Middle School Parents: What does ideal distance learning look like to you?

[Anonymous]

If you can provide a syllabus for the entire quarter at the beginning, especially for those classes that require projects to research/revise/edit/submit that will help with planning tremendously. Ask the kids questions in live /synchronous lessons so it sets the expectation to participate and not get on other websites during class. Let parents and kids know what day of week you update Aspen so they check that evening. It is hard for kids to be on screens all day and then do homework online after school is over. When you are letting kids into Zoom classes there is a lot of socialization going on - which they really enjoy. If possible, open it early or leave it open for a few minutes and let them know. Games that reinforce the subject matter would be great. Finally, is it possible to find a way to meet small groups of kids outside the school the first few weeks for social distance face-to-face interaction with core teachers? For a set time and limited duration? Use ice breakers, teach how to wash hands correct ly, or some game type so they can get to know you and colleagues.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Have a rising 8th grader at Deal and I’d like to see increased live instructional time. I don’t think my kid should be in a virtual classroom from 9-3 M-F, but there needs to be more live instruction than what we did in the Spring, which was 30 minutes once a week with each teacher. And many times the teacher didn’t teach during that 30 minutes but treated it like office hours. Here is my wish list:

Live instruction with each core teacher for 45 minutes at least 2 times a week.

Scheduled office hours with each teacher every day when they can drop in for questions and extra instruction. [like Grit - available every day. Not just 30 minutes on Tuesday]

Organized clear instruction to the students about assignments and when they are due. School needs to find a way to target this information better. Students should not have to read the entire weekly bulletin, click on the link for World languages, and then reach the entire World Languages newsletter to decipher the assignments for French 1. In school students were taught to write down all assignments in their planner. They need to find a way to replicate that process in a digital environment so students can organize their time and work.

Assignments scheduled with some flexibility on the ability to work ahead. My Deal student used to do a lot of work on the weekends to “get ahead”, but that was impossible during DL because assignments were not announced in advance and many “opened and closed” on a strict schedule.

I would like teachers to stay on top of their grading. Some teachers are always a challenge, but overall it seemed much worse during DL probably due to changing instructions on grading, but since that is the only way for students to check and make they don’t have missing assignments, its not helpful when all the grading is dumped in the last week fo the advisory.

I would like teachers to actually grade assignments and provide feedback. For some reason, my students were regularly asked to complete work but not turn it in - or turn it in but get no feedback on it. Only stuff with an automated program like math would give the student feedback on what they needed to work on. I recognize that this may require everyone to learn new vehicles for communication, but its a necessity.

Skip resources all together. What is the point of distanced PE? Just makes it more painful than needed.

Also have a rising 8th grader at Deal and I thought the weekly emails for 7th grade at Deal were incredibly user friendly.
I have no idea how you think think could be more clear?
Each Sunday an email was sent to our team with a subject-by-subject lists of the assignments (minus foreign language--the kids had to go someplace else for that).

Really curious how you think this could be improved upon. Short of a teacher calling your child up personally with their to-do list it was pretty darn clear what needed to be done each week.