What makes you believe distant learning will be better in the fall?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:They're going to do the best they can. This is a pandemic. It has never happened before.

Yeah it has.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Commenters should identify if they are a teacher or not. Because if you aren't, you have no actual idea. I am a teacher. DL will be much better, and that is the option I am picking for my HS student.

1. There will be synchronous (live) instruction 4 days out of 5, with attendance taken. Not optional office hours.
2. The county has curriculum writers working all summer to convert curriculum to Canvas. There are plenty of lessons learned and feedback from what worked and what didn't that is being incorporated.
3. Everyone will be using Canvas and there are a large variety of trainings to support teachers this summer. From the student side of things, courses will be structured in a similar fashion and the calendar will start to be useful because all the assignments will be there.
4. There will be a big emphasis on creating a classroom community via zoom, with different ways to get students to collaborate and participate in an online environment.

Will some classes and/or teachers be better than others? Of course. That is no different than in school. But if there are real problems, they should be able to be straightened out. At the HS and MS level, I really don't think that occasional in-person for each class is really going to be that much more beneficial than just having the consistency of 100% DL.

Do you know if the synchronous instruction will be just for students who choose 100% DL? People are confused about whether there will be synchronous instructions for students who choose a blended option once schools are able to reopen. (There are numerous threads debating this point.) Thanks. - Parent

+1 MCPS Teacher - Can you please answer this? I am confused about this as well (as are many people). Thanks!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I don't think it will be better, I just think they'll be more of it. People want to delude themselves into thinking it will suffice until that safe, 100% effective vaccine magically appears for everyone in January 2021.

It was great last Spring. My kids got a lot out of it and the pace seemed better too.

Great! My then Kindergartner and Second grader got very little out of it. The former could barely tolerate 45 minutes of Zoom (unsurprising, since there were 30+ kids on his call each day) and the latter participated mostly to see her classmates. She learned nothing new. The prospect of six hours of it, daily, as outlined in the MCPS draft plan, is completely unacceptable and, yes, I plan to tell MCPS that.

This, exactly. It is awful for elementary kids. Just absolutely not functional and awful. My 3rd grader did camp today, and it was even worse than the school-year virtual learning, if that's even possible. Not feeling optimistic about fall.

[Anonymous]

Nothing. It's not going to be any better, except maybe that kids and teachers will finally know how to use Zoom.

[Anonymous]

I’m a teacher and I just wanted to hop on to say I’m not convinced in person is really going to be that much better from DL. The social distancing factor alone takes a lot of classroom “best practices” out of play — like collaborative learning opportunities and group work, small group station work, etc. It’s kind of an eerie scene to think about, tbh. I’m not quite sure I can wrap my mind around what my own classroom would look like in person! (Lecture, notes, individual assessments, ick!)

[Anonymous]

It won't be...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:If we are posting if we are a teacher or not, I think we also need to post if we're white or not. Who in their right mind would think distance learning is better? Do you know how this will affect the immigrant community and communities of color? No you don't. You only care about yourself.

The fact is many parents are WORKING low income jobs and they still don't know how to work a computer. They might be non-readers and can't help their children access online materials.

The risk of getting in a car accident is much higher. I can't stand that you live your lives in such fear.

How can you be content staying at home all day?? What is wrong with you??

Take a breath. Sheesh, you sound like you're getting a serious psychological issue posting the same thing over and over and over, on ever possible thread. Seriously, it's getting weird.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and I just wanted to hop on to say I’m not convinced in person is really going to be that much better from DL. The social distancing factor alone takes a lot of classroom “best practices” out of play — like collaborative learning opportunities and group work, small group station work, etc. It’s kind of an eerie scene to think about, tbh. I’m not quite sure I can wrap my mind around what my own classroom would look like in person! (Lecture, notes, individual assessments, ick!)

How will things like individual assessments work online, especially if one child is late and you are behind? Like, if you are supposed to have a morning of four individual assessments over the course of an hour, and some kids don't log on in that period, or log on late? I think it's going to be harder than it would in person, particularly for lower elementary if parents are not there to help the kid. Also it's not clear to me how the teacher knows where the kid really is without doing regular one-on-one assessments. Some parents are going to be helping their kids with their work (and I don't mean that just "the parent is doing the work for the kid" -- some parents will say "check it again; I see two errors" or will tell their kid that no, that's not the main idea of the text; try again--kid will get more coaching than they would in school).

[Anonymous]

HS teacher responding

Do you know if the synchronous instruction will be just for students who choose 100% DL? People are confused about whether there will be synchronous instructions for students who choose a blended option once schools are able to reopen. (There are numerous threads debating this point.) Thanks. - Parent

+1 MCPS Teacher - Can you please answer this? I am confused about this as well (as are many people). Thanks!

