OP here. I think it's a fair point that people are too tired and so choose pods or that that DL can't be made to be very good, so fighting that battle is tilting at windmills. But I don't buy, depending on the make-up of your school, that it won't make a difference that some/many parents with the economic and social capital to have their voices heard by the teacher and principal don't feel the urgency to speak up because their kids are doing fine in pods. I think teachers would have to do better if they had parents reaching out frequently and complaining about what isn't working and explaining what their child needs. Not only will there be fewer parents doing this, but the ones with clout won't be the ones doing it. The teacher may even think she is doing fine since she doesn't hear much.

People are going to do what they are going to do. But it's unfortunate, IMO, that we aren't all in this together fighting this fight to get our kids what they need.

I will/would send my kids back to any in person school available. I have and will push for it. I am a pediatrician and think kids are getting completely screwed by our entire approach to the pandemic. But I will also pod my kids with the other children on my block; a neighbor is a former ES teacher turned SAHM and we hope to pay for her expertise.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IMO the subject line should be: distance learning disproportionately hurts poor kids.

Yes. This. There is no fight for high quality DL. Online learning has been studied rigorously for years ... it rarely, if ever, works well.

We have to get kids back to class. Even if it means closing indoor dining, church, and other things the city is loathe to give up.

Mark my words, we will have distance learning and pods, and daycares, and even aftercare like programs opening up full time. All these places will be allowed to stay open if we are in phase II but schools will stay closed because there is lots more at play than simply safety.

?? teacher unions?

I don’t think some of you understand that the administrative union (principals and assistant principals) is also pushing for distance learning. People always blame teachers.

Our school is not unionized but the teachers are very much against going back. There's only so far a school can push before they start quitting, and then what will the school do?

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IMO the subject line should be: distance learning disproportionately hurts poor kids.

Yes. This. There is no fight for high quality DL. Online learning has been studied rigorously for years ... it rarely, if ever, works well.

We have to get kids back to class. Even if it means closing indoor dining, church, and other things the city is loathe to give up.

Mark my words, we will have distance learning and pods, and daycares, and even aftercare like programs opening up full time. All these places will be allowed to stay open if we are in phase II but schools will stay closed because there is lots more at play than simply safety.

?? teacher unions?

I don’t think some of you understand that the administrative union (principals and assistant principals) is also pushing for distance learning. People always blame teachers.

Teachers as a whole, with few exceptions, are acting selfishly by refusing to find a way to open schools back up even a few days a week. LA Teachers Union even put universal healthcare on their list of needs before reopening! Their selfishness is forcing parents to act selfishly by creating these pods. I don’t blame the parents at all.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:IMO the subject line should be: distance learning disproportionately hurts poor kids.

Yes. This. There is no fight for high quality DL. Online learning has been studied rigorously for years ... it rarely, if ever, works well.

We have to get kids back to class. Even if it means closing indoor dining, church, and other things the city is loathe to give up.

Mark my words, we will have distance learning and pods, and daycares, and even aftercare like programs opening up full time. All these places will be allowed to stay open if we are in phase II but schools will stay closed because there is lots more at play than simply safety.

?? teacher unions?

OP, you way overestimate both the prevalence of pods and the influence of the supposed “influential parents.”

Direct advocacy and motivating, rather than obliquely criticizing, others would be more productive.

I don’t see how parental supplementation is a bad thing. If some kids are getting more instruction outside of school, that frees the teacher up to spend more one on one time with kids that need extra assistance.

Anonymous wrote:IMO the subject line should be: distance learning disproportionately hurts poor kids.

Yes. This. There is no fight for high quality DL. Online learning has been studied rigorously for years ... it rarely, if ever, works well.

We have to get kids back to class. Even if it means closing indoor dining, church, and other things the city is loathe to give up.

Mark my words, we will have distance learning and pods, and daycares, and even aftercare like programs opening up full time. All these places will be allowed to stay open if we are in phase II but schools will stay closed because there is lots more at play than simply safety.

^ Exactly, I think Pods will differ in their quality and length of time. It's not like it'll be the same as a school day.

Is it better than nothing? Definitely. Is it unfair to low-income children, yes.

That's not a reason for it to be stopped, it's something to have the government look at. Perhaps they should only allow low-income families to not work or only half-time (PAID of course) so they can facilitate their child's learning?

Pods shouldn’t be considered a magic bullet. Many kids will not be well-served by a pod.

And a lot of the problems with DL can't be fixed by schools. You need good, stable high speed internet, especially if you have more than one child in the home. You need a device for each kid. You need someone supervising the child who will make him do the work. (Plenty of teachers will tell you that there were kids who never logged in last spring.) You need someone who is familiar with the basics of Zoom, Canvas, etc.

More affluent parents and teachers can't fix these problems.No matter how good DL is there is a sizeable segment of the population for whom it just won't work.

Maybe it's just me but the pods don't sound super high-quality either. The gap will always widen but I'm not giving these pods that much credit.

People need to understand that as parents, our obligation is to OUR children. It is not my job to make decisions to benefit "the poor" at the expense of my own children. It's not a rational or optimal strategy from an evolutionary perspective or an economic theory perspective. You'd have to be an idiot to go sacrifice your children's own welfare for "the poor." Go back to grievance studies class because that's the only place that absurd logic flies.

I paid a tutor pre Covid. No reason not to now.