Hellobee Boards

@MamaCate: aw, thanks! I am one of the lucky ones, though. It could be so much worse for my family—I have neurotypical children, I am an educator for a living, I have a husband that is super involved (outside of the hours of 8am-6pm-ha).

I have a student that lives with a single parent, and I don’t know if the parent is working from
home or having to go into work—but the student is autistic and normally has a 1:1 class aide all day. He is having a really, really hard time. I get 10-15 messages a day from him, just full of anxiety and upset (at the school work, and of course it’s upsetting, he is literally not capable of doing this stuff alone and has an IEP saying so) and meanwhile, we have other parents always asking for MORE, so their kids will be at the computer not bothering them from 9-3 each day. And I understand why that might be the case, first hand. I would also love for my kids to not bother me from 9-3 each day. There’s also a big disconnect between the teachers who don’t have young kids at home and those that do—the teachers without are pushing for more “accountability”, more live lessons. We are now having a live faculty meeting next week—like why? Just put that shiz in an email.

It’s like.....augh.

@Anagram: We have weekly live faculty meetings too! Last week it was an hour and a half. OMG.

We just got started with distance learning today and luckily it’s not very demanding. For the first assignment today DS (kindergartener) had to listen to a book on YouTube and then draw a picture about his favorite part of the story.

I have a very demanding job and so does DH. Right now we are switching off every other morning taking on the kids. But essentially that means I’m still on my computer reading and responding to emails and doing various work things while I’m responsible for my 6 year old and 3 year old not killing each other. So if the school work gets any more demanding it’s just not going to happen and I’m not going to feel bad about that.

We were on spring break last week. This week, the district has sent out very vague district – wide plans. As a former teacher, I feel I can better direct his learning than that, so we are doing our own stuff for the week (I did look at the plans, and I think they are fine and I’m glad they offered them to parents who don’t really have a sense for where to start. They do, though, look fairly time intensive for the adults working with the kiddo.) The teachers are using this week to prepare activities moving forward, so once his teacher sends things out, we will do those activities. I have a 10-month-old, so getting much into the day is difficult, so I am interested to see what those activities look like. But my son is fairly motivated, So I’m optimistic. DS2’s teacher at his play-based preschool has specifically said she won’t be sending anything home, but will post ideas and things to Facebook. She is just encouraging us to engage as much as possible with our kiddos and play.

@threeplusme: what grade? Our school sent out a survey and many parents responded they were spending 3-4+ per day on the work so the school actively tried to reduce that and additionally a lot of us commented that the format was not great. The work was laid out by subject rather then by day which was much more annoying for parents. After the school made these adjustments things have been smoother. Have you been asked for any feedback or offered any?

I'm dragging my 1st grader through her research paper. The teacher's method was a bust for her so I'm writing all her bullet point on post its so we can reorganize them tomorrow.

Honestly I had no idea 1st graders wrote research papers so I guess that's a + for parental involvement but I am so over it. And no, calling it a 'research story' is not better.

The teacher has made some videos which are helpful and I'm praising her regularly because she looks and sounds incredibly nervous and uncomfortable. But I even when I watch the video and sit with DD while she struggles I have no idea how focused and well written a 1st grade paper is supposed to be. We had a one on one teacher conference today and apparently 'our' work is nowhere near good enough. DD cried into the camera saying 'Daddy told me to do it this way' and ran to hide behind the couch. So much for not passing on my paper writing anxiety.

Other units are going better. We spend an average of 3.5 hours a day on it which is tough to squeeze in during work.

@threeplusme: I'm in a large district in Northern VA and our distance learning is now a documented disaster. Schools have been shut since March 13, and we were told that there would be no formal instruction until after spring break (April 14th). My first grader was supposed to have a half hour "morning meeting" 4 days a week (mostly social, some learning), 45 minutes of office hours every week with a small group of kids and her teacher, and assignments through videos and worksheets. The school district majorly bungled the live learning piece - last week it was security issues and capacity outages on Blackboard, so they scrapped everything after the first day to make security upgrades. Everything was supposed to resume this week, and once again, outages and Blackboard down, so once again, they scrapped everything. So between two weeks my kid got one meeting last week and one this week. She's a social learner so videos and worksheets are not cutting it for her and the false starts are so frustrating. I'm definitely pushing her to do the work because she loves to learn and her teacher and the whole first grade team put a lot of work into it and I so appreciate that, but none of it will be graded or counted so sometimes it is hard to push her when she's grumpy and just doesn't want to. She will do things all day long if she has a chance to discuss things with others, but I'm working so I can only do so much with her and you can only make a worksheet so fun, and I'm struggling to explain why she still should do it in a way that will resonate (so would love ideas from folks if you found something that works). The district is also sending standard grade packets to everyone to work on and I've noticed that the work the teachers put together don't even refer to the packets. I was really hopeful about this and it's been a major disappointment.

Just wanted to update: we just got an email that we will only be doing course work mon-Thur from now on and also school will be released a week early on 5/21

We were told yesterday that the primary kids (preschool through 3rd) are moving to MORE online stuff- each grade level is going to do one hour, three times a week, of synchronous stuff with their class via Google Meets, in addition to 4 half hour blocks with specialists, in addition to 20 minute daily meetings. I have two kids and we just don't have the screens available for that. Plus... that's a lot of screen time for little guys. Trying to get it all done today (while teaching my own class and simultaneously being in a hiring committee meeting) was bananas.