Teacher here, ready to throw in the towel...

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Talking is overrated. All teachers need to shut up about how to deal with stuff, and actually DEAL with stuff!

Maybe we are tired of being the solution to all of society's problems. Maybe we want everyone to know how it really is in schools. We have dealt with our inept school districts for our entire careers. Now you get to see what we have to put up with.

The solution to all of society's problems? Christ lady, get over yourself.

If only the rest of us had jobs maybe we could commiserate with the teacher-cum-savior. Alas according to teachers they are the only ones that are gainfully employed. The martyrdom is strong in this profession.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this real?

My school district has lots of plans in place. Teachers got to go packs this week in case the class needs to go virtual. I just don’t feel this way and wonder if you are a troll. Apologies if you are not but where do you teach?

This sounds VERY real to me.

--DCPS teacher.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:What was helpful to us last year was buying extra set of books from Abe books for home learning days. They have everything, and you can search by ISBN number. If teachers share ISBN numbers for all books and workbooks with parents, that can be very helpful

I found that useful even before covid. The single greatest issue I have had when supporting my kid is lack of textbooks. Worksheets don’t cut it.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Someone's experience is different from yours and they are a troll?

NP and we've made seating arrangements to facilitate contact tracing, but there has been no conversation about what will happen if/when students are out for a long time or classes get pushed virtual. We luckily have lots of mitigation strategies in place (mandated masking and distancing). But it feels like "well, let's see what happens with Delta because all this worked well last year."

+1

School districts vary so much both in resources and in their ability to pivot. I teach in a large aircraft carrier type district (slow to course correct). I also teach a course that is only taught to highly gifted learners at my school and one other magnet in the district. No one is giving us either premade asynchronous materials or time off to make them. I can’t just go online to download whatever worksheet that I can link to a video.

DP. You should be using, either in whole or in part, what you used last year during DL or hybrid/concurrent. You should not be starting from scratch each time. Just sayin'. If I were your evaluator and you told me you were planning on starting from scratch every time this year then I would be doing a serious reevaluation of whether you were in the right assignment.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:What was helpful to us last year was buying extra set of books from Abe books for home learning days. They have everything, and you can search by ISBN number. If teachers share ISBN numbers for all books and workbooks with parents, that can be very helpful

I found that useful even before covid. The single greatest issue I have had when supporting my kid is lack of textbooks. Worksheets don’t cut it.

+1 Fortunately I was able to dig up some that I had for my older kids and use those. Another option is to go to homeschool blogs and see what they are using there. Some of the homeschool parents have really good information about the best textbooks and where to source them.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Talking is overrated. All teachers need to shut up about how to deal with stuff, and actually DEAL with stuff!

Ah, you sound lovely. No wonder your kids are desperate to get to school.

Who says they are? They are not, they are in college and certainly eager to get to in-person classes. And DS already had in-person classes last semester. I myself am in academia and we had outdoor parties to celebrate our graduates.

Nice you had outdoor parties for the post-secondary grads. K-12 teachers are desperately trying to figure out how to keep kids 18 and under safe AND how to teach them effectively. Not a one time party.

[Anonymous]

Not sure I understand. Fccps went back last year and there were no quarantines. If there were it would be the virtual system. Not really that complicated.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Didn't teachers have 2 months this summer to drum up a plan for kids home sick? Arguably, if a kid is sick, why should they do work? They are sick. Mark assignments as 100%, give missed math lesson sheets when they return so they can catch up.

I'll drum up some plans if they paid me to but they didn't.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Talking is overrated. All teachers need to shut up about how to deal with stuff, and actually DEAL with stuff!

Maybe we are tired of being the solution to all of society's problems. Maybe we want everyone to know how it really is in schools. We have dealt with our inept school districts for our entire careers. Now you get to see what we have to put up with.

The solution to all of society's problems? Christ lady, get over yourself.

