Distance Learning - WWYD

[mommyatty]

My BFF is a teacher and actually loves the e-learning set up so much that she plans to open up her own business basically homeschooling 4-6th graders. She’s had a lot of interest. But she teaches at a very different school that was already only 4 days a week and already gives kids the option of doing 2 days at home.

We have been fairly happy with our private school. Now I’m just hoping my job is stable so they can stay there.

[librarychica]

May 14, 2020 17:45:29 GMT -5 supertrooper1 said:

May 14, 2020 17:28:22 GMT -5 mustardseed2007 said:

Has anyone thought about pulling their kid from public school and doing full homeschooling?

I don't understand how I would handle that but its a subject in a lot of mom groups I'm in. The public school's distance learning curriculum isn't great apparently, and so some people are wondering if they don't have the OPTION of sending their kids to a building, maybe they should purchase home school curriculum that is truly built for home schooling.

The thought of it makes me want to cry.

My mom brought this up last weekend. She's a secretary at an elementary school and is responsible for sending out homeschool materials that are provided by the school. She said many parents are considering going this route instead of sending their kids back to school in the fall. I was shocked, mostly because I'm in my bubble here on the WP and see how hard it has been for everyone. 

My friends who homeschool say when you take out all the busywork And rigamaroll, that homeschooling takes up a lot less time. I have considered it casually if schools don’t open of if they, more likely, open in a way that is not compatible with working. I work 4/10s and I could theoretically get most of their schooling done on my three off days. It doesn’t sound pleasant and I am not 100% what we would do for childcare but at least then H and I would just need to figure out childcare between the two of us and maybe a babysitter, outside of whatever the school system seems necessary. IDK. My husband took today off I could focus on work for 12+ hours. I don’t know how to sustain all this.

[mae0111]

If I had to homeschool DD1 I would likely end up in jail or an asylum. She does not take instruction from me. At all.

DD2 and I would have fun, and I would seriously consider it, but I’m worried about the social aspect. I don’t think I could rely on extracurriculars enough to satisfy the need.

I’m pleased with the way it’s going at our school, but my kids are 100% done. They miss their friends and they miss their teachers and they miss being away from home.

[sdlaura]

S/O parents now considering homeschooling, I wish schools would survey parents to see who actually plans to go back. It might be a lot easier to social distance if there are a lot of kids who don’t go back.

[mommyatty]

sdlaura- and with the economy tanking, I think private schools might lose a lot of students because of financial reasons. Which means they will probably have more room for students. Ours already has large classrooms and small classes, but I anticipate our enrollment will be down next year. Both for economic reasons and nervous people keeping their kids home.

Plus I know of 2 parents who won’t re-enroll if it’s going to be distance learning. So I think a lot of people will shift to homeschool curriculum if the kids will be home anyway but then will want a spot when classrooms open up. That’s going to completely screw up school funding. Especially in places with “school choice” set ups.

[twinmomma]

There's no way I could consider homeschooling myself. Even if I don't love how it's going and it's been really, really hard so far, it requires ExH and I to do the same stuff and stay on the same routine. I cannot imagine the nightmare it would be to try and come to some kind of agreement on what counts as curriculum on our own. Since, you know, he was the world's most qualified teacher before. *Eyeroll* Public school's plan and facilitation takes that headache out of the equation.

[twinmomma]

traveltheworld reading your further updates, I'd email the principal. Your teacher isn't just swamped in trying their best efforts, they're just being difficult and unhelpful at this point. That's very different.

[waverly]

Since I think our district is doing a good job with elearning I don’t plan to pull them for homeschooling at this time.

I could see doing it purely for schedule reasons like if I needed to work during elearning and couldn’t help the kids, although I’d probably go the babysitter route to help them before I warp my schedule all around.

For homeschooling I guess there is a decent co-op in our area and yes field trips would be fun, but if school isn’t open the co-op won’t be open and places to go on a field trip wont be open. So in a lot of ways elearning probably doesn’t represent homeschooling. Some homeschoolers come to school for some classes or extra curriculars which wouldn’t be available either.

[campermom]

I am finding this at the school level and at the system level:

Principals are given expectations from above. They share the expectations with staff. Here’s are your requirements. Let’s say, “do this, do this. You can do this if you want, but you don’t have to.”

