I think the quarantine has established most parents see school as day-care, not education.

[vi edit]

I have a 9 year old and a 13 year old. My wife works on location at a hospital 10 hour days. I fortunately had an employer that sent us all home and said "stay there".
We've been doing e-learning for just short of a year. It's one of the worst experiences of my parenting life.

I have a big boy job. I run a lot of meetings, have to participate in a bunch of calls. And generally need some uninterrupted time to do what I have to do. I don't have that. I have two kids that have vastly different schedules, and every 20 minutes from 9am to 2pm I'm making sure they are in class. If I'm on a call and running a meeting I'll lose track of time and forget to check on a kid and then end up getting texts from teachers that my kid isn't there. Each kid has roughly 2-3 hours a day of "in class" stuff where they are actually logged into a google class. The rest is "asynchronous" learning which means they just get 5-15 assignments sent to them electronically.

On any given day I'm getting 2-5 texts from a variety of teachers. Emails from the middle schools, emails from the middle school teachers, emails from the elementary school, emails from the elementary school teacher, emails from the school district overall. My kids get messages sent direct to them in one app for one kid that I might not catch. Then the other one gets messages from teachers in another app. One kid has homework assigned in one app. The other in another.

And we haven't even gotten to homework. My fucking god. The homework. Some days it's 3-4 hours of busy, but non-productive stuff that my 9 year old is being assigned. Stuff that would take 30 seconds with a piece of paper is taking 15 minutes to manipulate text boxes and what not on a laptop to complete. The chromebooks themselves are their own distraction and one of the worst mediums for young kids to learn. My oldest has clinically diagnosed, severe ADHD. Her homework assignments are a black hole of despair. There's little communication from the school. You get vague text messages to complete "X" assignment, but you have no idea what the assignment is. And it's another multiple hours a week trying to make sure she's staying on task for a curriculum that is literally virtual and opaque.

I've had to proctor MAP assessment tests. I have to be the PE teacher. I have to be the science teacher. I have to be chef in the middle of the day. I have to be the micromanager hounding them for hours a day to get assignments done. It's exhausting.

And then you get into the fact that this is now approaching a year with no end in site. Every single one of us is so over this. My kids have totally checked out. They straight up don't give a shit. I'm exhausted and frankly don't have the time or energy to spend hours a day dogging them on obnoxious and tedious busy work. I had 3/4 people in this house in tears this weekend over school stuff. And then you throw in the additional tears and and counseling since my kids aren't actually seeing other kids their age. My 9 year old hasn't played with a kid his age in close to a year. That is not healthy.

We cannot vaccinate teachers, throw money at safe schools and get kids back in classes fast enough. It's not a daycare. It's a foundational society pillar we've been accustomed to for decades. Kids are suffering, parents are suffering. The downstream impact of these last 12 months are going to be studied for decades.

 

[[DHT]Osiris]

I have a 9 year old and a 13 year old. My wife works on location at a hospital 10 hour days. I fortunately had an employer that sent us all home and said "stay there".
We've been doing e-learning for just short of a year. It's one of the worst experiences of my parenting life.

I have a big boy job. I run a lot of meetings, have to participate in a bunch of calls. And generally need some uninterrupted time to do what I have to do. I don't have that. I have two kids that have vastly different schedules, and every 20 minutes from 9am to 2pm I'm making sure they are in class. If I'm on a call and running a meeting I'll lose track of time and forget to check on a kid and then end up getting texts from teachers that my kid isn't there. Each kid has roughly 2-3 hours a day of "in class" stuff where they are actually logged into a google class. The rest is "asynchronous" learning which means they just get 5-15 assignments sent to them electronically.

On any given day I'm getting 2-5 texts from a variety of teachers. Emails from the middle schools, emails from the middle school teachers, emails from the elementary school, emails from the elementary school teacher, emails from the school district overall. My kids get messages sent direct to them in one app for one kid that I might not catch. Then the other one gets messages from teachers in another app. One kid has homework assigned in one app. The other in another.

