Middle school DL is pretty successful. The teaching is solid.

It's nice to see some parents complimenting teachers here. The MS teachers are working extremely hard.

Middle school DL is pretty successful. The teaching is solid.

APS middle school parent. I don’t even bother trying to understand Canvas. Leave it to my 2 middle school kids. I just monitor parent vue.

Another MS experience in APS that's working fairly ok. Canvas is a mess so it's hard to keep track of work. That's my biggest complaint and it's not minimal. But the actual teaching is impressive.

Anonymous wrote:

Middle school is working fine. I know plenty at our APS middle school who feel the same way. Would kids prefer to be be in person? Yes. Do they miss friends? Yes. Is this DL workable for many? Yes. But I get why it doesn’t work for elementary. Get them back as soon as possible after the surge starts to decline.

What are the names of the middle schools that are working fine?

DHMS

Williamsburg. Working pretty great for kids. Parents are complainers collectively though.

I have a middle schooler at HBW and it’s great. My their grader is a bit of a disaster but I don’t blame the teachers, it’s just a shitty format for 8year olds.

Middle school is working fine. I know plenty at our APS middle school who feel the same way. Would kids prefer to be be in person? Yes. Do they miss friends? Yes. Is this DL workable for many? Yes. But I get why it doesn’t work for elementary. Get them back as soon as possible after the surge starts to decline.

What are the names of the middle schools that are working fine?

Middle school is working fine. I know plenty at our APS middle school who feel the same way. Would kids prefer to be be in person? Yes. Do they miss friends? Yes. Is this DL workable for many? Yes. But I get why it doesn’t work for elementary. Get them back as soon as possible after the surge starts to decline.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, very happy with the DL my APS middle schooler is getting. It’s not perfect. But I’m pretty happy. They are learning, they do small groups, their teachers are responsive and supportive. I think the curriculum might be slowed down a bit. But for a pandemic, it’s pretty damn impressive. I heart our teachers.

same for my Middle Schooler .. My 3rd grader is definitely struggling. Way too distracted and can't seem to focus

Same. MS has been much more engaging than ES.

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, very happy with the DL my APS middle schooler is getting. It’s not perfect. But I’m pretty happy. They are learning, they do small groups, their teachers are responsive and supportive. I think the curriculum might be slowed down a bit. But for a pandemic, it’s pretty damn impressive. I heart our teachers.

same for my Middle Schooler .. My 3rd grader is definitely struggling. Way too distracted and can't seem to focus

Anonymous wrote:Honestly, very happy with the DL my APS middle schooler is getting. It’s not perfect. But I’m pretty happy. They are learning, they do small groups, their teachers are responsive and supportive. I think the curriculum might be slowed down a bit. But for a pandemic, it’s pretty damn impressive. I heart our teachers.

I think you are an outlier. I've yet to hear one person IRL who said DL is working. I have an elem and HS kid. HS kid is making it work. ES kid is failing miserably. School knows and they only care when it's time for grades. I didn't get a notice of ANYTHING missing until 2 days before grades were due.

Honestly, very happy with the DL my APS middle schooler is getting. It’s not perfect. But I’m pretty happy. They are learning, they do small groups, their teachers are responsive and supportive. I think the curriculum might be slowed down a bit. But for a pandemic, it’s pretty damn impressive. I heart our teachers.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents here are full of crap. You do not know what goes I do teaching based on what you can see. And if you’re so free of anything else to do you can sit and watch your kids classes to this level of detail day in and day out you don’t have a concept of what work actually is since you don’t do it.

+1000

Ridiculous comment. We are talking about young children who are mostly not equipped to manage DL independently. So most parents do need to be readily available to help, and many of us are concerned with the lack of learning going on, and therefore try to monitor so we can work with them separately. Stop blaming parents for micromanaging the teachers when all we truly care about, is helping our children.

This. You think I want to work 16 hours on the weekend to make up time lost helping with distance learning during the week?

My first grader is really great with her ipad and can do things completely independently. Same with my fifth grader. So I leave them alone and I genuinely have no idea what is happening in their class. Their teachers are going above and beyond -- I can tell because we get emails on a weekly basis, my first graders teacher mails paper materials several times a month, and both of them get real feedback on seesaw. Also at their parent teacher conferences, their teachers had actual comments about their work that were not completely generic.