Then, the teachers who choose to do more are Then compared to the teachers who are doing what they’ve been told is the expectation or requirement. And the ones who are doing just what they have to (likely because they are trying to survive) are being crucified by parents.

“Can you believe she doesn’t even meet with kids on google! So and so does three times a week!” When they were told it wasn’t an expectation to do live teaching.

“Or Can you believe our school isn’t doing a parade for 5th grade graduation! Xyz school is and that isn’t fair!” When our schools were told not to, to be honest. Know how that ended? The other school had to cancel their parade-not bc they couldn’t have it, but bc too many parents from other schools complained.

I keep quiet in real life when I hear my non-educator mom friends complaining about not getting more, more, more but it really makes me smirk and think...”I wonder if she was asked to do XYZ, would she go above and beyond at her work right now?” I just really believe this is a time to show grace.

ETA; her responses to not putting the link up early are lame. It’s sort of a common issue to have something go wrong. However, we are also learning this stuff and finding that many kids are unsupervised (understandably) in these chats and if they enter before the teacher—it’s not good. Same goes for if the kids have the ability to stick around after the teacher leaves. That could be why?

But I also think it’s lame that they won’t post the weekly schedule if the other teachers on the team have had access to it.

In response to the assignment that was confusing-our teachers were creating their own content until...once again...too many parents complained it was either too much or not enough. Then the county said Enough. All the kids are getting the same content (with special ed individualized) and so many of the teachers HATED the content.

There is so much that goes on behind the scenes that parents don’t always get to know.

[vasc]

Everything campermom said. I’m a school counselor, I know what’s being told from the top down.

[mae0111]

Our public school district dropped the ball in a big way with all of this. Parents are really angry, and really vocal on social media. 0% of the anger is directed at the teachers. 90% is directed at the superintendent, and 10% is directed at unresponsive principals.

I don’t really have a dog in that particular fight, but I’m glad that no one is mad at the teachers. They’re not slamming the teachers with emails - they’re slamming the administrators. And that’s exactly as it should be.

[mommyatty]

You’d think the Department of Education would have a task force that would be setting up recommendations for appropriate distance learning. Instead they enacted new regs requiring colleges to give rapists the right to cross-examine their victims before they can face disciplinary action.

It’s a great point about some teachers going above and beyond. We haven’t seen that. I think our school has been great about going “here’s the plan we will all follow. Stick with the plan.”

[traveltheworld]

campermom and vasc, do you know what is the concern with posting the Google classroom link early? Is it because the teachers don't want the students talk to each other unsupervised? I thought there was a way to not open up the Google classroom before the host enters, but the link would be there and you could log on ahead of time? But I might be wrong on that as I haven't used that platform. And the teachers haven't explained why they can't do it. And I do agree that it should be a "from the top" directive, especially given that these issues seem to be consistent across 3 of the 4 classes - hence the thought of emailing the principal. I find the content of the assignments to be fine, it's just that there has been no feedback at all so the kids have no idea if they are doing it correctly or not. What I thought I could politely suggest is: (a) a weekly schedule of assignments (since one teacher is already doing it, they can just all use that template across all 4 classes) - currently the assignments are posted during various times of the day and it's just hard to navigate (whereas the 1 class posts all of them the Sunday night before so I know the assignments are ready to be posted); (b) a weekly 1 to 2 hour "office hour" where kids can sign in and talk to the teachers live and ask questions; and (c) a general response on all mandatory assignments - there are typically about 1 to 2 mandatory assignments a week; or if individual feedback is too much, then a weekly class-wide session where the teacher can go over the common mistakes that were made on the mandatory assignments, so at least the students can know that they are doing something wrong. I won't mention the Google link thing because even though it's annoying, I can deal with it. I'm really trying not to be too critical here and take to heart you point about showing grace, so would really welcome your thoughts on how I could phrase/plan it better. Any insight you can offer from the teachers' perspective would be really helpful. We have a group of very concerned (but I think reasonable) parents, so if we understood better what the underlying challenges are, I think everyone can work towards a more fruitful solution.

