Reply to What are schools/teachers doing this summer to make DL actually work?

Forum Index » Schools and Education General Discussion

Reply to "What are schools/teachers doing this summer to make DL actually work? "

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I don't understand this.

Those of us in the professional world are managing ourselves via zoom or goto meetings.

To the PP who hasn't done anything because there hasn't been any direction: why on earth would you wait until the last minute to figure out how YOU are going to handle this? Why aren't you working out some options for teaching the content that you, presumably, teach every year?

I get that kids are different animals than adults - sure they are. But DL does NOT need to be that hard.

Frankly, if these kids can play those effing first person shooter games and the like for HOURS on end, it's time for the excuses that DL can't work to STOP. They are MORE than happy to be on their computers for five hours a day. Maybe, just maybe, it's time to acknowledge that this portion of this generation - and their teachers - are going to have to ADAPT.

Create a syllabus, create expectations (Larla must be present and paying attention on the zoom, just as she would be expected to in class, or there are consequences), and deliver the education you are being paid to deliver.

Is it optimal? Perhaps not. Will some kids struggle? Undoubtedly. Might some kids have to be left back, because of x, y, or z, reason? Possibly. But it's time for teachers to stop whining about what they CAN'T do, and figure out the alternative options they CAN offer.

FFS.

You would think that our educators would have a wealth of both creative and critical thinking skills. Figure it out, people. [/quote]

Many teachers (myself included), are doing just that, working to completely overhaul their curricula during the summer. Where the &quot;no guidance&quot; comes in is that it's disheartening to consider that I'll be spending an enormous quantity of time making plans that may never see the light of day because leadership hasn't decided what the fall looks like yet. This is time that's totally uncompensated, material costs out of pocket, etc., but, honestly, that doesn't bother me.

What bothers me is the vast waste of critical time. Instead of embracing distance learning, working to train teachers who struggled during the fall, because it's a totally different pedagogy than in-person learning (I literally have a master's degree in this, my MP3 and MP4 were tight and well-executed, I'd love to work to support teachers who don't have that expertise). But, instead, we've all been left to our own devices, to reinvent the wheel school by school, department by department, teacher by teacher.

This is not a new problem; this is just exposing pre-existing failures to coordinate, communicate, and invest in professional development. Remember when MCPS rolled out the flagship Canvas myMCPS platform, and didn't train anyone - teachers, students, or parents? We haven't put in the groundwork to properly support [b]the entire county overhauling the way it conducts education in a few months[/b]. This isn't &quot;Mr. So-and-So is a lazy teacher, and didn't plan well!&quot; - this is a total collapse of the institution of schooling, and we're all doing our best to keep up.

So ... we are doing things. This is a global catastrophe, and, actually, I don't begrudge you your annoyed, flippant attitude. The fall is going to be a mess, but it's not because teachers aren't working, or because unions are obstructing this or that. It's because our entire country from the federal government on down has dragged its feet making the hard decisions. Nobody wanted to hear &quot;we'll be remote in the fall&quot;, and so we haven't announced it yet, even though it should be clear to everyone that that's where we're heading.

Best,
a DCC AP teacher &lt;3[/quote]

I’m OP, and this is exactly what I’m afraid of: no one wants to acknowledge we are still going to be DL, so we aren’t planning properly for this increasingly obvious result. So we will have the worst of both worlds: the same inadequate DL we had in the spring. While like many parents I would love to just return to full time in person learning, I am scared we are squandering our opportunity to look this problem in the eye and address it well.

Reassuring to see one teacher post they’re doing training for new software. [/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics