FBISD called it for the year, the rest are...waiting? (Houston: fit in, spring break)

[DejaBlue]

What say you all?


I have many teacher friends. The one in FBISD is in shock but said she knew it was coming. The rest are annoyed and say they district is waiting on Abbott to say somethin. Many are worried about how they'll work out cleaning for summer because you have to basically strip your classroom while really just babysitting for 2 weeks. There is no content to be learned.



Most are really worried about managing behaviors which could be epic after being at home unexpectedly and then thrust back into school. It's not like children will just come right on in ready to learn. They'll want to hug on friends and just play and be children and do what children do. Basically a month or weeks of recess.


The end of the year is an intro into the next year's skills which...they forget over the summer and then they get the full lesson when they start that next grade.



I can see where they're coming from. School is an 8 hour day. After all this, it's a lot to expect some order for a very minuscule time then summer break.


I get them wanting to come back because it's school BUT I think I'd feel stronger if this were January or February. It's almost May.

[Texas Ag 93]

I suspect many, if not most, districts will do this. I'm in CCISD and I personally felt the school year would be be over when they closed back in March, so I've basically been expecting it all along. Additionally, last week, the district notified us they'd be going to Pass/Fail for the semester.

I think after a full 6 weeks or more of everything being virtual, it would actually be more disruptive to send everyone back to the classrooms than to just keep it virtual. I personally would be fine if they returned to school in early May and then continued on through half of the summer to make up for this lost time, but I realize few probably share this opinion.

[JL]

How come they can't transition to online classes?

[Texascrude]

Originally Posted by JL

How come they can't transition to online classes?

Most have tried, but in general the implementation has been a complete joke. We are in Conroe ISD (woodlands) and have three kids in elementary and middle school. Each teacher for each subject has taken an independent approach. They are all sending links to different websites for different projects (class dojo, canvas, brain pop, etc), and each require accounts to access the material. As parents, we spend more time navigating the “daily curriculum” than we do helping our kids learn. I think at this point we are up to about 30 different accounts that we have to access to complete the content for each week.

What should have happened: on day 1 the district superintendent should have met with a team and put together a common approach for each grade on a common set of platforms. They should send out weekly emails with the work for the week. The teachers should have standard “office hours” to do instruction through zoom 2 hours per day for the kids that need “live learning”.

Luckily our kids are advanced and are self learners. We are doing fine, but mostly going off script. I don’t fault the teachers because they really are trying, but the lack of coordination from the top is really shocking.

[Jtxg]

I don't have kids, so maybe I 'just don't get it'....but why wouldn't districts have decided to do something like extend 'spring break' till end of May, then resume in June, July, and first week of August. Then have a few weeks off and start the new school year?

[swopoe]

Originally Posted by Jtxg

I don't have kids, so maybe I 'just don't get it'....but why wouldn't districts have decided to do something like extend 'spring break' till end of May, then resume in June, July, and first week of August. Then have a few weeks off and start the new school year?

Teacher contracts don’t have teachers working in June and July. So contracts would all have to be renegotiated and I don’t think that would happen.

[mkwensky]

Originally Posted by swopoe

Teacher contracts don’t have teachers working in June and July. So contracts would all have to be renegotiated and I don’t think that would happen.

If that's the case then it's pointless to bring the kids in just for a few weeks. For elementary school kids especially there's no way to enforce any kind of hygiene or social distancing so risks far outweigh whatever questionable benefit in doing this.

[NTexas2010]

I have a lot of thoughts, being on both sides of the looking glass - we have two elementary aged kids and my wife is a high school teacher in LCISD.

1. Transitioning to online teaching and learning has been nothing short of a disaster. From a teaching perspective, it was mostly a lack of communication between the district and teachers as to what the plan was, and what the expectations were with respect to taking grades (and still is through the end of the year). Teachers cannot simply "pivot" to online teaching in just a few weeks. Also remember, districts were on Spring Break when the quarantines went into effect, so teachers don't even have all of their resources and materials at their disposal while remote teaching.

From a student perspective, our kindergartner is being overloaded with too many assignments across too many web portals. There is an assignment for every subject matter for every day that takes anywhere from a couple of minutes to an hour per assignment; in essence, the 6 year old is being asked to sit on a computer for 4-6 hours/day completing assignments and modules, while we as parents are trying to work from home remotely. I can't imagine the headache it must be for parents who aren't as educational web-portal savvy as my teacher wife, trying to navigate the various links and student profiles to keep track of assignments and due dates. In short, we are not setup to function as a "home-school" family.

2. Social distancing seems to be proving an effective tool, especially in the Houston area. To re-introduce the hundreds of thousands of students back into school in May would be to create an unnecessary spike in Covid cases, 7-14 days later. Why not wait until August, when cases should be fairly flattened (even if there is to be a second wave this fall.)

3. I can say with 100% certainty that if the districts did re-open, there would be all kinds of hell raised the moment the first case of Covid inevitably presents itself in a student. Just imagine that backlash. I can't imagine the districts are in a hurry to take on that unavoidable headache.

4. I think the districts were holding out on making an official announcement to see if Abbot was going to close schools through the end of the 2019-2020 school year. No one wants to make the first move - what if Corona suddenly drops to near zero levels? Imagine the backlash that would come with walking that one back? Sounds like FBISD bit the bullet and moved forward with remaining in remote learning mode through the end of this school year; expect other area districts to follow suit shortly.

[Jtxg]

Originally Posted by swopoe

Teacher contracts don’t have teachers working in June and July. So contracts would all have to be renegotiated and I don’t think that would happen.

I get that - but using my argument, they would not be working right now or in May or the first part of June - so it's a wash. I'm just wondering how bad it's going to be when kids go back to school next year. I feel like teachers will be working until Christmas just to get the kids up to speed - both in curriculum and behavior. But again, I don't have kids and I'm not an educator, so I probably don't have a clue.

[NTexas2010]

Originally Posted by Jtxg

I get that - but using my argument, they would not be working right now or in May or the first part of June - so it's a wash. I'm just wondering how bad it's going to be when kids go back to school next year. I feel like teachers will be working until Christmas just to get the kids up to speed - both in curriculum and behavior. But again, I don't have kids and I'm not an educator, so I probably don't have a clue.

That might make sense if the kids had been put on a prolonged spring break, but the districts already moved to remote learning back at the end of March. So at this point they are pretty much committed to either finished up the year via remote learning, or remote learn until May 4 and attend in person through May / 1st week of June.