https://boards.hellobee.com/ Pregnancy, Baby and Parenting blog, by Hellobee en Sun, 26 Apr 2026 21:54:18 +0000 https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918835 Mon, 07 Sep 2020 22:12:40 +0000 DesertDreams88 2918835@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@bhbee: I think it very much depends on your state and how much they'd be willing to pay for new hires, honestly. I see you are in Dallas. I don't know the teaching situation there, but a basic search says there's a teacher shortage, and that was pre-pandemic. So I'm not optimistic. However, there are lots of factors, like how desirable your district is, and how straightforward the position is. It's easier to hire for elementary ed than SpEd, for example. </p> <p>In AZ, there are thousands of positions every year that go filled by long-term subs or never filled. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918834 Mon, 07 Sep 2020 20:48:51 +0000 bhbee 2918834@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@DesertDreams88: side topic, but being a teacher, what’s your opinion on ability to hire this year? Our school is supposed to hire to break up our 37-kid virtual class but I’m worried it will never happen this year ... your post made me wonder if teachers are even out there who aren’t working yet and want to take on this craziness ... </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918831 Mon, 07 Sep 2020 18:39:23 +0000 DesertDreams88 2918831@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@cat620: I wonder if you could suggest that district office staff pick up the virtual class load, for a stipend. Because of the lack of teachers, about half of the district office staff were given a virtual class in addition to their normal duties. The district has an ethical obligation to provide a certified teacher AND a manageable class load. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918829 Mon, 07 Sep 2020 18:19:50 +0000 JCCovi 2918829@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Yikes! I’m sure you really just need to follow your gut on this one but...</p> <p>1) Since you were already waiting to see you could just hang on a bit longer and see if the new program works for your kid. If it does you can continue until *if* the rest of the close goes in-person and see what happens then. My point is you can pull out to homeschool at any time and if you value the zoom program it might be worth a mid-semester switch to make the switch at the right moment.</p> <p>2) We decided to homeschool this year and it’s going really well. I did all our curriculum prep over the summer before I made the decision so you could go ahead and do that now. It’s going to be different for everyone but having done virtual this spring and homeschool this fall, homeschool is significantly less work for me. The hands on time I have is actually teaching my kids and doing fun things with them instead of managing them (why did you mute yourself? Get back to your desk! Break time is over!) Although we had a full day of zoom (5.5 hours with breaks throughout) and now we spend 2.5 hours with breaks on virtual Chinese school and maybe 2 hours with sporadic breaks on actual school so overall it’s much less! That will definitely vary family by family. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918828 Mon, 07 Sep 2020 18:10:46 +0000 honeybear 2918828@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>My advice would be to decide if *you* want to home school. If you really don't, then you shouldn't, because parental enthusiasm and effort is absolutely essential for it to work well, IMO. If you do, then I'd say you should go for it, because I think it is a lot of fun and highly rewarding. It's also frustrating at times, but not in the same way that dealing with an organization is frustrating. </p> <p>I do want to caution you that if you do home school this year, it won't look like a normal year for home school either. You'll probably be at home way more than most "normal times" home schoolers are. Any group or class you might want to join will probably have to operate under fairly severe constraints and might not be doing many of their typical things. That's going to make it hard to do group activities and to meet people. And even if you wouldn't necessarily join a group, there will be plenty of places where you might want to go that may not be open or hard to visit. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918827 Mon, 07 Sep 2020 14:18:36 +0000 annem1990 2918827@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>So frustrating! I will say though, regardless of what you choose (homeschool or virtual school with the new class) there will be a learning curve for both. There may be some hiccups adjusting to a new teacher and different plan, but I’d argue homeschooling would be an even bigger adjustment. Not to say it’s the wrong choice, but I do think some underestimate the amount of work it is. Everyone’s school year is going to look different so whichever route you go will be OK. There’s no wrong answer, and there’s no right answer which totally sucks. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918826 Mon, 07 Sep 2020 13:57:57 +0000 LemonJack 2918826@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>@808love: THIS. We already had a major sub shortage. This is a disaster. Guarantee they couldn’t find her a sub. I was out on maternity leave last year and they didn’t even have a sub for me for the first couple of weeks, and that was pre-Covid.</p> <p>I would give it a little time to see how it all shakes out, but if you have the time and desire to homeschool, I certainly wouldn’t blame you for going that route! We’ve thought about it for our 1st grader if things aren’t organized well, but with me teaching and my DH working, I just don’t know if we could do it. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918824 Mon, 07 Sep 2020 10:36:25 +0000 808love 2918824@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Many subs won’t accept virtual jobs because of the complexity. It’s a massive issue. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918819 Sun, 06 Sep 2020 22:33:32 +0000 bhbee 2918819@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Adding one more thing - not sure where you live but maybe check out the homeschool laws for your state. In TX where we live I can send a letter to the school any day of the year and start homeschooling the next day. And the state has basically zero requirements of homeschool parents (maybe kind of scary but helps here!). So I can tell myself - that option is always there if things blow up, but if it’s going ok I can stick it out a week at a time. That might help if it’s ok now but may change - of course depends how it works in your state! </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918818 Sun, 06 Sep 2020 22:22:37 +0000 bhbee 2918818@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Oh man I feel for you in all this! I don’t think there’s one right answer but here’s my experience so far. We’re virtual also but majority of district goes back in person Tuesday. We’re 3 weeks in and man it is a mess. I don’t like how the leadership has handled many things and I feel so much for what is being asked of the teachers. </p> <p>Oldest is in 