11 minutes ago, BirdsFanBill said:

This seems to be a common idea. That teachers are the same as healthcare workers. Weird since they don't get paid like healthcare workers.

they're also police officers, remember?  

they should definitely be paid more. 

13 minutes ago, Dawkins 20 said:

Yeah, pretty much every sector of the workforce has needed to take reduced hours/pay cuts in some capacity. Teachers should not be immune from this as well if they're going to be working reduced hours and remotely.

I was working from home 2 or 3 days a week from March until the end of June. At that point I couldn't do it any more. It's impossible to focus or get anything done. Simple mundane tasks were taking 3 or 4 times as long to complete. We ended up getting a neighborhood teenager to watch the kids on those days and it has worked out much better this month.

I feel like this return to school thing is a severely complicated issue and I find myself conflicted with it constantly.

It's way more complicated than some are making out to be.  If there was a virtual classroom that was like a real classroom setting then I might lean that way but setting these kids back a year and a half with a shiddy virtual learning platform is unacceptable.  Instead of me trying to figure out how the F they want my kids to learn math problems with no guidance (totally different than when I was in school) have the teacher there in instructing them online.  Not messaging back and forth and emails, etc...a simple 10 minute task can take an hour. 

Our district has 3 options on the table, full virtual (of course we haven't seen the platform so no way in hell am I doing that again until I see it), an A/B staggered schedule for 6th and up where it's a mix of in class and virtual with kids staggered on different days and then full day with masks and distancing (basically will cut anything non-core to accommodate extra space).

The online aspect should be different than it was at the end of last year.  The school district my kids are in and the one my wife teaches in are both making significant changes to the online/remote aspect.  There will be more live synchronous teaching versus asynchronous info dumps in emails and videos. 
 

it sounds like what my wife was doing last year remotely, as well as my kids teachers, was already much better than what some of you guys experienced, and that sucks.  There really are no good answers in this.  

10 minutes ago, Shepard Wong said:

The online aspect should be different than it was at the end of last year.  The school district my kids are in and the one my wife teaches in are both making significant changes to the online/remote aspect.  There will be more live synchronous teaching versus asynchronous info dumps in emails and videos. 
 

it sounds like what my wife was doing last year remotely, as well as my kids teachers, was already much better than what some of you guys experienced, and that sucks.  There really are no good answers in this.  

This is what I would want.  Now obviously they weren't the slightest bit prepared for what happened and I hope they've been working on a system from the start.  I'm just not confident until I see it in action.  It still doesn't solve the issue of middle class, lower class families or single parent households with younger kids who can't work from home and need a paycheck to keep a roof over their head and food on their plates.  What do you tell those people?  Quit your job, lose your house and go on gov't cheese to stay home with your kid because you can't afford 8 hours of babysitting all week?  That's where it becomes much more complicated.  Like it or not people build their lives around their kids going to school.

28 minutes ago, mr_hunt said:

they're also police officers, remember?  

they should definitely be paid more. 

The kindergarden art teacher at my home town school gets paid 60k a year to fingerpaint 6 hours a days for 9 months out of the year.  That's grossly overpaying what they actually do.

Just now, paco said:

The kindergarden art teacher at my home town school gets paid 60k a year to fingerpaint 6 hours a days for 9 months out of the year.  That's grossly overpaying what they actually do.

if there's an art teacher just for kindergarten, that district definitely has problems. 

1 minute ago, paco said:

The kindergarden art teacher at my home town school gets paid 60k a year to fingerpaint 6 hours a days for 9 months out of the year.  That's grossly overpaying what they actually do.

She must be new there for that salary.

1 minute ago, paco said:

The kindergarden art teacher at my home town school gets paid 60k a year to fingerpaint 6 hours a days for 9 months out of the year.  That's grossly overpaying what they actually do.

Dealing with kindergartners for 6 hours a day isn't exactly a walk in the park.

Just now, rambo said:

This is what I would want.  Now obviously they weren't the slightest bit prepared for what happened and I hope they've been working on a system from the start.  I'm just not confident until I see it in action.  It still doesn't solve the issue of middle class, lower class families or single parent households with younger kids who can't work from home and need a paycheck to keep a roof over their head and food on their plates.  What do you tell those people?  Quit your job, lose your house and go on gov't cheese to stay home with your kid because you can't afford 8 hours of babysitting all week?  That's where it becomes much more complicated.

Agreed.  I’m lucky enough that I have a job that allows me to work from home 100% of the time and allows us wide latitude for flexibility during the work day to help my kids and then get work done at night.  As of now, my wife will be teaching in the building full time when the year starts back up so if my kids are hybrid or remote, it’s all on me to help them.  Most people aren’t that fortunate, I know.

My youngest is going into 1st grade and by far had the worst experience learning remotely last year.  I really don’t want to have him do it again, for his sake.