Teachers/Public Schools are asked to:
Detect various forms of abuse and neglect.
Detect rapid gains in BMI or failure to thrive.
Detect mental health issues ranging from anxiety and mild depression to OCD, bipolar, even schizophrenia or more severe.
Identify families in financial crisis or housing insecurity that need a referral to social services.
Supply weather appropriate clothing, bedding, and shoes as well as supplemental food (3 meals + snacks, weekend food).

As a former desperately poor kid who was being abused sexually, I support all that schools do now, but it is too much! Doctors do not also have to see if kids are making educational progress.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Schools have been operating in person all around the country for quite some time now. My kids went back in person in FCPS elementary for 4th quarter last school year. They did not have a single case of covid. I think it's going to be fine. And I think they will roll with whatever happens. I know in FCPS, the health department is responsible for handling contact tracing and determining quarantine. Anecdotally, they seem to rarely to quarantining a whole classroom. I just don't think it's going to be that difficult to figure things out as they come.

This! People here are acting like the DMV schools are sending the first person to Mars. Hundreds if not thousands of school districts were open last year, many all year and with very little disruption. Considering that MCPS, FCPS and DCPS were some of the LAST in nation to get students back into classrooms, we are by no measure inventing the wheel here.

But we don’t all have the same vehicle to put the premade wheel on. Some are in a brand new luxury SUV, some in a classic town car, others in a gently used family sedan or compact, a few in a nimble Smart car, and way too many of us are in a used RV doubling as a home (my school).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

DP. You should be using, either in whole or in part, what you used last year during DL or hybrid/concurrent. You should not be starting from scratch each time. Just sayin'. If I were your evaluator and you told me you were planning on starting from scratch every time this year then I would be doing a serious reevaluation of whether you were in the right assignment.

Different poster. We can't just do that. If you work for a large school district, you need to follow their plans. I can't tell you the number of times last year the plans changed on us. We can't just use "in whole or in part" what we used last year during Distance learning. That was distance learning. We were told which portions of the day had to be asynchronous learning and what those assignments were to be, and how they matched up with the curriculum, and how much time they should take students to do. And how much should be synchronous learning (Zoom and/or in class instruction) with assignments completed on Google Classroom, etc.

This year, so far, we are not doing distance learning. We aren't doing Zoom and Room lessons and posting work online. So far as we have been told, we are back to our usual, in school only classroom instruction (including a lot of small group instruction). Having students out for 1 to 2 days per illness is usually and normal and we deal with that all the time. Usually they complete a few worksheets we did in class, or a journal assignment, or make up a quiz. Or the work is simply excused.

But having multiple students out, not for illness, but for quarantine, for 10-14 days, on and off all Sept-November, missing 2- 3 weeks of instruction, is not the same thing. We aren't going to be turning on our cameras and doing hybrid instruction again, because that would allow all the parents who wanted to request virtual instruction with the classroom teacher, and the school district isn't allowing it. (If you wanted virtual you had to select it already and it isn't through your child's own school.).

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

DP. You should be using, either in whole or in part, what you used last year during DL or hybrid/concurrent. You should not be starting from scratch each time. Just sayin'. If I were your evaluator and you told me you were planning on starting from scratch every time this year then I would be doing a serious reevaluation of whether you were in the right assignment.

Different poster. We can't just do that. If you work for a large school district, you need to follow their plans. I can't tell you the number of times last year the plans changed on us. We can't just use "in whole or in part" what we used last year during Distance learning. That was distance learning. We were told which portions of the day had to be asynchronous learning and what those assignments were to be, and how they matched up with the curriculum, and how much time they should take students to do. And how much should be synchronous learning (Zoom and/or in class instruction) with assignments completed on Google Classroom, etc.

This year, so far, we are not doing distance learning. We aren't doing Zoom and Room lessons and posting work online. So far as we have been told, we are back to our usual, in school only classroom instruction (including a lot of small group instruction). Having students out for 1 to 2 days per illness is usually and normal and we deal with that all the time. Usually they complete a few worksheets we did in class, or a journal assignment, or make up a quiz. Or the work is simply excused.