3rd, they had number issues on the virtual/in person choice m and the district didn’t support getting two virtual teachers, so the class started at 30 and they overflowed 8 girls including my oldest to a school that is not well run compared to our home school. We’ve been 3 weeks so far and it was a disaster - I would have pulled her out. But much (MUCH) parent complaining about the overflow and the class size finally got it changed ... sort of. They got an additional allocation at her home school but can’t fill it yet so now the class size is about 37 until further notice and the teacher is supposed to get additional support from our instructional person and the gifted teacher since there’s a cluster in there. And the worst part is everyone can change every 9 weeks here so it could all blow up in October! But she’s very happy to “go back” to her home school Tuesday. I don’t know how much 1-1 stuff can really happen this year with it being so complicated. </p> <p>One thing I did during all the uncertainty was try to plan out what homeschool would be for her - look at samples, think about how it would be structured, I even bought a few inexpensive things. It was a bit overwhelming to think about doing third well (although is any kid getting as good of a year as normal? Probably not). I was really worried about whether we could keep it up when things got hard (material wise - when she had to work harder / not always be right) and whether I could hold up momentum in say January when I’m also in charge of her two siblings. Lastly, she really wanted to be with friends at her home school and I could see even in the class that wasn’t run well she enjoyed looking up to the teacher. So with the change back, even at 37 kids, we’re giving it a shot. I am still supplementing her in math and sometimes I tweak assignments to make them harder. So that’s an option - provide more of the 1-1 yourself, even if it’s not full homeschooling. I see it as school provides the backbone and social etc and then you can supplement where you like. </p> <p>Now on the flip side I have a boy starting K. His class is 25 (still over the state limit!) and his teacher is doing ok but man ... K online is just not ideal. He could NEVER do 3 hours of zoom. He does about one and complains every time. I also don’t like how many videos there are in the asynchronous parts. It’s just not how I want his learning to look. So I’m giving it one more week but leaning to homeschool him. He’s at the age/temperament where I have to oversee everything and I told a friend - if I have to do that, I want the time to be useful and right at his level, which school can’t hope to provide. So I’m struggling to keep him focused for zoom and then feeling like we have to supplement also. He also doesn’t get much benefit from the social side and I’m pretty comfortable teaching the material in K. I just feel like for him, it’s few positives (because he can’t really get all the usual K learning about social stuff, being in a class all day, etc), and a lot of negatives in the execution. </p> <p>So in the end, I’m thinking we will leave my 3rd grader in for now and see how it goes with this new class setup and whether anything changes in October ... but take my Kindergartener out giving us more flexibility. It’s also a factor for me that the 3rd grader can mostly handle herself, so this way I let her do that and give her brother a focused hour with me and we’re done. The biggest drawback is that if things improve, he’ll still be stuck at home with me and little sis (2) while oldest can go back on campus. But for us that’s likely March at best and I can’t keep the current situation 3/4 of the year just in case he can go back for 2 months. </p> <p>So none of that answers your question but maybe some ways to think about it! Sorry for all the rambling! </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918816 Sun, 06 Sep 2020 19:51:11 +0000 muffinsmuffins 2918816@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>Everyone’s school situation is different depending on where they live, but what I keep reminding myself of is no matter what your kids school situation is, everyone’s gonna have a bit of a screwed up year. So the extra class size wouldn’t sway me really (FWIW there’s been massive drama in our school board about misleading class sizes so I’ve kinda had to come to terms with more kids than I originally thought...) I guess between in person, virtual learning and home school it depends if you want to be completely responsible for your kids learning and cut off from the school, and if you can swing it financially/work allows it to be a possibility. If you had the drive to do home schooling before all this happened, I would go for it. But if it’s just to avoid extra kids and shuffling around, I’d just stay with virtual. For me, there’s no way I would ever consider home schooling, Covid or not, so hopefully there are some others to chime in with that perspective. </p> https://boards.hellobee.com/topic/more-school-troubles#post-2918815 Sun, 06 Sep 2020 14:55:44 +0000 cat620 2918815@https://boards.hellobee.com/ <p>I’ve posted in here before about remote learning at my son’s elementary school, and how I’ve been on the fence about withdrawing him and homeschooling.</p> <p>We have now done the remote learning for three weeks, and while I don’t think it’s ideal, I feel like we’ve gotten into a groove with things. My 1st grade son has between 2.5 and 3 hours of zoom each day followed by another 2 hours of independent work. But so far, I feel like the zooms have been manageable, because the teacher gives breaks and tries to engage the kids. My son likes his teacher and the other kids in his class. There are 20 of them.</p> <p>His teacher is pregnant, and she will be taking a maternity leave from the middle of September through December, so she won’t come back to teach until January. This whole time we’ve been eagerly waiting to find out who the sub will be.  I received an email today from the school saying that instead of a sub, they are going to disperse our class into the other three 1st grade classes. that means the average number of children in each class will jump to about 26 or 27. I’m concerned about having a larger number of kids in a class, especially because I feel like my son already doesn’t get much one-on-one attention from his teacher. </p> <p>The other concern is that we are signed up for the full remote academy at our school district, which means that our class is committed to doing virtual learning through the school year. The other three classes are remote learning currently, but they could go back to in-person learning if Covid conditions improve in our community. I have no idea how this will play out if the other classes go back to school, and the teacher has to somehow juggle them as well as those of us who are learning from home.</p> <p>I emailed our teacher to find out more information, and her reply was that she doesn’t have any answers and will forward my questions to the principal. I feel like this wasn’t a well thought out plan, and I’m annoyed by the lack of information they are giving us. My husband thinks this is our final push to do homeschooling, but I’m not sure what to do at this point. Just felt like sharing and seeing if anyone has advice. </p>