My third grader ironically is really bad with technology and has trouble navigating apps on his ipad as well as managing his time and listening. He's eight. This is in the range of normal. So, I spend the majority of my day helping him with distance learning, and I have a good idea of what is going on in his class. That's not because I want to attend third grade, its because when left on his own, he would end up missing whole parts of the day because he didn't know how to log in to clever or launch dreambox, or he would miss the instructions or when he was supposed to come back. His teacher is a dud -- she is a brand new teacher (last year was her first year teaching, so she doesn't even have a year worth of experience since last year ended early). She doesn't do very simple things that would really help keep the class on track -- like writing on a slide what the instructions are and when the kids are supposed to come back, or even muting everyone when she's about to start a lesson. She also doesn't know anything about my son -- I posted up thread about how she had no idea what his reading level was and he hasn't done any graded writing this year. I asked if she had some book recommendations at parent teacher conferences, her reaction was "well, I don't really know his personality very well, so I'd recommend taking him to the library and letting him wander around." Umm, libraries are closed. That's not possible these days. And as his teacher don't you know of some popular book series for kids his age? There's no feedback on seesaw -- she hearts things but that's not consistent, so I'm not sure what it exactly means. Occasionally she will write a note, like "great job". Compare that with my first grader who gets a comment on every thing she posts, and gets correction if she does something wrong. Or my fifth grader who has everything in canvas, and has numeric grades associated with everything she turns in.

So the moral of the story is some teachers are great and are definitely working 50 hours+ a week. Others are not, or if they are, its not really clear that "working hard" is really resulting in any sort of tangible benefit for their students.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Parents here are full of crap. You do not know what goes I do teaching based on what you can see. And if you’re so free of anything else to do you can sit and watch your kids classes to this level of detail day in and day out you don’t have a concept of what work actually is since you don’t do it.

I have a K-2 student. I'm her childcare and tech support. Of course I know what's going on after 2.5 months of supervising DL, even while working. I've also been working nights and weekends to make up for the time spent helping her during the school day. It's endless. I'm exhausted.

Here, let me write her math lesson today:

Look at this picture of crap. Estimate how much crap you see. What does everyone think?
Write 673, 894, and 546 in expanded form.
Write 300+30+2 in reduced form. Write 400+50+3 in reduced form.
Go do Dreambox.

Here's a writing lesson:
Do pages 16-20 in Handwriting without Tears
Record yourself telling me three ideas for your next story

Here's a reading lesson:
Read the assigned text in Raz Kids and do the quiz.

This isn't rocket science.

Is this the asynchronous assignments? Or the live synchronous days work?

No the PP here, but my experience is similar - synchronous days.

It really could be either for us. On synchronous days, the teacher does the math problems live with the class. On asynchronous days, the kids do them on their own. For reading and writing, there would be some discussion of the assignment on synchronous days. The reading teacher might talk about how to recognize and remember facts when reading nonfiction. The writing teacher would let the kids chime in with their topic ideas and make suggestions for how to come up with a good topic.

And this is it: all of the core instruction in 2nd grade. 3-5 math problems per day, a few minutes discussing reading and writing, and then independent work/software apps. Nothing is graded. No feedback. No report card comments on individual progress.

I think you are a bad school. My kids are at a SE DCPS and they have small groups every day, and my first grader is doing more work and at a higher level than what is being assigned to your second grader. All of our teachers check in weekly, we've already received report cards, and overall, I know he has learned a lot since the beginning of the year. Have you been meeting with your school principal about your concerns? Many parents in our school do this regularly through our school advisory committee, and our principal and teachers have made adjustments accordingly.

Unfortunately, this sounds like a par for the course APS school. Our APS school did not even attempt to roll out small groups until after Halloween--even though I asked about it the first week of school when the teachers called to touch base and say hello. That was the one unique contact and outreach I have had from them. They both seem very nice and I'm sure are wonderful, but, APS has woefully under-performed during this distance learning crisis.

The feedback from APS administration is that this is meeting the district's expectations. There is zero desire to do more.

Just like the spring, when there was absolutely minimal effort to educate our kids? We literally received one weekly, grade-level email for self-guided instruction. Not one 1:1 meeting for my 2nd grade child and his teacher for months. Not one small group, absolutely minimal and pathetic effort and it hasn't improved much.