than faceless, limited communication. I had students who stayed on or arrived early before class started to talk on Meet. It helped.
Talk with the gifted and talented teacher. They're trained to invidualize instruction. Tell her/him your concerns and ask how you and she/he can plan meaningful and challenging lessons. It's very hard for a teacher to not rise to the occasion when a parent says, "How can I help?"
Don't expect any word on how your school will plan to run classes for another week or more. They're watching this second wave closely and waiting on state and county health departments/agencies to give more guidance.
That will certainly be on the agenda once September and October come. Right now we have more daily visitors every day since reopening than we did for 4th of July last year, it is clusterfuck. I can rarely even take the boat out right now because there is so much traffic on the water...I don't like summer down here with the exception of baseball season. Thanks for the good ideas
Daily temp checks. If anyone in the class tests positive, everyone goes into quarantine. No choir, no assemblies. Staggered class times, so no grades are in the hallways at the same time. Outside as much as possible. Masks for grownups whenever they reasonably can.
They are doing what they can, and hoping for the best. It could turn clusterfuck fast.
meeting 2 weeks ago where they read like 100 messages (selected of course) from parents, most parents of younger kids (K-grade 5) seemed to want to go back to school at any cost saying the kids aren't at a health risk, but are falling behind and need structure and were afraid that remote learning could disable them for years. So they seem to be committed to opening at this point.
My kids are in parochial school and there has been zero communication on the matter.
option. Why can’t your daughter still do band? That would keep her socially connected. Here it’s the same mix of in school and online being offered. Even if you choose on line though, you can still do sports and extra curriculars from what I have been told.
There are consequences you may not be thinking about to an online/home schooling scenario. When I find the podcast I am thinking of, I'll send it your way.
When things get back to normal and they feel safe they can return to in person school at any time from what I have been told.
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As is usually the case, the folks who have a "one saved life is worth it" belief do not weigh the risk at hand against the risks on the opposite side. I can assure you that the vast majority of teachers want to be back, including those in the 55-70+ age range. I'm sure most districts will accommodate those teachers who want to teach from home. It is relatively easy to have students in school, watching a big screen, as the teacher teaches from home. Plus, you can have a para/aide in the room to keep the kids more on task than when they're on their own at home.
That said, the logistics of in-school instruction are enormous and I just can't see it working in most districts. You're relying on kids to be disciplined about keeping the masks on and not herding together. I just can't see that, at least in bigger schools. Many have parents who aren't wearing masks, already. You will have kids who deliberately cough or sneeze at each other or without covering. I can foresee multiple outbreaks in many schools, which will then have to close for periods of time. How many times will these districts go virtual and then come back? I think about my previous district, specifically the middle school, where they had to pay teachers $4000 extra to take lunch duty because no one wanted to do it due to student behavior. As a colleague stated, "You'd rather have your head dunked in a toilet full of crap than have lunch duty here." How is this going to work in that environment, which isn't atypical?
As long as we have masks and safe spaces, I see no problem with this.
Flu Epidemic to bring home the much more daunting challenges kids faced a century ago. Because we are a nation of historical illiterates, we think every new challenge is the biggest one Americans have ever faced.
And you're absolutely right in my non-expert opinion, of all of the things that are lacking for the latest crop of children (mine at 13 and 11 included) is that they don't have a historical perspective, they don't understand just how good they have it in the context of 200K+ years of human struggle.
I worry about the lack of struggle most.
The most obnoxious thing I see now is 20 year-olds lecturing an elderly American about any of this stuff. This is a function of how they've been raised, not taught humility, not taught that their views are not particularly important because they have zero life experiences. I know how embarrassed I am of things I said and believed at twenty, when I really didn't know anything.
I'd also like to know how you can be a multiculturalist if you don't know anything about the foreign cultures you attempt to venerate, nevermind your own. If you ever want to stump or silence them, ask them to tell you something about the history, the religions, the social structures of these places they claim to love. They know nothing about them. If they had a class allegedly based upon study of these cultures, it was undoubtedly fixated upon their oppressed/oppressor, one-size-fits-all explanation for everything. They were taught political ideology, not history or culture.
In my twenties I felt sorry for myself for it.
In my thirties I tried to forget about it.
In my forties I embrace it, own it and feel fortunate that I was given the opportunity for growth.