First Day of School

[Bonehead]

How are earth are they managing to teach? My son got an email from the paraprofessional that he had in high school. He told Joe they're finally back in school. What role would a para play now?

Probably no different than before, support work just no air time with students. My son managed just fine from home at the end of last year. Lots of phone calls and assignments via the net.

 

[Bonehead]

Please forgive my rantings, I’m just a father so filled with rage I can barely function.
My oldest was supposed to start K this year — I have done everything I could to make it perfect. We planned, years in advance, housing to endure her attendance in the best school district we could afford. We set up everything for this year. I hand-built her a desk and chair (of course bright pink!) with carvings of her favorite characters.
she was looking forward to meeting all new friends, and having a teacher like your wife, @kom526 .
And now she’ll be sitting in front of a laptop for 4 hrs a day. And there’s few things I can do about it.

I can't say that I understand your irritation completely ( because I don't walk in your shoes) but you sure have the right to be frustrated no need for any kind of forgiveness.

 

[LightRoasted]

If I may...

The schoology platform that is being used in St. Mary's was basically dropped in the teacher's laps less than a month ago, ...

All school systems have had the entire summer to get their acts to together. Especially since it has been known for quite a long while that the "teachers" were/are so afraid, (playing it up), to go back into the classrooms because of the hoax. Parents, if you are able, remove your children from the public school system and homeschool them. The experience is extremely rewarding. As an added bonus, the more people that homeschool, the less funding the school system gets. Starve the beast.

 

[Chris0nllyn]

Well, yes and no.

The circus is going on in the spare bedroom, which I spent the last two weeks in preparing as an online classroom and which isn't yet finished. I still need to upgrade the lights.

So far today there has been one power cord meltdown (a known problem with Macs), a SchoolMax crash and a parent who refuses to give her real name when requesting her kid's password. I am so glad I retired. My task now is keeping more retirement papers from being dropped. I'm holding out a new car purchase as an incentive to delay that.

However, I am ensconced downstairs and thankful that Dove season and early goose starts tomorrow with squirrel beginning in a couple weeks. Once the weather breaks I have enough outside stuff, mostly painting (including touching up goose decoys) to keep me out of the line of fire for a few weeks. I also have some stuff at my oldest daughter's house to help her and her husband with so I'm set for awhile. November may be tough, I may have to get a bow and start archery hunting for deer, something I haven't done for decades.

Even being trained/certified as an online instructor I can't imagine having to do this.

Heading out for goose and dove myself. It'll be nice to get outside.

Good luck if you make it out tomorrow!

 

[UglyBear]

I can't say that I understand your irritation completely ( because I don't walk in your shoes) but you sure have the right to be frustrated no need for any kind of forgiveness.

Yeah, apologizing for ranting is because it's against my personal code -- men don't rant, men do.

I'll try to coherently explain why I'm so frustrated.
I fully believe that education on the elementary school level is mostly social -- most definitely in K. That's where kids get together, learn to behave in a group, listen to their teacher, interact with their classmates both individually and in a group. Even baby monkeys need to learn this, and us humans, with our much more complicated social structures, need years of this. Remote ed is killing this aspect.

My wife already works with kids on academic stuff -- our incoming K kid is close to second-grade level on reading and math. We as a family really believe in the value of education, and will make sure kids are caught up anyways.

A poor overworked teacher scrambling to figure out the new software, filling out the forms, and all the other BS associated with remote learning will never be able to be as effective in teaching reading and math as we are doing already. That's not what teachers go into teaching to do, and this will be bad for everyone.

Also, screen time. K kids are required to sit in front of the screen for 4 hours every day, or be counted absent. That is insanity -- that's 4 times the screen time we give our kids a day, including TV! Again, from all my research into education methods (including comparative anthropology), screen learning at elementary school level is useless, or even harmful. Kids need to finger paint, throw Play-Doh at each other, eat paste and worms on the playground, get into fights, play patty cake and spread kooties. The more of this they do early on, the better their cognitive abilities will be, the better their 3-D imagination will be, and the better their social interactions will be developed when they grow up. These are the skills that will be valuable no matter how many cheap Indians can be imported to code.

Last, this is an extreme invasion into our privacy by unaccountable school admin.

 

[kom526]

This might sound like No shiat Sherlock advice but check your spam and promotions email folders for smcps stuff. My LW has had several emails from them that ended up in one of those two spots. It happens with emails from my son’s college also. Oh and heaven forbid if you are in a two parent household and the school has both yours and your spouse’s email.

 

[Clem72]

My granddaughter has an IEP and this mess is gonna put her further behind than she already is. Home schooling is looking more and more as an option.

Your first sentence makes sense, your second one much less so. You basically said the following "my grandchild has special needs and schooling from home is not meeting them and she will fall further behind. So permanent schooling from home is looking more and more appealing."

 

[KingFish]

Calvert has their first day of school Wednesday. Hopefully it goes with less hassle than SMC.

 

[Bonehead]

I spoke to a friend of mine he has grandchildren at his house that started K and 8th grade. They had no problems from his perspective.

 

[phreddyp]

This is one of those reminders that all elections are local, and that your vote counts:
I listened to the CalvCo BOE meeting several weeks ago. 85% of polled parents wanted to re-open.
BOE was going to reopen. Then one member shut it all down. She was condescending, aggressive, and mean. She brow-beat all the others into reversing. Not like others had no power , it just sounded like they were gutless cowards and let her. So, if your kid is stuck at home dealing with this CF, you have one person to blame. Remember that at the voting booth next time.