I don't. I'll be watching the BOE meeting for clarity today, along with everyone else.

In FCPS plan, they discussed specifically that the hybrid plan meant that when the other cohort was live, the off-site cohort was independent. Frederick's plan has shortened in-person hours so that the teacher can check in with the off-site group at the start and end of the day. No matter how I've tried to slice and dice groups of kids and teachers, I keep being limited by teacher time. In DL learning the teacher-student ratio is 1:24. In F2F the ratio is 1:12. Any time that you put towards F2F has to be taken away from DL time. This is like general staffing ratios. Focus schools have 1:18 normally in K-2 and non-Focus have 1:25. If you wanted to support 1:12 in Focus schools for full time in-person, you would have to increase the ratio at other schools to maybe 1:28 in order to keep the same amount of staff.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and I just wanted to hop on to say I’m not convinced in person is really going to be that much better from DL. The social distancing factor alone takes a lot of classroom “best practices” out of play — like collaborative learning opportunities and group work, small group station work, etc. It’s kind of an eerie scene to think about, tbh. I’m not quite sure I can wrap my mind around what my own classroom would look like in person! (Lecture, notes, individual assessments, ick!)

Thanks for sharing your perspective--I can completely see how it could eerie.

I'll say, though, that my young elementary kids have adapted well to the modifications their camps have put in place. I absolutely know it's not the same, but they've come up with creative ways to still engage with their peers even with masks, at a distance, etc. And the improvement in their moods from when we were doing DL this Spring is staggering. I appreciate your sharing around the lack of best practices for academics and learning, and agree on that, but from a social interaction perspective, in person with modifications, for many if not most kids, is likely to be far better than DL. And for the elementary kids in particular, I think that matters hugely.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and I just wanted to hop on to say I’m not convinced in person is really going to be that much better from DL. The social distancing factor alone takes a lot of classroom “best practices” out of play — like collaborative learning opportunities and group work, small group station work, etc. It’s kind of an eerie scene to think about, tbh. I’m not quite sure I can wrap my mind around what my own classroom would look like in person! (Lecture, notes, individual assessments, ick!)

Thanks for sharing your perspective--I can completely see how it could eerie.

I'll say, though, that my young elementary kids have adapted well to the modifications their camps have put in place. I absolutely know it's not the same, but they've come up with creative ways to still engage with their peers even with masks, at a distance, etc. And the improvement in their moods from when we were doing DL this Spring is staggering. I appreciate your sharing around the lack of best practices for academics and learning, and agree on that, but from a social interaction perspective, in person with modifications, for many if not most kids, is likely to be far better than DL. And for the elementary kids in particular, I think that matters hugely.

Also for the middle school kids and high school kids. Everyone needs social interaction.

[Anonymous]

The summer program is much better than the spring. I think they will continue to improve with practice.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The summer program is much better than the spring. I think they will continue to improve with practice.

Agree with this. My middle schooler and rising 5th grader are taking summer school and just the first day alone was so much better than what it was in the Spring. My 5th grader's math class has 2 teachers and the entire class meets at the beginning for 10 minutes then breaks out into 2 separate break-out rooms. You all have to realize that not only are the teachers getting better at this, but the students are too. We are opting full DL for the upcoming school year. Is it ideal? No.. but it's a lot safer, stable, and more straightforward than the alternative.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I’m a teacher and I just wanted to hop on to say I’m not convinced in person is really going to be that much better from DL. The social distancing factor alone takes a lot of classroom “best practices” out of play — like collaborative learning opportunities and group work, small group station work, etc. It’s kind of an eerie scene to think about, tbh. I’m not quite sure I can wrap my mind around what my own classroom would look like in person! (Lecture, notes, individual assessments, ick!)

Thanks for sharing your perspective--I can completely see how it could eerie.

I'll say, though, that my young elementary kids have adapted well to the modifications their camps have put in place. I absolutely know it's not the same, but they've come up with creative ways to still engage with their peers even with masks, at a distance, etc. And the improvement in their moods from when we were doing DL this Spring is staggering. I appreciate your sharing around the lack of best practices for academics and learning, and agree on that, but from a social interaction perspective, in person with modifications, for many if not most kids, is likely to be far better than DL. And for the elementary kids in particular, I think that matters hugely.

Also for the middle school kids and high school kids. Everyone needs social interaction.

Of course they do, but that's not the point. This is a pandemic. We need to figure out priorities right now, and social interaction isn't first on the list. Ease up on screen time. Let your kids socialize online.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:The summer program is much better than the spring. I think they will continue to improve with practice.

+1 That's our experience so far, too (admittedly only one day so far, but went off without a hitch and kid was engaged. Middle Schooler.)