Completion of the school year

[PeoplesElbow]

I can't see why they didn't have a remote learning plan in place already. They should have already had something for snow days.

Hell back in the 80s we had "snow day work" to do just in case.

 

[officeguy]

My kids are doing more while stuck at home with this than they do in a regular school week. They already got many of their assignments prior to this thing via 'google classroom', now it's everything.

 

[RoseRed]

I can't see why they didn't have a remote learning plan in place already. They should have already had something for snow days.

Hell back in the 80s we had "snow day work" to do just in case.

I recall smog days.

 

[SamSpade]

It's still going to be a bitch getting them to do ANY damned work. One of them WILL do it; the others will fight me over it.
My oldest has zero attention span and will quit after five minutes; the other insists she only has to read when she HAS to.

I am not looking forward to this.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

It's still going to be a bitch getting them to do ANY damned work.

I am not looking forward to this.

Maybe they picked that up somewhere

 

[PeoplesElbow]

Probably too late now, but this actually works very well with adults.

 

[SamSpade]

Maybe they picked that up somewhere

No idea - I mean, I have one who does it right away. She actually WANTS to do the remote work.
The oldest, I get it - he has very severe learning disability and homework is almost useless for him.
Even when he's in school, he's pretty much supervised all the time. And they usually put him somewhere quiet with no distractions.

It's the youngest I don't get. She's not smart but is at least above average. But she's somehow got it in her head she should never do anything that's hard to do. Even at 10 years old, she's mostly convinced she will marry a rich guy so she won't have to do anything. Some of our conversations have been hilarious if they weren't in earnest.

 

[NorthBeachPerso]

I can't see why they didn't have a remote learning plan in place already. They should have already had something for snow days.

Hell back in the 80s we had "snow day work" to do just in case.

Some of it's because there is a substantial portion (typically 20%-30%) of kids who, for whatever reason, don't have access to the internet.

If you want to go live from home think for a minute what that means, the teacher has to have an area in their home set aside for broadcasting, not to mention having the supplies and equipment necessary to conduct a lesson.

Which then leads to deciding the how of the lesson. Teaching on-line, no matter how you do it (real time discussion, live streaming, making an assignment for later turn-in) is different than being live in school.

Also, if you're going to do textbook stuff, even if it's just "Read Ch. 31 and compete Think About questions 1 and 3, you're assuming the kid took his book home. And no, on-line texts from the publisher don't work unless the school system has paid for them.

If you mean having emergency plans ready to use for this, that is likely doable if you keep in mind that emergency plans are just general, usually just practice that's designed to keep the kids busy and not new material.

 

[GURPS]

she's mostly convinced she will marry a rich guy so she won't have to do anything.

so .... elementary school was in the mid 70's

a discussion my mother had with a teacher on one of the progress reports ...... you shouldn't be too worried about his spelling. after all he will most likely have a secretary typing up his memos or letters any way

 

[SamSpade]

so .... elementary school was in the mid 70's

a discussion my mother had with a teacher on one of the progress reports ...... you shouldn't be too worried about his spelling. after all he will most likely have a secretary typing up his memos or letters any way

Not sure that excuse would be much different today - I've known far too many engineers whose penmanship is worse than any doctors, whose written grammar is atrocious and whose spelling would make a grade schooler laugh. And they're still laughing all the way to the bank because in their profession, writing English isn't all that important.

What DOES disturb me though is the thought that simple, basic MATH or even arithmetic skills aren't important, because we'll have calculators or computers to do it FOR us. It's kind of like saying you don't need handyman skills or cooking skills, because you can always have someone else do it. Until of course - you don't.

I wish I had a nickel for every instance in my lifetime where someone lacking simple math skills either got screwed over or managed to massively screw something up because they never bothered to learn.

 

[NorthBeachPerso]

Not sure that excuse would be much different today - I've known far too many engineers whose penmanship is worse than any doctors, whose written grammar is atrocious and whose spelling would make a grade schooler laugh. And they're still laughing all the way to the bank because in their profession, writing English isn't all that important.

What DOES disturb me though is the thought that simple, basic MATH or even arithmetic skills aren't important, because we'll have calculators or computers to do it FOR us. It's kind of like saying you don't need handyman skills or cooking skills, because you can always have someone else do it. Until of course - you don't.

I wish I had a nickel for every instance in my lifetime where someone lacking simple math skills either got screwed over or managed to massively screw something up because they never bothered to learn.

Wasn't there a Mars lander a number years ago that crashed because one design team was using English measurement and the other team was using Metric?

 

[GURPS]

Wasn't there a Mars lander a number years ago that crashed because one design team was using English measurement and the other team was using Metric?

