How is first day going for DCPS kids?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:K- she didn’t want to dial in because she hated last year. They had 2 hours of live instruction and with a 15 min break. It was too much and too much work for me.

Much older or her CC old registered recently for her school so she had nothing in canvas and no morning meetings. Dialed in for afternoon meeting and the teacher sent them to canvas for a 35 assignment (but my kid had nothing there).

I am ready to day drink and let them both drop out.

Our K did 3 hours of live instruction with only a 10 minute break! And then they had a special 2.5 hours later that was two classes and two specials combined and was basically a total mess, but my kid was weirdly actually engaged in that one.

[Anonymous]

First day went great! I credit the teacher for making the class run smoothly and MYSELF for prepping this weekend and keeping all this stuff on track. Back pat. Yes, please give yourselves one too! We don't do that enough.

One minor issue: We can't seem to use the hand raise or comment section functions on the Surface Go. Anyone else have this issue?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3rd grade - its been mixed. Canvas is not working right so links to the various teams live lessons are being circulated among the parents. I have no idea why they are using Canvas instead of just directly going to Teams like we did in the Spring. Seems like they have just added confusing steps and prevents us from going back into Teams after class to check on the instructions the teachers put in the chat. But at least my kid got on with her teachers. She has been asked so many times by several different teachers how she's feeling about all this is just getting to be comical. All the kids are tired and bored listening to their friends say the same thing over and over again. They have live classes till 3:15 and its way to long. The kids look like zombies on the screen.

BuT wE wAnT mOrE lIvE iNsTrUcTiOn. Teachers tried to say kids can’t sit on a computer that long. But enough of you complained to Dcps about how terrible it was and now here we are. 6, 7 and 8 year olds on a screen for multiple hours a day exhausted.

+1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3rd grade - its been mixed. Canvas is not working right so links to the various teams live lessons are being circulated among the parents. I have no idea why they are using Canvas instead of just directly going to Teams like we did in the Spring. Seems like they have just added confusing steps and prevents us from going back into Teams after class to check on the instructions the teachers put in the chat. But at least my kid got on with her teachers. She has been asked so many times by several different teachers how she's feeling about all this is just getting to be comical. All the kids are tired and bored listening to their friends say the same thing over and over again. They have live classes till 3:15 and its way to long. The kids look like zombies on the screen.

BuT wE wAnT mOrE lIvE iNsTrUcTiOn. Teachers tried to say kids can’t sit on a computer that long. But enough of you complained to Dcps about how terrible it was and now here we are. 6, 7 and 8 year olds on a screen for multiple hours a day exhausted.

+1

I don’t want much live instruction. But my preschooler has more than my first grader. Our particular school is not offering enough yet but we will see what comes. We spent much of the day ata a playground because we had hours off. I’m not feeling good about that but I’m also not homeschooling. I’m following the schedule we have.

[Anonymous]

So far so good with Deal and Wilson. It's clear the teachers are working so hard to make the best of a challenging situation. Thank you teachers!!

[Anonymous]

No complaints here. Teachers and students were great. Everything went smoothly.

2nd grade, Hyde-Addison

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:3rd grade - its been mixed. Canvas is not working right so links to the various teams live lessons are being circulated among the parents. I have no idea why they are using Canvas instead of just directly going to Teams like we did in the Spring. Seems like they have just added confusing steps and prevents us from going back into Teams after class to check on the instructions the teachers put in the chat. But at least my kid got on with her teachers. She has been asked so many times by several different teachers how she's feeling about all this is just getting to be comical. All the kids are tired and bored listening to their friends say the same thing over and over again. They have live classes till 3:15 and its way to long. The kids look like zombies on the screen.

BuT wE wAnT mOrE lIvE iNsTrUcTiOn. Teachers tried to say kids can’t sit on a computer that long. But enough of you complained to Dcps about how terrible it was and now here we are. 6, 7 and 8 year olds on a screen for multiple hours a day exhausted.

Stop repeating this line. It's DCPS's job to weigh all input and stakeholders, which I believe they attempted to do. There is not one subset of complainer parents that won out.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:1st grade. Day is too long (multiple 30 minute live sessions) and multiple 30 minute independent work blocks in several learning sites. He is exhausted and ready to be done and we still have an hour left.

Also, the teacher only calls on the kids she can "see".

Our first grader had 6 hours of live instruction today with 3 15 min breaks. It was a lot.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1st grade. Day is too long (multiple 30 minute live sessions) and multiple 30 minute independent work blocks in several learning sites. He is exhausted and ready to be done and we still have an hour left.

Also, the teacher only calls on the kids she can "see".

Our first grader had 6 hours of live instruction today with 3 15 min breaks. It was a lot.

Live as in the teacher was talking the whole time?

[Anonymous]

I thought it went pretty well. My first grader also had 6 hrs of live instruction, but that will be reduced once small groups are set up, so it's not a big deal. The only hiccup seemed to be specials, where it looked like the entire first grade was together in the same class? That's a lot of kids.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:1st grade. Day is too long (multiple 30 minute live sessions) and multiple 30 minute independent work blocks in several learning sites. He is exhausted and ready to be done and we still have an hour left.

Also, the teacher only calls on the kids she can "see".

Our first grader had 6 hours of live instruction today with 3 15 min breaks. It was a lot.

Live as in the teacher was talking the whole time?

Yes. My first grader has 2 main teachers, so one talked all morning, the other had the afternoon.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Missed the first 15 minutes of the day because no one told us (or a lot of others in my kid's class) that you had to re-sign in to Teams to join a meeting. They just said to click on the link out of Canvas and you're in, so we sat there waiting to get let in to the meeting until another parent figured it out.

The teacher also didn't turn off the chat function so half the class (4th grade, WOTP school) clearly was tuning her out and just chatting amongst themselves.

Teachers can't turn off the chat, unfortunately, but supposedly DCPS is going to disable it for all students next week.

[Anonymous]

Is distance learning better than no school at all? Debatable!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Missed the first 15 minutes of the day because no one told us (or a lot of others in my kid's class) that you had to re-sign in to Teams to join a meeting. They just said to click on the link out of Canvas and you're in, so we sat there waiting to get let in to the meeting until another parent figured it out.

The teacher also didn't turn off the chat function so half the class (4th grade, WOTP school) clearly was tuning her out and just chatting amongst themselves.

Teachers can't turn off the chat, unfortunately, but supposedly DCPS is going to disable it for all students next week.

Hope they don't! My son't 4th grade teacher used the chat as part of the lesson. It was a great way to keep the class engaged, as well as teach good chat habits.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Is distance learning better than no school at all? Debatable!

Considering the amount of time that is wasted every day when in-person school is in session, DL is better from my perspective.