Reply to Just spoke to an MCPS teacher who said she was 99% sure MCPS will be DL in the fall

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][b]I think rather than trying to try to find a way to make face to face person learning safer, we should concentrate on making distance learning effective.[/b]

Much of the argument for traditional at-school learning is that children are not susceptible to the virus.  However we're still learning about the virus.  We now know that some children develop Multisystem Inflamatory Syndrome, that even asymptomatic cases can have lung damage, and that COVID may need to be re-classified as "airborn".  Sending kids back to school at this point is making them human test subjects in a very dangerous experiment.

Distance Learning has been done for years.  I remember stories of children in remote areas like the Alaska wilderness or Australia's Outback having distance learning long before cell phones/tablets, 5G, and Zoom.  I know that more recently online curriculums have been used by homeschoolers.  Rather than spending the summer conducting surveys and trying to decide what to do, have somebody study the available options and pick one that works.

I realize there are other, less academic benefits to children having school.  We can implement new programs/systems as needes to compensate for these areas, as we did last Spring offering food distribution/meals through the school.  Remember, in a typical year, students don't have school during the summer, Spring Break, and Winter Break.

There are probably special needs students whose needs cannot be met remotely.  For this much smaller population, I would think it more feasible to provide for their needs in school, with much less risk than if the entire system was in attendance.

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This.  I am a different poster who posted something similar in a different thread.  I agree with some other posters that distance learning is not particularly effective for K-1 or kids, especially teaching how to read, and with special needs.  Those kids should be allowed the choice to come in the building, spread out over the other unused classrooms.

However, for every other grade distance learning does not have to be useless.  Of course it is not as good as in person.  But I have one child in private school, and he got a lot out of distance learning.  MCPS did a terrible job with something that did not have to be the complete disaster that it was.  MCPS needs all students to be having LIVE ZOOM classes, which I understand did not happen in middle school and high school.  They need to create opportunities for smaller group break outs either at different times a day with the teacher or with paraeducaters to have discussions or talk to individual students more directly.  Math should be taught live by the teacher, with opportunities for questions, and not with those terrible videos.  Same with language arts.  Science and Social Studies must be included from the start.  They can have students use materials they have at home for science and art, or find ways to distribute materials (if teachers can come to the building and create packets/bags that can be picked every few weeks for what they will need).  Although not as ideal of in person school, from an education perspective (taking aside the issue of working parents), children CAN receive an education through distance learning- MCPS just needs to do a better job.[/quote]

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