Six on Schools: The Biggest Distance-Learning Experiment In History: Week One; 2020-Parents-Guide-to-Google-Classroom.pdf; What does school look like without the classroom?; handling work and kids during COVID-19 isolation; My home 'school' is a joke
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Thanks John and Gary
"Every state has closed at least some public schools to fight the spread of coronavirus, and some are starting to say they expect to be closed through the end of the school year.
Thrown into the breach, public schools are setting out on an unprecedented experiment: With little training and even fewer resources, in a matter of days they're shifting from a system of education that for centuries has focused on face to face interaction, to one that works entirely at a distance.
Diana Greene, the superintendent of Duval County Schools where Robin Nelson teaches, sent an email to her staff on Friday, March 20 that illustrates the magnitude of the effort educators around the country are faced with:
"It is amazing to me that it was just 3 days ago that we made the decision to close schools. In less than 72 hours, Team Duval moved the entire district to an at-home, virtual instruction model. We have managed to troubleshoot the mobilization of meal programs, lack of technology equipment, online teacher training, and a whole host of issues that come with a change of this magnitude. Three days!
"Three days to create, print and distribute about 5 million pages of instructional content. Three days to load classes onto an online platform. Three days to gather online resources so aligned instruction could continue to take place. Three days to train about 8,000 teachers in a whole new way of work. Imagine that!
"Three days to conduct a survey of technology needs from 130,000 students and to prepare thousands of computers for student use. Three days to prepare for neighborhood delivery of school lunches and snacks on our buses so children would not go hungry. Just three days to mobilize a community of partners and volunteers to assist our schools."
Some families, like Sadie's, are adjusting reasonably well. Her parents are both working from home, still earning paychecks. When Sadie has to concentrate on her lessons, they turn on "Daniel Tiger" for her little sister Kate. There's a backyard swimming pool for cooling off when lessons are done.
But as a crisis often does, this one has exposed existing inequalities — among schools, among districts and among students. Just over half of the nation's public school children are from families considered low-income, and an estimated 12 million lack broadband Internet access at home.
Robin Nelson, an educator with 10 years experience, says one of the students in her class has special needs and needs significant accommodation, and the family also struggles financially. "I've spoken to his mom. There's another little one on the way, if not already arrived."
And, Nelson notes, for that family and many like it, "survival is a priority and not, you know, accommodations right now for him." Nelson thinks the student may end up repeating a grade. She's also concerned about children whose parents must go out to work, and who are sending their kids to home-based daycares that remain open.
She tears up talking about her "babies" and how much she misses greeting them at the door with a fist-bump, handshake or hug. Sadie Hernandez wrote a note and drew pictures to leave on her beloved teacher's doorstep.
Because of these inherent inequities, some researchers are advocating that public schools focus on making up lost learning when things get back to normal — through summer school and other remediation. That will take extra funding, including money to pay teachers. Douglas Harris, an education researcher and fellow at the Brookings Institution, has written a post calling for school districts to focus on making up time, not on teaching remotely.:
"Studies of online learning suggest not only that students learn less in online environments, compared with in person, but that disadvantaged students learn the least. And that's true even when online teachers have experience and training with online teaching. Under the current emergency, most teachers will not have any experience at all with this approach."
Nevertheless, with its latest guidance, the federal Education Department has encouraged schools closing due to coronavirus to pursue distance learning quote "creatively" and with "flexibility", even if they can't reach every student that way.
Reminding everyone that this is an unprecedented situation, "No one wants to have learning coming to a halt across America due to the COVID-19 outbreak," reads the guidance, "and the U.S. Department of Education (Department) does not want to stand in the way of good faith efforts to educate students on-line."
The Senate coronavirus relief package passed on Wednesday includes $13.5 billion earmarked for schools, which they can use to keep paying staff as well as to buy new technology."
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"Mr. Copeland, who has children attending public schools, acknowledged that not all families would be able to access the resources that are available to students in private schools. But he said that many parents are being creative in keeping their children engaged in learning.
“If you have committed individuals who are creative, who are passionate educators, they will do amazing things," he said. “You can also just see from Pinterest to Instagram, parents whether they are educators or not are trying their best.”
E. Wayne Ross, a professor in the department of curriculum and pedagogy at the University of British Columbia, worries that regardless of government motivations, inequities in the education system will be amplified as students learn from home.
He said that parents should understand that during this time of upheaval, learning experiences, especially for younger children, do not mean recreating school in their homes.
“Rather than using worksheets or drilling kids on math facts, or trying to set an agenda based upon textbooks or the provincial curriculum, parents should focus on creating opportunities for the kids to take the lead by exploring things that are of interest them,” Prof. Ross said.
He said that schools fail to allow students in classrooms to drive their own learning by digging deeper into interests.
"In school, students are told what to do, read, and study,” Prof. Ross said. “So it’s really important for parents to allow their kids to learn what it means to be responsible for their own learning, the first step is unlearning the approaches used in school so that young people learn to speak for themselves, understand that they have agency regarding their own education.”
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"Day 2 began at 9 a.m. with reading and math, but quickly veered off track with a lengthy Nerf bow-and-arrow battle.
On Day 3, my younger son drew all over his legs with a pen. That qualifies as art class, right?
This will be fine for a week or two. The closures were the right decision in the face of a pandemic that could become far more deadly without serious measures to slow infections. We can manage, and the kids won’t suffer from a short break in their education. But if schools are closed for the rest of the academic year, as Gov. Gavin Newsom suggested this week, well, that’s a different story.
There are, no doubt, some parents who will take the baton from their kids’ teachers and not miss a beat. After all, almost 200,000 children in this state, or about 3% of the school-aged population, were home-schooled in 2017-2018, one home-schooling site estimates. But let’s not pretend that most kids stuck at home during the shutdown are getting “home-schooled” or getting any kind of serious education — beyond the school of life, that is.
I can’t come close to providing the quality instruction that my kids get from their professionally trained and experienced teachers. Certainly not when my husband and I are both trying to work from home, balancing video teleconference meetings, phone calls and writing. (How’s it going? It took me eight hours to write this column.)
I desperately hope that Newsom, State Supt. of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond, LAUSD Supt. Austin Beutner and school leaders across the state are developing plans to ensure kids don’t lose months of education during the coronavirus emergency.
There have got to be models and curriculum that could rolled out relatively quickly. Online courses? Teaching by teleconference? Schools could open computer labs and libraries by appointment to minimize crowds and maximize social distancing. The challenge is providing students with high-quality learning opportunities, not busy work, and making sure that all students can participate, not just those with tablets and computers at their fingertips. Considering that about 80% of L.A. Unified students are poor enough to qualify for subsidized school lunches, that’s no small order.
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