Who was it , it can still be fixed ?

 

[BernieP]

No worse than the usual "the bus didn't pick up my kids today" first day of school cluster.

No, not sure it's that simple to fix, they went live without doing a fully loaded system test.
Don't forget, the system was put in place primarily for use after hours and people did not have to log in.
Now you have everyone logging in at the same time trying to use the hardware that doesn't have the bandwidth.
Plus, I'm sure the local internet providers weren't expecting as much traffic during the day either.
Factor that into the teleworking crowd and things slow down
When traffic gets delayed, packets get dropped , harder to establish a secure connection.
If you do get a connection, it's going to be slow.
NMCI had to scramble to add new servers and new portals for the VPN. That's not a $10K grant from the state to pay for the hardware and software.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

That depends on the work ethic the kid gets at home. Mine are doing fine because they want to do the best they can without having a hand stuck out for freebies. I practically have to force them to take gifts.

Not really talking about that. For 10 years or so I haven't seen a new college grad that could actually solve a problem that doesn't have a cut and dried answer that can be googled, haven't seen one that isn't afraid to make a decision for fear of making the wrong one and then figuring out how to fix that.

 

[CRHS89]

Your first sentence makes sense, your second one much less so. You basically said the following "my grandchild has special needs and schooling from home is not meeting them and she will fall further behind. So permanent schooling from home is looking more and more appealing."

True homeschooling is not done virtually. The parent (or whomever the parent chooses) is the teacher and is there in person with the child. THe child would be doing more hands-on learning as opposed to watching a screen. There are also many opportunities for socialization with other children through home school co-ops.

 

[NorthBeachPerso]

Not really talking about that. For 10 years or so I haven't seen a new college grad that could actually solve a problem that doesn't have a cut and dried answer that can be googled, haven't seen one that isn't afraid to make a decision for fear of making the wrong one and then figuring out how to fix that.

I think that's always been true. I started working in manufacturing 45 years ago and those Greatest Generation bosses would second guess every decision you made, even when you did everything right. God help you if you made a mistake, they talked about it for years even if you fixed it.

I was going to word the above differently describing those pricks but I didn't want my whole post to be asterisks.

 

[SamSpade]

No, not sure it's that simple to fix, they went live without doing a fully loaded system test.
Don't forget, the system was put in place primarily for use after hours and people did not have to log in.

I'm for all kinds of testing. I'm a programmer, but my job for years is processing MILLIONS of records all day long. You will ALWAYS have unexpected consequences. One that I definitely saw was not everyone got the information they needed - e.g. some messages just went to the wrong person. This could have been solved with a simple dry run, but everyone just said wait till Monday. A guaranteed way to have a problem.

I find it interesting that my youngest - who is not at all tech-savvy - has had zero problems with school since we started. I attribute the biggest reason? We spent the weekend working with the school to make sure she was ready Monday morning. They made the process seamless - do this, that, automated messaging and they had a bona fide expert solving EACH kid's tech problems individually.

The other two - school pretty much said, we'll figure it out Monday. One kid missed the whole morning and none of her friends made it on - and the other they just had dropped meetings. One has decided to do Zoom but somehow hasn't mastered the idea of using the same room ID twice. Another started with Google meetings - and they didn't work for the first day and a half.


I am definitely NOT in favor of "we'll figure it out when we get there". Forearmed is forewarned.

 

[PeoplesElbow]

I think that's always been true. I started working in manufacturing 45 years ago and those Greatest Generation bosses would second guess every decision you made, even when you did everything right. God help you if you made a mistake, they talked about it for years even if you fixed it.

I was going to word the above differently describing those pricks but I didn't want my whole post to be asterisks.

Well, engineers are supposed to learn how to solve problems that haven't been solved before by turning them into a problem that they can solve. IMHO Google has ruined engineering education and many have turned it into looking up an answer, which it is not. I started seeing the trend between 2005-2010 when the new engineers would have had access to Google in college and high school and it only got worse. I also blame it on the rise of helicopter parents.

When I was in college in the 90s a very expensive calculator was advertised in the school news paper, the students looking for a shortcut went out and bought one, most usually failed out because they thought they could use it to cheat with and never bothered actually learning how to solve problems.

 

[RareBreed]

Calvert has their first day of school Wednesday. Hopefully it goes with less hassle than SMC.

Checked in with youngest while on their one hour lunch break. He said he was able to log into all his classes so far and that today is just an introductions day. Figured it would be. I was worried about him having issues after reading all the post about the problems SMC students had. I do think Calvert and SMC are using two different systems for online learning though. Calvert is using Microsoft Teams but has Schoology as a back-up. Plus my son didn't do a lot of his work last quarter until the last day because there was no accountability.

Calvert seems to be running this like in person school where there is attendance taken daily and due dates for assignments. Neither happened for Schoology last quarter. Students are able to ask teachers questions when they arise instead of waiting on a response email hours later. I am at least hopeful that my youngest will do well until schools decide to open up for real.

 

[stgislander]

When Is SMC's lunch period during virtual school?

I see a lot of kids out riding bikes and playing after 1:15pm.

 

[kom526]

When Is SMC's lunch period during virtual school?

I see a lot of kids out riding bikes and playing after 1:15pm.

They gunna get the 'rona!

 

[stgislander]

They gunna get the 'rona!

Shoot, they never stopped even after virtual school started last spring. Lockdown... what lockdown.

They've likely already had it.