Hellobee Boards

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

So none of that answers your question but maybe some ways to think about it! Sorry for all the rambling!

Many subs won’t accept virtual jobs because of the complexity. It’s a massive issue.

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.

Yikes! I’m sure you really just need to follow your gut on this one but...

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.

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.

@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 ...