9 minutes ago, rambo said:

It's way more complicated than some are making out to be.  If there was a virtual classroom that was like a real classroom setting then I might lean that way but setting these kids back a year and a half with a shiddy virtual learning platform is unacceptable.  Instead of me trying to figure out how the F they want my kids to learn math problems with no guidance (totally different than when I was in school) have the teacher there in instructing them online.  Not messaging back and forth and emails, etc...a simple 10 minute task can take an hour. 

Our district has 3 options on the table, full virtual (of course we haven't seen the platform so no way in hell am I doing that again until I see it), an A/B staggered schedule for 6th and up where it's a mix of in class and virtual with kids staggered on different days and then full day with masks and distancing (basically will cut anything non-core to accommodate extra space).

It sucks that those were the experiences that you had with online learning. I had live sessions with each of my classes 2-3 times a week, although the district limited those sessions to 30 minutes a piece and that was the maximum number of times I could meet with my classes. I would have preferred being able to meet with all of them 5 days a week. On top of that, I allocated 2 hours a day where I sat by my computer in a MS Teams (kinda like Zoom) room waiting for students to stop by if they had questions or needed additional guidance on assignments. I enjoyed working this way, even though I ended up putting more work into teaching than usual (and I normally spend a lot of time with my work). Because of the nature of how the learning was happening, I knew that I had to provide a lot more written feedback since I wasn't going to be able to provide as much real time verbal feedback to students.

It was an enormous amount of work making the transition from live teaching to online, and I feel that the majority of my colleagues were simply trying to keep their head above water given the short notice and total lack of expertise in making this transition. This is where I get nervous about this upcoming year. We should all be preparing to be online if it is going to be a successful means of instruction, but I see us sitting here insisting that school must be in person. There is no incentive to the vast majority to take the time to prepare the resources for online instruction since the plan is to be live. I don't think any of us (not just talking about teachers here) enjoy doing hours and hours of work only for it to be meaningless and discarded. The transition from online to live instruction is significantly easier because most people are used to teaching live.

From a psychological standpoint (for the teachers), I think that the best method would be for all schools to say, "Our current plan is to provide instruction online to all students." Then, the teachers have the time to prepare and hopefully would provide a better product than they did in the spring. I'd rather prep to be online when we start back up, and then have them say, "well things have calmed down enough that we can meet in person with these guidelines...", because it will be easier to transition from planning to be online and going live, then planning to go live and transitioning to online.

For context, my perspective comes from my experiences. I was extraordinarily prepared to go online compared to the vast majority of my colleagues. I've been setting things up to make online instruction possible for my courses for years, to make it easier for students who were absent from the building for various reasons to catch up. You're missing a week of school to go to Disneyworld... okay, here are the lessons that you'll be missing and here are the assignments- watch these short videos to get additional explanation of what is going on. Of course, it was worth it to me to make all of these resources in advance, because I have mostly highly motivated high school students, since I teach Calc 1, Calc 2, and some Gifted Seminars. I could count on the students to access these. When we did online instruction in the spring, I could tell students to watch 15 minutes worth of videos on the days that we didn't have class and we could do a quick debriefing on their questions when class went live.

I guess more than anything, I'm saying that our schools having a plan would be greatly appreciated, because the uncertainty is worse than any of the possible plans (except for maybe going back to school live with absolutely no guidelines in place).

6 hours ago, DrPhilly said:

In denial of what?

Our opinions mean very little here.  I mean, we’ll get the chance to vote in November, but for now the people in charge of the Coronavirus response are the people in charge.  And expecting that all of a sudden in July of 2020 that they’re going to adopt a more complex and nuanced view of getting back to normal is naive.  It’s not gonna happen.

27 minutes ago, Shepard Wong said:

Agreed.  I’m lucky enough that I have a job that allows me to work from home 100% of the time and allows us wide latitude for flexibility during the work day to help my kids and then get work done at night.  As of now, my wife will be teaching in the building full time when the year starts back up so if my kids are hybrid or remote, it’s all on me to help them.  Most people aren’t that fortunate, I know.

My youngest is going into 1st grade and by far had the worst experience learning remotely last year.  I really don’t want to have him do it again, for his sake.

My youngest was in 1st.  The challenge of keeping a 6-7 year old on task with all the distractions of home is a job in itself.  My daughter was in 3rd.  She would stay on task but rush through the work and be done in an hour or two.  She's a very bright student and was in advanced math and was selected for a special project team with other advanced students, basically she was way above bench mark in all core curriculum.  Her work suffered quite a bit with the virtual.  Some of that has to do with me tending to the younger most of the time and not following up on her work because by the time I get done with the school work I still have my own work to do.

1 hour ago, DrPhilly said:

Six hour school board meeting from my old high school this past Monday with 80% on the topic of what to do this fall. 

Our meeting lasted just shy of 3.5 hours last night and probably 95% of it was on the topic of our re-entry plan for the fall.  There were at least 65 comments or questions from the public.