@orangebird2020, I guess it depends on what you want to use Outschool for. DS uses it for actual learning, so he picks the topics he's interested in. For DD, since she's not tecnically even in kindergarten yet and she is getting Zoom classes from her preschool as well, we use Outschool just as an opportunity for her to talk to someone other than us. We've intentionally stayed away from anything "academic" and picked classes that are more fluffy. So far she's enrolled in a weekly dinosaur show and tell class, a lego building class, a ballet class, and an "art appreciation" class. She's incredibly timid so I've intentionally picked classes that are ongoing and ones where there'd be a lot of teacher/student interaction so that she'd have an opportunity to get to know the teacher better. If you have other friends who will join, I find that really helpful too as the kids like seeing their friends.

[sdlaura]

mommyatty ideally there’d be a coordinated federal response and plan for everything having to do with this crisis, including schools. But I don’t have much hope for that.

Our school district only has 8 small elementary schools in it, and we’re located in a climate where school could be held outdoors year round. Also no buses or transportation issues to worry about because everyone walks. But we will end up having to go along with whatever other larger local districts decide, I’m sure.

[sandandsea]

We have been doing one outschool class a week and ds loves it. So far it’s been about sharks, Minecraft chemistry, prehistoric beasts, and tomorrow is coding. They are things he’s interested in and up his alley and a nice break from the awful stuff the district is putting out.
His teacher this year is amazing and was helping him so much before all of this. Now it’s all out the window and I think everyone is in survival mode.

[campermom]

traveltheworld I totally agree with you about wanting to have assignments posted by a certain time. I mean that is extremely reasonable. And the expectation given in my school was Monday by 9 am. The only exception to that has been my daughter’s question of the day (again-a teacher went above the expectation) and it is optional. But my daughter looks forward to it everyday. Honestly? Everything is optional for us. You’re either getting a pass or incomplete. Everyone’s passing. In order to pass you need to show “engagement” and that means having done one thing.


As for the google classroom-my daughter has a regular link that remains the same. The teacher as assigned times and the issue with that is kids come in early to the second class and it’s distracting to the ones who are finishing up the first class. It’s understandable that they want to, they want to see each other. Or on the flip side kids are late coming in and she needs to catch them up. She hosts several class times per day and she goes above and beyond and offers extra support times for kids if they need it. Her classroom is like a revolving door, but she is ok with that.

My sons’ teacher posts her link (which is only open when she posts it) at exactly opening time. And you can see all the kids commenting on the stream. “Two more minutes! I can’t wait!” It’s worked every time for us, I mean, if you’re already in the google classroom, then you’re in. We’ve had no problems getting in on that. I guess my question is, are you having ongoing issues being able to get in?

Where parents have struggled was getting onto Microsoft Teams classrooms which we are also allowed to use. There’s a lot more glitches and issues with the app.

ETA as for requesting the office hours-if you do that, you may be one of those parents who are asking for more more more. They won’t tell parents what they’ve told teachers is the “minimum”, but our expectation was that teachers don’t need to do anything live if they don’t want to. And some really don’t want to.

ETA: the feedback issue. There should be a general expectation teachers were given. It can’t hurt to ask what it is, from the principal but before you complain about what is or isn’t happening, just find out what that expectation is. My mom friend totally went off bc she had her daughter go back to week 1 and turn things in and the teacher responded that per our...policy...or whatever she referenced, she won’t be providing feedback from any assignment from more than two weeks ago. Well that mom complained. Her stance was, I don’t have time to check it bc I work, you need to do your job! The assistant principal had to call her. But she was being totally unreasonable. And FYI there were answer keys for parents. She wanted the teacher to do it instead of her bc she’s busy and overwhelmed. Just find out what the expectation is-nothing wrong with that.

I appreciate your delicate stance on this before you go in hot-principals are hearing complaints all day long. I don’t think you’re one of those and I appreciate you asking for a perspective on it!

[vasc]

traveltheworld My guess about posting the link early is the security issue, having kids login too early and potentially be chatting with each other or parents of other children.

It’s a shame your son’s teacher doesn’t seem to be as organized with putting out assignments as the other teachers, but with just a few weeks left of instruction, I’d be reluctant to make a big stink. Has she been a good, communicative teacher the rest of the year? If so, I’d extend her some grace and chalk it up to having difficulty adjusting to eLearning. If she’s been a hot mess the rest of the year, then I guess I’d still chalk this up to her being a hot mess regardless of the circumstances.