But having multiple students out, not for illness, but for quarantine, for 10-14 days, on and off all Sept-November, missing 2- 3 weeks of instruction, is not the same thing. We aren't going to be turning on our cameras and doing hybrid instruction again, because that would allow all the parents who wanted to request virtual instruction with the classroom teacher, and the school district isn't allowing it. (If you wanted virtual you had to select it already and it isn't through your child's own school.).

I also work for a large district. I am in NoVa. I see the first poster's point. I think you're making this harder for yourself than it needs to be. At this point the schools in the DMV are 1:1. Use that to your advantage. Use Kami or Nearpod for delivery of materials that you've either printed in the past years or that you used last year. Stop digging such a deep hole. No one in our school system (no coach, no principal and no one from "central office") is telling people to start from scratch or to avoid using materials from prior years. That would be dumb.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

DP. You should be using, either in whole or in part, what you used last year during DL or hybrid/concurrent. You should not be starting from scratch each time. Just sayin'. If I were your evaluator and you told me you were planning on starting from scratch every time this year then I would be doing a serious reevaluation of whether you were in the right assignment.

Different poster. We can't just do that. If you work for a large school district, you need to follow their plans. I can't tell you the number of times last year the plans changed on us. We can't just use "in whole or in part" what we used last year during Distance learning. That was distance learning. We were told which portions of the day had to be asynchronous learning and what those assignments were to be, and how they matched up with the curriculum, and how much time they should take students to do. And how much should be synchronous learning (Zoom and/or in class instruction) with assignments completed on Google Classroom, etc.

This year, so far, we are not doing distance learning. We aren't doing Zoom and Room lessons and posting work online. So far as we have been told, we are back to our usual, in school only classroom instruction (including a lot of small group instruction). Having students out for 1 to 2 days per illness is usually and normal and we deal with that all the time. Usually they complete a few worksheets we did in class, or a journal assignment, or make up a quiz. Or the work is simply excused.

But having multiple students out, not for illness, but for quarantine, for 10-14 days, on and off all Sept-November, missing 2- 3 weeks of instruction, is not the same thing. We aren't going to be turning on our cameras and doing hybrid instruction again, because that would allow all the parents who wanted to request virtual instruction with the classroom teacher, and the school district isn't allowing it. (If you wanted virtual you had to select it already and it isn't through your child's own school.).

I also work for a large district. I am in NoVa. I see the first poster's point. I think you're making this harder for yourself than it needs to be. At this point the schools in the DMV are 1:1. Use that to your advantage. Use Kami or Nearpod for delivery of materials that you've either printed in the past years or that you used last year. Stop digging such a deep hole. No one in our school system (no coach, no principal and no one from "central office") is telling people to start from scratch or to avoid using materials from prior years. That would be dumb.

Many schools are 1:1, but
1) the equipment differs greatly —sometimes even within systems. DD was issued a crappy old school Chromebook to take back and forth. DS was issued a top of the line touch screen one. They are both rising 10th.
2) devices matter less than the school or district purchased software
3) students are at varying levels of comfort with the technology (hardware or software). Add the stress of being positive to Covid and unexpectedly out of school and it’s not going to plug and play for 100% of kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is this real?

My school district has lots of plans in place. Teachers got to go packs this week in case the class needs to go virtual. I just don’t feel this way and wonder if you are a troll. Apologies if you are not but where do you teach?

Welcome to MCPS!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Didn't teachers have 2 months this summer to drum up a plan for kids home sick? Arguably, if a kid is sick, why should they do work? They are sick. Mark assignments as 100%, give missed math lesson sheets when they return so they can catch up.

I'll drum up some plans if they paid me to but they didn't.

Lots of government employees work OT unpaid. Especially ones who have people relying on them for their welfare. Like children relying on YOU for their education. Don't be a clock watcher.