And we haven't even gotten to homework. My fucking god. The homework. Some days it's 3-4 hours of busy, but non-productive stuff that my 9 year old is being assigned. Stuff that would take 30 seconds with a piece of paper is taking 15 minutes to manipulate text boxes and what not on a laptop to complete. The chromebooks themselves are their own distraction and one of the worst mediums for young kids to learn. My oldest has clinically diagnosed, severe ADHD. Her homework assignments are a black hole of despair. There's little communication from the school. You get vague text messages to complete "X" assignment, but you have no idea what the assignment is. And it's another multiple hours a week trying to make sure she's staying on task for a curriculum that is literally virtual and opaque.

I've had to proctor MAP assessment tests. I have to be the PE teacher. I have to be the science teacher. I have to be chef in the middle of the day. I have to be the micromanager hounding them for hours a day to get assignments done. It's exhausting.

And then you get into the fact that this is now approaching a year with no end in site. Every single one of us is so over this. My kids have totally checked out. They straight up don't give a shit. I'm exhausted and frankly don't have the time or energy to spend hours a day dogging them on obnoxious and tedious busy work. I had 3/4 people in this house in tears this weekend over school stuff. And then you throw in the additional tears and and counseling since my kids aren't actually seeing other kids their age. My 9 year old hasn't played with a kid his age in close to a year. That is not healthy.

We cannot vaccinate teachers, throw money at safe schools and get kids back in classes fast enough. It's not a daycare. It's a foundational society pillar we've been accustomed to for decades. Kids are suffering, parents are suffering. The downstream impact of these last 12 months are going to be studied for decades.

Raise some hell. Crawl up the school board's ass, demand printable homework that can be scanned back to the teachers, tell them the current situation is completely untenable and given that you pay their salary, you can dictate when they've fucked up enough for you to get involved.

 

[vi edit]

I'm not taking it out on the teachers. They *generally* didn't want this either and are trying to do what they can. The unions can fuck off. But in general, everyone dealing with this daily is miserable.

 

[dank69]

Exactly - the closure of pre-k and elementary schools is especially harmful. Middle and high school kids aren't well served by remote learning but it's not nearly as bad. You stand a chance of getting a 16 year old to sit still and listen to class on an iPad. A four year old though? Not a chance.

My daughters started distance learning when the pandemic hit and the schools first shut down. They were 5 and 7, finishing K and 2nd.

We opted to keep them distance learning even though the schools opened back up full time here soon after this school year started. We chose this because we prioritize stability over convenience when it comes to the kids.

We knew that living in a red town in a blue state, it was going to be a clusterfuck of dumb shits ignoring guidelines, and we would rather plan on having them home full time instead of sending them back and having to adjust to quarantine lottery results. Through the holidays, COVID positive alerts were going out daily. What we didn't count on was the school board plowing through orange and red and staying open despite state guidelines.

Anyway, I replied to your comment specifically to say that the girls, now 6 and rapidly approaching 9, have been fucking marvelous throughout the ordeal. The 6yo especially has had zero issues and even earned a silver award this month for being exemplary or whatever. The 9yo had exactly 2 hiccups, where she was watching youtube videos during meetings and ignoring the teacher's request to talk to her after some meetings. Both times the teacher informed us of the problems promptly and we corrected the behavior.

Now, we have been lucky enough to have 2 smart girls for whom grade-school classwork is easy. Even before the pandemic, the curriculum was way too easy for them, and if anything the curriculum was dialed back even further. They are able to do most of the work themselves, but the key with this stuff, and really the key for everything parenting related, has always been consistency. Once you give them an inch, it becomes impossible to justify why they can't have that inch all the time. Then the next inch and the next stack up and you have lost control completely.

 

[Stokely]

My youngest just started high school...and his first semester was at home. It was a disaster. At his age, he doesn't need "daycare" and he doesn't bother me in the slightest as I work from home.

The schools are not properly equipped to teach both in-school and at-home at the same time, for one thing.

It was so bad that now he's back at school despite the fact that in every way possible I've been self-quarantining. I haven't personally stepped foot in a band, store or restaurant in almost a year, although my wife has gone grocery shopping so that's a risk point too.


Basically it's a big shit sandwich and we all have to take a bite (stolen from Full Metal Jacket). There's no good side to this as far as schooling is concerned.

 

[ch33zw1z]

I disagree with the premise, as it's really both, and that's the way we do economy in America. I want my kids to have a safe place to be and socialize with friends (daycare), while at the same time be educated in a meaningful way academically.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

Sure - you can call it a daycare as well. That very much applies because based on our laws parents can't legally go to work. Thus the family gets fucked over, can't have any income, and are just 100% screwed.