[lexus]

May 14, 2020 14:51:54 GMT -5 traveltheworld said:

May 14, 2020 12:19:48 GMT -5 k3am said:

I would... not escalate to the principal. Your kid is like EVERY OTHER KID on the face of the planet right now and having their education affected. But unlike a lot of kids right now, your kid has access to technology and devices, parents who "could" provide feedback, and since you brought up that many students are new immigrants, yours have a huge advantage of that you speak English fluently and can assist with homework whereas others in your distrct may not be able.

Are you spending 100% of your time on work right now? Because I know I sure as heck am not and most of the parents I know are not. I have two kids who need attention, lessons, lunch, play, discipline, etc. If my boss or a client came to me and told me I was doing a poor job of working during a crisis or that I could be doing more, they'd be LUCKY if all they were met with were passive aggressive responses.

I think that was exactly why I want to say something and DH is very much taking the "why do we care" attitude.  Because my kid is not struggling, but there are a lot of families whose kids are struggling and I want to point this out as a systematic issue.  For example, one of the parents reached out to the teacher to ask for help because the assignments were not clear.  After a week of no responses, she emailed again and was told that it was not a graded assignment so she shouldn't worry about it.  Um...what about the child actually understanding the concept?  Another parent asked whether the teacher could organize more than 1 google meet per week as it would help the kids feel more connected to the teacher/their friends and was told that the parents are more than welcome to organize that themselves and she (the teacher) doesn't see why she needs to be there for that.  The same parent followed up and ask if she can set up links on Google Classroom for these meet-ups or get the class email list so we can organize Zoom calls, and no response.  We've also asked if there could be a weekly office hour arranged (1 HOUR) where the kids could ask questions and was told that if a child has a question, the parent can just email her directly.  

I have tried really hard to think about what else the teacher is doing - not that I expect her to work 100%, but I genuinely can't even think of 30%.  Aside from the weekly 1/2 hour google classroom, there's nothing.

Honestly I think I'm more inflamed about this than I otherwise would be because another parent just forwarded me the teacher's latest response to her request to please post the Google classroom meet-up link 5 minutes before the schedule time so that we can log on ahead of time to take care of any tech issues and was met with a "if you were in a regular classroom, I'd expect the class to start on the dot, so I don't see how Google classroom would be any different."  As I have almost consistently failed to get DS on at exactly the right time and he gets upset every time that he's "late", that was really something I was hoping could be easily fixed (um...just post the link ahead of time?!?!).  I probably need to just calm down first.

So I’m a teacher. A high school teacher in a huge district. I’m struggling to give feedback on assignments so I thought I would explain why. 1) I have two of my own kids- a 3rd grader and a 3 year old. 2) My Dh’s workload has not changed and he is expected to have things run business as usual. Mine has, the union negotiated a four hour work day to accommodate care giving, etc. As a result, I am the primary care giver (I’m using that term loosely, I change the tv channel, log into the iPad, get snacks, and nag the 3rd grader to do work. 3) Our lease is up in a month and we have gone through the home buying, minor renovations, and now moving process in the middle of all of this so we didn’t feel comfortable having many people over to do work or pay them to move us 4) I’ve used google classroom for about five years already and grading every single thing on there is cumbersome. It’s not as easy as a stack of papers. It takes forever to log my comments. 5) I spend hours prepping the week’s work, even though I’m using curriculum my district provided because I want the instructions to be clear and all the links in one central location for the week. 6) I spend hours responding to emails from students and their parents who clearly did not read the instructions. 7) I have at least one meeting a week with adults about work 8) my co teacher (the special teacher who works with me when I have students with special needs in my class) hates technology and sends me questions or calls me and I have to teach her how to use Google Classroom or just get the information she needs 9) I send calls and emails to students who I haven’t heard from in two weeks 10) I have to log (or go back through) every single communication or assignment that is turned in each week to take attendance on Friday.

4-10 are work related, take more than my contractually obligated time and I am still two weeks behind on grading and feedback. I will likely pull an all-nighter next weekend to get caught up so I can contact parents of kids who are failing.

None of the things I mentioned include me or anyone in my family having Covid-19, which could happen to your teacher. Perhaps her partner is without a job, etc. there are so many reasons why she can’t get the link out early or give feedback. She should be more polite in her responses. Give her a break or at least just call her out on the sass not the feedback. You could even politely ask for feedback directly related to a specific assignment or area of concern.