2 minutes ago, rambo said:

My youngest was in 1st.  The challenge of keeping a 6-7 year old on task with all the distractions of home is a job in itself.  My daughter was in 3rd.  She would stay on task but rush through the work and be done in an hour or two.  She's a very bright student and was in advanced math and was selected for a special project team with other advanced students, basically she was way above bench mark in all core curriculum.  Her work suffered quite a bit with the virtual.  Some of that has to do with me tending to the younger most of the time and not following up on her work because by the time I get done with the school work I still have my own work to do.

Our kids are close in age. We have a lot of the same issues. I hear the same things form others. Traditional schools are not equipped to effectively go online. They lack the technology, and the teachers lack the proper training. 

Just now, Imp81318 said:

Our meeting lasted just shy of 3.5 hours last night and probably 95% of it was on the topic of our re-entry plan for the fall.  There were at least 65 comments or questions from the public.

Same with ours.  I watched it after.  They had to boot an anti-masker from the virtual meeting because every time they said masks might be required they went all ballistic and started spouting off like a ****.

Overall, from the surveys, about 70% of parents want their kids back in school in some capacity.  With most being fine with social distance and mask guidelines.

10 minutes ago, rambo said:

My youngest was in 1st.  The challenge of keeping a 6-7 year old on task with all the distractions of home is a job in itself.  My daughter was in 3rd.  She would stay on task but rush through the work and be done in an hour or two.  She's a very bright student and was in advanced math and was selected for a special project team with other advanced students, basically she was way above bench mark in all core curriculum.  Her work suffered quite a bit with the virtual.  Some of that has to do with me tending to the younger most of the time and not following up on her work because by the time I get done with the school work I still have my own work to do.

sounds familiar...my 14 y/o would rush through sheet as fast as possible so he could play ps4. then i had to start micromanaging & teens love that.   

46 minutes ago, rambo said:

She must be new there for that salary.

He's been there for a while.

Just now, mr_hunt said:

sounds familiar...my 14 y/o would rush through sheet as fast as possible so he could play ps4. then i had to start micromanaging & teens love that.   

My daughter is will be 10 this year.  Her and my wife are already starting to get along like oil and water because my wife is a micromanager sometimes.  I see her attitude come out occasionally and am dreading the teen years. 

45 minutes ago, Paul852 said:

Dealing with kindergartners for 6 hours a day isn't exactly a walk in the park.

Oh no, one is crying because they don't have a juice box.

 

Not worth paying the equivalent of $97,500 full time salary to a glorified babysitter.

Just now, paco said:

Oh no, one is crying because they don't have a juice box.

 

Not worth paying the equivalent of $97,500 full time salary to a glorified babysitter.

Let me just say this, I wouldn't do it for 97k.

2 minutes ago, paco said:

He's been there for a while.

Whoops gender assumption on my part.  SMDH.  I guess teaching art to kindergartners doesn't require an advanced degree to move up the pay scale.

1 hour ago, rambo said:

It's way more complicated than some are making out to be.  If there was a virtual classroom that was like a real classroom setting then I might lean that way but setting these kids back a year and a half with a shiddy virtual learning platform is unacceptable.  Instead of me trying to figure out how the F they want my kids to learn math problems with no guidance (totally different than when I was in school) have the teacher there in instructing them online.  Not messaging back and forth and emails, etc...a simple 10 minute task can take an hour. 

Our district has 3 options on the table, full virtual (of course we haven't seen the platform so no way in hell am I doing that again until I see it), an A/B staggered schedule for 6th and up where it's a mix of in class and virtual with kids staggered on different days and then full day with masks and distancing (basically will cut anything non-core to accommodate extra space).

We're in the same boat. 3 options on the table... full online, A/B staggered schedule, and business as usual (anything in-class includes the usual COVID safety protocols). I feel like the older the kids are, the easier virtual learning will be (not saying it's "easy" per se, just easier for older kids than younger kids). My kids will be going into Grade 1 and Grade 2 and the virtual learning is a total sheet show. My oldest actually took to it pretty decently but the other outright refused and wanted nothing to do with it. If parents are going to be working relatively normal schedules, there just isn't enough time in the day to come home from work, make dinner, do the usual household tasks, and somehow accomplish virtual learning on top of that for x # of hours. It's just not possible.

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

No kids FTW,

3 minutes ago, Paul852 said:

Let me just say this, I wouldn't do it for 97k.

same.

my brother has taught kindergarten for years...his district doesn't have a fancy art teacher just for kindergarten...and he works a 2nd job on weekends & in the summer to help make ends meet. as for the job itself, we don't talk about it much but he has said that the parents are much worse to deal with than the kids. 

1 minute ago, vikas83 said:

I've said it before and I'll say it again...

No kids FTW,

You're gonna need somebody to wash your balls when you're old and decrepit.