APS Parent - incredibly disappointed.
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Anonymous
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It's 2.5 months into distance learning, and my husband and I are so disappointed with the APS elementary instruction. The "live" portion of instruction amounts to roughly 12 hours/week. Mondays are teacher workdays, Tues-Fri is 9-2:20 with more than half that time spent on breaks or independent learning. Even "live teacher reading" is recorded, along with minimal grading and interaction with the teacher. We have lots of respect teachers and maybe it's just our school, but we are fed-up with the minimal effort here. Add in the 2 days of additional asynchronous learning in November for preparing for hybrid learning that was cancelled, the amount of effort put forth for our child's education right now is dismal.
I'm sorry to write this, but I feel that "some" teachers are taking advantage of this situation and a very large proportion of these teachers are also hoping to remain with DL. Teachers should be considered essential workers and the hybrid model has to become a priority for early 2021. |
Anonymous
| Just stop. It isn’t minimal effort. It isn’t teachers taking advantage. I’m so tired of you privileged APS whiners complaining. |
Anonymous
| Name your school. |
Anonymous
Please support your statement with some data/facts as OP has. |
Anonymous
Facts? These are OP’s feelings |
Anonymous
| Most elementary school students (heck, most people of any age) don’t or have the stamina for hours of continuous online learning. The day is broken up that way so our kids can get a necessary mental and physical break to come back ready to engage again. Believe me, I know how much it sucks because it feels like one my kids is always on break and I basically get no work done all day, but the alternative isn’t necessarily better for them. |
Anonymous
"The "live" portion of instruction amounts to roughly 12 hours/week. Mondays are teacher workdays, Tues-Fri is 9-2:20 with more than half that time spent on breaks or independent learning. Even "live teacher reading" is recorded" This sounds like facts to me. |
Anonymous
OP made zero causal connection between her facts and her conclusions. |
Anonymous
It’s also what is age appropriate for this age group. What do you want, 8 continuous hours straight of online instruction? “Teachers are taking advantage” is feelings. Baseless. “Minimal effort” is feelings. Both are baseless. |
Anonymous
None of that necessarily equates to teachers failing to do their best or not wanting to work. Do you have evidence of a better virtual learning plan? |
Anonymous
x1 million Just stop. The pandemic sucks. DL sucks. Teachers are doing their best in a crappy situation. |
Anonymous
I understand and agree 100%.. But, why aren't teachers taking advantage of the additional time to have more 1:1 with students or small group sessions? Our main teacher is live for less than 2 hours T-Th. What is the point of Monday as an asynchronous day? The teachers in our entire grade take turns crafting the week's schedule, and there isn't much grading happening... |
Anonymous
There’s a lot of prep work between instruction. It all isn’t done on Monday. I know teachers aren’t chilling the other 4 hours, but it’s mostly time spent burning off technical debt. |
Anonymous
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The ones who you think are “taking advantage” of the distance learning format were probably crappy teachers anyway. There are always people who are unmotivated and bad at their jobs. So yeah there is no connection to the amount of in-person time our kids get and the quality of the teacher.
Also when my child is doing independent work, the teacher is usually working in small groups with other kids. Just because you don’t see the teacher on the screen doesn’t mean the teacher isn’t working! |
Anonymous
The only way it can be better is with radically smaller classes, like 10 students. With cameras on. But we can’t support that. |