[lexus]

May 15, 2020 5:39:59 GMT -5 campermom said:

traveltheworld I totally agree with you about wanting to have assignments posted by a certain time. I mean that is extremely reasonable. And the expectation given in my school was Monday by 9 am. The only exception to that has been my daughter’s question of the day (again-a teacher went above the expectation) and it is optional. But my daughter looks forward to it everyday. Honestly? Everything is optional for us. You’re either getting a pass or incomplete. Everyone’s passing. In order to pass you need to show “engagement” and that means having done one thing.


As for the google classroom-my daughter has a regular link that remains the same. The teacher as assigned times and the issue with that is kids come in early to the second class and it’s distracting to the ones who are finishing up the first class. It’s understandable that they want to, they want to see each other. Or on the flip side kids are late coming in and she needs to catch them up. She hosts several class times per day and she goes above and beyond and offers extra support times for kids if they need it. Her classroom is like a revolving door, but she is ok with that.

My sons’ teacher posts her link (which is only open when she posts it) at exactly opening time. And you can see all the kids commenting on the stream. “Two more minutes! I can’t wait!” It’s worked every time for us, I mean, if you’re already in the google classroom, then you’re in. We’ve had no problems getting in on that. I guess my question is, are you having ongoing issues being able to get in?

Where parents have struggled was getting onto Microsoft Teams classrooms which we are also allowed to use. There’s a lot more glitches and issues with the app.

ETA as for requesting the office hours-if you do that, you may be one of those parents who are asking for more more more. They won’t tell parents what they’ve told teachers is the “minimum”, but our expectation was that teachers don’t need to do anything live if they don’t want to. And some really don’t want to.

ETA: the feedback issue. There should be a general expectation teachers were given. It can’t hurt to ask what it is, from the principal but before you complain about what is or isn’t happening, just find out what that expectation is. My mom friend totally went off bc she had her daughter go back to week 1 and turn things in and the teacher responded that per our...policy...or whatever she referenced, she won’t be providing feedback from any assignment from more than two weeks ago. Well that mom complained. Her stance was, I don’t have time to check it bc I work, you need to do your job! The assistant principal had to call her. But she was being totally unreasonable. And FYI there were answer keys for parents. She wanted the teacher to do it instead of her bc she’s busy and overwhelmed. Just find out what the expectation is-nothing wrong with that.

I appreciate your delicate stance on this before you go in hot-principals are hearing complaints all day long. I don’t think you’re one of those and I appreciate you asking for a perspective on it!

We were told we don’t have to do any recording. We also have to record the session if there is only one student in the “room” during office hours. Some people really dislike being on camera and are uncomfortable recording themselves or kids. Another teacher was going to do live sessions but even sitting in on meetings isn’t working well for her because of internet issues. The district is providing internet for teachers who didn’t have it but nothing for those of us with tons of people in the home online at the same time.

[mustardseed2007]

May 14, 2020 18:38:52 GMT -5 mommyatty said:

sdlaura - and with the economy tanking, I think private schools might lose a lot of students because of financial reasons. Which means they will probably have more room for students. Ours already has large classrooms and small classes, but I anticipate our enrollment will be down next year. Both for economic reasons and nervous people keeping their kids home.

Plus I know of 2 parents who won’t re-enroll if it’s going to be distance learning. So I think a lot of people will shift to homeschool curriculum if the kids will be home anyway but then will want a spot when classrooms open up. That’s going to completely screw up school funding. Especially in places with “school choice” set ups.

A friend who works at a nearby catholic said that the archdiocese is projecting a 20% decrease in enrollment due to the impact on the economy. That was in April so I don't know if the projection is any different now. They also closed several schools. 

We don't go to a catholic school but I think its informative for private schools in general. If anything actually many catholic schools in our area cost less than most others, so I think other schools will be impacted even more. 

Our school is really going to suffer too. I agree that I know several parents who don't want to pay private school tuition for distance learning, some people will have lost their jobs or so much of their income that they won't be able to afford it, and some people were already planning to move for individual reasons (some is the normal in and out but some was related to the low enrollment that existed pre pandemic).

So basically I love our school and want to keep going there but I'm really worried about its survival. And I do get the concern about paying private school tuition for distance learning. I'm guessing home school programming costs are lower than private school tuition (probably by a lot? I don't know) so why not do that if you have the home situation that makes it similar quality?