Academics are important. Of course they are. We need book smart people to help change the world for the better. I’m suggesting we take a collective educational breath and let our kids catch their breath. We can use this opportunity to keep our kids healthy physically and just as importantly, healthy emotionally.
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The only question is who: Will it be my child, your child, my child’s teacher or yours. Whose family member: the teacher’s spouse, or parent, the student’s parent or grandparent. It will be more than a few someone’s. And who will represent FCPS at the funerals?
Not all education technology is bad, but there are limitations. Students eventually need good graphing calculators, spread sheets, word processing and modern data acquisition capability. However, when the technology is little more than worksheets delivered by a digital device like those from I-ready and Education Elements not only is the screen time required unhealthy, the lessons are hated by students and ineffective.
On Friday, Johns Hopkins University reported the highest number of cases of COVID-19 since the pandemic began.
That’s 83,757 new cases and 943 new deaths. Now is not the time to reopen schools.
Actually, GOT does have time for that. He is a math teacher and mathematics is full of socialism. Every math teacher every day is indoctrinating students in the idea that people should receive equal treatment regardless of merit.
According to guidelines from the Center for Disease Control (CDC) and the Pennsylvania Department of Education, affected schools should be closed for somewhere between 5 days and two weeks.
Read MoreToday, without much support from the federal government, public schools are once again stepping up to the challenge. Millions of cyber capable devices have been distributed, internet hotspots have been created and teachers are adapting to teaching on line. It is not wonderful and students are especially missing the social aspect associated with in person school, but it has value and students are learning. The COVID-slide is about undermining public schools and is not a real phenomenon.
Read MoreTeachers will teach. The problem is that the politicians know this, and they will keep putting our lives and the lives of our students at risk. They know that rank and file educators will take whatever rotten lemons they throw at us and turn them into lemonade.
If the pandemic ended tomorrow, I would like to return to the physical classroom. But I can’t say I’d willingly leave every innovation of virtual instruction on the cutting room floor.
Read MoreIt’s important for young people to understand that, while American debate is healthy, the country’s current volatility is worse than usual. I hope that come November this changes.
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If we stumble forward blindly for long enough, we will fall into the pit before us – irrespective of whether we recognize it is there or not. How much better to open our eyes!
Public education run democratically by local communities is the bedrock of American democracy. Today a rising oligarchy is demolishing that 1776 experiment. To revitalize the American ideal, start by freeing public education from a billionaire financed tyranny and associated political malfeasance.
Read MoreIf Coronavirus infections are significant in your county, you should not be offering in-person schooling. You should be offering the best remote option available – and that’s the teacher-led cyber option.
If only my home district knew it.
“I ask no favour for my sex. All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks.”
–US Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg
Read MoreKnow that what’s important is checking in, assessing what they’re learning, and reviewing the work they submit that documents their learning.
Read MoreHere in New York City, we just finished a very hectic week of preparing for the Blended Learning reopening of our public schools . Or as I like to call it, “Bill de Blasio’s No-Good-Very-Bad-Plan.”
Read MoreYou’ve got to plan for just about everything. You put the assignments on Google Classroom and set up the Zoom meetings and make your handouts into PDFs and try to digitize your books and figure out how classroom policies designed around a physical space can be revised for cyber space. You answer countless questions and concerns, videotaping your lessons for those who can’t be there in person. You try to make things interesting with new apps, new software, new grading systems, new approaches to the same material you’ve been teaching for over a decade.
Read MoreAs more and more school districts open for the new year, a renewed demand for internet resources, including bandwidth from service providers, file capacity from central servers, both school district and tech companies like Microsoft and Google, and transfer protocols, are rearing their ugly heads.
Read MoreOverall, the intensity of charter school segregation in America’s major cities is shocking. However, the city with the most charter schools, Los Angeles, looks relatively OK. This is a bit of an illusion because many of the charter schools in that city serve racially isolated white students.
Read MoreWhy is testing for a virus during a global pandemic bad, but giving students a multiple choice test during the chaos caused by that pandemic somehow good?