But it's also a service that we pay for with our tax dollars. If we aren't receiving the service, then what the fuck are we paying for?

 

[ch33zw1z]

Sure - you can call it a daycare as well. That very much applies because based on our laws parents can't legally go to work. Thus the family gets fucked over, can't have any income, and are just 100% screwed.

But it's also a service that we pay for with our tax dollars. If we aren't receiving the service, then what the fuck are we paying for?

People are still receiving the service, just not the same traditional way. It's got downsides, no doubt, and it won't last forever. Both my kids can go to school right now, in MA, and one of them really needs that. The other still works remotely.

If Americans are consistently wise enough to get the vaccine, fall '20 will be BAU.

 

[s0me0nesmind1]

I have a 9 year old and a 13 year old. My wife works on location at a hospital 10 hour days. I fortunately had an employer that sent us all home and said "stay there".
We've been doing e-learning for just short of a year. It's one of the worst experiences of my parenting life.

I have a big boy job. I run a lot of meetings, have to participate in a bunch of calls. And generally need some uninterrupted time to do what I have to do. I don't have that. I have two kids that have vastly different schedules, and every 20 minutes from 9am to 2pm I'm making sure they are in class. If I'm on a call and running a meeting I'll lose track of time and forget to check on a kid and then end up getting texts from teachers that my kid isn't there. Each kid has roughly 2-3 hours a day of "in class" stuff where they are actually logged into a google class. The rest is "asynchronous" learning which means they just get 5-15 assignments sent to them electronically.

On any given day I'm getting 2-5 texts from a variety of teachers. Emails from the middle schools, emails from the middle school teachers, emails from the elementary school, emails from the elementary school teacher, emails from the school district overall. My kids get messages sent direct to them in one app for one kid that I might not catch. Then the other one gets messages from teachers in another app. One kid has homework assigned in one app. The other in another.

And we haven't even gotten to homework. My fucking god. The homework. Some days it's 3-4 hours of busy, but non-productive stuff that my 9 year old is being assigned. Stuff that would take 30 seconds with a piece of paper is taking 15 minutes to manipulate text boxes and what not on a laptop to complete. The chromebooks themselves are their own distraction and one of the worst mediums for young kids to learn. My oldest has clinically diagnosed, severe ADHD. Her homework assignments are a black hole of despair. There's little communication from the school. You get vague text messages to complete "X" assignment, but you have no idea what the assignment is. And it's another multiple hours a week trying to make sure she's staying on task for a curriculum that is literally virtual and opaque.

I've had to proctor MAP assessment tests. I have to be the PE teacher. I have to be the science teacher. I have to be chef in the middle of the day. I have to be the micromanager hounding them for hours a day to get assignments done. It's exhausting.

And then you get into the fact that this is now approaching a year with no end in site. Every single one of us is so over this. My kids have totally checked out. They straight up don't give a shit. I'm exhausted and frankly don't have the time or energy to spend hours a day dogging them on obnoxious and tedious busy work. I had 3/4 people in this house in tears this weekend over school stuff. And then you throw in the additional tears and and counseling since my kids aren't actually seeing other kids their age. My 9 year old hasn't played with a kid his age in close to a year. That is not healthy.

We cannot vaccinate teachers, throw money at safe schools and get kids back in classes fast enough. It's not a daycare. It's a foundational society pillar we've been accustomed to for decades. Kids are suffering, parents are suffering. The downstream impact of these last 12 months are going to be studied for decades.

Very well said.

This is a reflection not just of how shitty this remote-learning is - but also in general of how shit and piss-poor our education and teachers are in general.

Simply assigning a bunch of work-papers to complete for 3-4 hours of homework is unproductive as fuck. This didn't just start from the pandemic, this has been ongoing for the last decade.

 

[MrSquished]

Very well said.

This is a reflection not just of how shitty this remote-learning is - but also in general of how shit and piss-poor our education and teachers are in general.

Simply assigning a bunch of work-papers to complete for 3-4 hours of homework is unproductive as fuck. This didn't just start from the pandemic, this has been ongoing for the last decade.

We all know you are shitting on teachers because nearly 75% are women and you are a disgusting chauvinist pig.