A Satellite was lost in the 1960's because of a misplaced comma in the programming

 

[SamSpade]

Wasn't there a Mars lander a number years ago that crashed because one design team was using English measurement and the other team was using Metric?

Don't know about that one, although in school they made us do the stupidest thing I can think of - endlessly converting them back and forth. Kind of like converting base 7 to base 5 - an utterly useless thing. We're just never going to convert totally.

(Admittedly - the English system still has its strengths - mostly in, you can roughly estimate most of the major units by inspection. A foot is about the size of your foot, an inch is about the width of your thumb, a hand is the width of your hand, a fathom is about the distance between your outstretched arms - which can be useful when say, measuring out rope. I used to work with a carpenter whose "rule of thumb" measuring was pretty good when we had no means of measuring with a tape - forearm length to measure spaces between studs, for example).

I DO know that not long after Hubble was launched, they found a serious error in the mirror surface - because of a lack of calibration on the device used to smooth out the mirror. WORSE, the caught the error but ignored it, because the (flawed) method was considered more accurate.

 

[BernieP]

I talked with the wife about the pass/fail deal and I think the guidance is going to be all pass no fail. This really is a bad idea because if you have a kid in your class that has been a zero getting dunce since day 1, that kid is not going have a 180 degree turn and start passing to the point that their grades would warrant a passing grade in the 55-57 days that are left in the year.

I thought that would be the policy. I get the sense the teachers don't always agree, at least some of the more seasoned, with the guidance from the palace and the administrators.

For the size of the system I find SMCPS to be top heavy, not only in people, but in salary.
I think the people on the front lines should be compensated better, but we should also hold them to a higher standard.
There are many fine teachers, some who are as frustrated as parents, but there are the occasional duds. The kids know who they are, and so do their peers, but the union and rules allow these duds to take up space.
The money saved on overhead (home office) could also be better spent on improving teaching aides, upgrading technology.
The only other comment is that the school system can't hold everyone back because of the exceptions.
There are limits to what the schools and government can do for people. Try and make the resources available, but at some point, you have to move forward and hope you can help the less fortunate.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

Some of it's because there is a substantial portion (typically 20%-30%) of kids who, for whatever reason, don't have access to the internet.

If you want to go live from home think for a minute what that means, the teacher has to have an area in their home set aside for broadcasting, not to mention having the supplies and equipment necessary to conduct a lesson.

Which then leads to deciding the how of the lesson. Teaching on-line, no matter how you do it (real time discussion, live streaming, making an assignment for later turn-in) is different than being live in school.

Also, if you're going to do textbook stuff, even if it's just "Read Ch. 31 and compete Think About questions 1 and 3, you're assuming the kid took his book home. And no, on-line texts from the publisher don't work unless the school system has paid for them.

If you mean having emergency plans ready to use for this, that is likely doable if you keep in mind that emergency plans are just general, usually just practice that's designed to keep the kids busy and not new material.

Thing is they only need a couple teachers to do this, not every one. A lecture on complex numbers can be made by a single teacher in Maryland instead of every single Algebra teacher in Maryland. It could be broadcast from the school.

 

[Ken King]

Wasn't there a Mars lander a number years ago that crashed because one design team was using English measurement and the other team was using Metric?

Yep, it was a Mars probe, back in 99, $125 million conversion error.

 

[officeguy]

It's the youngest I don't get. She's not smart but is at least above average. But she's somehow got it in her head she should never do anything that's hard to do. Even at 10 years old, she's mostly convinced she will marry a rich guy so she won't have to do anything. Some of our conversations have been hilarious if they weren't in earnest.

I checked with my wife. Her comment was that your 10yo IS the smart one ;-)

(And I am going to bite my virtual tongue and not ask any of the follow-up questions in my mind, because well she is 10.)

 

[NorthBeachPerso]

Thing is they only need a couple teachers to do this, not every one. A lecture on complex numbers can be made by a single teacher in Maryland instead of every single Algebra teacher in Maryland. It could be broadcast from the school.

You're presupposing every student in the state is on the same page. That doesn't work even in a single school no matter what the curriculum writers want people to think.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

You're presupposing every student in the state is on the same page. That doesn't work even in a single school no matter what the curriculum writers want people to think.

They should be, they take the standardized tests at the same time.

However the thing about digital video is that is can be watched at any time, the lectures can be prerecorded and assigned by the individual school to match their schedule.

The time of needing so many teachers is coming to an end.

 

[RareBreed]

First day of digital learning and Schoology website is already having issues. Got a text saying they are experiencing intermittent load errors.