Reply to Has Duran gone mad? (APS)

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Very sorry PP. so angry that APS is doing this to teachers for what amounts to DL in school.  It is not a magically better instructional option. All it brings is risk.  I am keeping my kids home to protect them and teachers.  But I know that doesn’t help you. We’re at one of the crazy high hybrid middle schools.  [/quote]

What do you mean it amounts to DL in school? Privates in the area are certainly providing a much better in-person education that the DL garbage we get. (And yes teachers are working very hard, but it doesn't matter how hard you work if it isn't translating to learning. Sure, parents with fancy jobs that can work from home or SAHPs can make DL work. Congrats for you! The vast majority are flailing.) The keep APS closed crowd has not been able to point to any science or research to support their position. They are the anti-science crowd. [/quote]

Chill. Maybe you are an elementary parent, in that case then DL and hybrid will be different. But for middle and high, the concurrent plan is DL in school.   That is very clear. It’s not a debate.  Our APS principal made that clear. Privates may do it differently but our principal said in APS the only way they can do concurrent is everyone on devices with headphones.  I am a MS parent who was talking to a HS teacher. For 6-12, it will be DL at school.  [/quote]

DP.  Even if that’s what it looks like, many secondary students would benefit from being in a classroom with an aide who will make sure students stay on task.[/quote]

Aide?? In high school?? Lololol.

If kids come in, I expect them to work. I will tell them to stay on task. If they don’t, i’m too busy teaching the online kids to bother. It’s their choice if they come in and do nothing. [/quote]

If you are physically in the classroom, then it will not be the same as distance learning.[/quote]

Your kid won’t magically pay attention. It’s just you won’t be the witness any longer.[/quote]

I’ve laid out for my middle schooler the parade of horribles on what hybrid might be like, and he still really wants to go back.  When asked why, he said that even with everyone being in separate rooms with doors closed, he still sometimes hears his sister’s lesson in the next room (especially when she has music or PE) and finds it really distracting in a way that kids on separate tasks in a classroom never was.  He said he also finds his mind wanders and he gets off task far more easily sitting at a desk in our guest room (which has nothing but his school stuff in it) than he ever did in a classroom.  Even seeing all of the worst case scenarios, he firmly believes he would learn more effectively in the school building than at home.

He also thinks he would manage his time better if his independent/asynchronous work times were in the building where the expectation is that he’d sit at his desk and work during those times than he does at home when there’s accountability during those periods so it’s easy to just take a break and push off the work until after the school day.  If I see him downstairs during an asynchronous time, I’ll tell him to go back upstairs and do his schoolwork, but if I’m on a work call and can’t check on him, that doesn’t happen.

He wants to be in the building, even with everything you describe, because he believes he will still learn more effectively there, and he can point to concrete and specific reasons why.  It’s hard to argue with that he’s wrong.[/quote]

I have similar issues to your middle schooler.  I thought about going in to work from the building, but I am in one of the zip codes with a high rate of cases, and received about 5 emails last month alerting me to positive cases and quarantines at the school.  It sounds like you have taken the right steps setting up  a designated workspace for him.  Perhaps you need to make it a bit cozier and more comfortable so that it isn’t too spartan?  Could you get him fish or a pet lizard or hamster for the room?  Colorful cushions?  Or maybe you need to make it more office like with a nice office chair and a whiteboard  and calendar?  Definitely try noise canceling headphones, ear plugs, or classical music if he is noise sensitive.  
[/quote]

DP. He clearly wants the structure that a school building provides. The same way that many people prefer going into the office building to delineate home and work. A pet lizard isn't going to help with that. Or maybe it will. Maybe schools should start handing out lizards with the laptops...[/quote]

Jesus. Never mind, then.  I was just trying to be helpful in the event that he doesn’t get to go back in the building in January!  [/quote]

I am the poster to whom you originally responded with suggestions.  I understand that you were trying to be helpful, I really do.  But it is also tiresome, because underlying your suggestions is an assumption that I'm some lazy, disengaged, etc., parent who just isn't trying hard enough to help her child learn effectively.  That I'm just screaming for schools to open because I don't want to parent my kid.

I have engaged.  I have thrown everything I have into this, plus time and money I don't, to try to make distance learning work for him because I appreciate that if we could make distance learning effective for everyone, it would solve this whole issue because we would simply continue with distance learning until the pandemic is over.  But distance learning isn't working for him.  In some ways, I'd rather see APS punt on this whole school year, just cancel it and repeat the year next year, because I'm deeply worried that my child is getting left behind and that no one in the schools is going to take responsibility for making up what he didn't learn this year.

I'm also worried about the toll this is taking on him mentally.  He is now in teletherapy (that I'm running up credit card debt to pay for) because the effects of the isolation became so bad that I was worried he was going to hurt himself.  He is in sixth grade, in a bunch of classes with kids he doesn't know (because his school somehow managed to put him in classes with almost no one from his elementary school).  His middle school has done virtually nothing to help the sixth graders integrate socially through this, so online learning has become a huge source of anxiety for him, always worried about whether his picture is showing on everyone else's screen (and afraid to speak up to ask a question because then he'll definitely be on everyone's screens, even after he's done talking) and a bunch of kids who barely know him will see him doing something embarrassing and that's how everyone at middle school will know him going forward.  If I didn't have to work, I would withdraw him and homeschool because I am that worried about the toll this is taking on him, but becoming homeless would take an even worse toll.

So please, go ahead and keep assuming that I'm just some ignorant, disengaged parent who doesn't care about teachers, but also know that your assumptions are false and offensive.  I care about the teachers, but I can't care about them more than I care about my own child.[/quote]

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