Outside Topic Schooling During Covid19 Closures

Outside Topic Schooling During Covid19 Closures - Printable Version

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Schooling During Covid19 Closures - Hank 91 - 03-15-2020

I hope no one minds, but since the readership here comes from various corners of the country, I thought it would be a good place to take a quick survey. For those of you with school-aged children, I have two questions:
1. Is their school district currently closed?
2. Are their teachers taking any steps to continue teaching them remotely? (And how do you feel about that?)

I ask because I'm a middle school English teacher, and I'm just curious about what's going on in other places. Our district is closed through April 20th, and I'm doing my best to keep things going with various on-line resources and video sharing platforms. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - BostonCard - 03-15-2020

Hey Hank...

Burlingame school district is closed as of Monday. My girls got sent home Friday with some work. Monday and Tuesday are in service days so that the teachers have a crash course to prepare their online curriculum, so starting on Wednesday, they will be school from home. We will see how it works.

San Mateo Unified is also closed as of Monday. I feel like high school is a bit easier to do remotely, but my son has thus far immersed himself in fortnight, since “OMG, everyone is back to playing it”.

As I recall, your district is Long Beach Unified, right? I can only imagine the challenges you and your kids will face trying to work remotely with the socioeconomic challenges already present. I’m sure I don’t speak for just myself when I say that if there is anything I can do to help, please post. I know you’ve done book drives in the past, and I’m sure we can rally the cardboard to get your kids some reading materials. Post or PM me.

BC

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - TreeWeird - 03-15-2020

I live in San Jose. Every public school in Santa Clara county is closed, and every private school I am aware of. Even my granddaughter's private pre-school is closed, although they are a fairly large one with lots of students in one place. I also don't know of any college in the county that is still holding physical classes.

I know that Presentation High School (private) is holding classes online and providing windows of time for students and parents to come to campus on an individual basis to meet with teachers.

At least one of the public high schools in San Jose is completely closed with NO online classes because they simply aren't equipped to do it. On top of that, most of their students probably have the means to take online classes at home, but many probably do not.

I also have a niece and nephew in Catholic elementary school in SF. They have some classes online. My sister-in-law says they are more or less expected to be home-schooled at least for now. All the public schools in SF are closed, as well as all the catholic diocesan schools in SF, San Mateo and Marin counties.

All public schools in Santa Cruz county are closed.

etc, etc, etc.

The announced minimum dates of closure vary somewhat.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - PalmTree - 03-15-2020

(03-15-2020, 12:36 PM)Hank 91 Wrote: I hope no one minds, but since the readership here comes from various corners of the country, I thought it would be a good place to take a quick survey. For those of you with school-aged children, I have two questions:
1. Is their school district currently closed?
2. Are their teachers taking any steps to continue teaching them remotely? (And how do you feel about that?)

I ask because I'm a middle school English teacher, and I'm just curious about what's going on in other places. Our district is closed through April 20th, and I'm doing my best to keep things going with various on-line resources and video sharing platforms. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

Hank - first, we don't have any kids in K-12 but Novato USD in northern Marin canceled classed though at least 4/30 this past Friday. I believe Sonoma USD also did the same. Classes 3-12 will have on line teaching and assignment beginning this week, via Goggle Classrooms. Special needs kids will be managed on a 1:1 basis via their assigned specialists. There will also be a drop-bye/drive-by pickup point for pre-packed free lunches for all kids 18 and under at one of the school facilities. As our son graduated from a different USD (Petaluma) 7 years ago, I can't really offer a strong opinion on the efficacy of the plan and program other than to say NUSD is one of the poorest and chronically understaffed in Marin County so I have to wonder how well the current staff will be able to cope with managing the change - the Google site does at face seem to be easily navigable and well-developed. Here're links to the USD announcement and the on-line learning site:

NUSD Announcement

NUSD On-Line Learning

Hope this is useful,
PT

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - cardcrimson - 03-15-2020

Acalanes Union, Mt Diablo, and San Ramon Valley are all closed, as are the private schools, I think. My daughter will be starting online learning tomorrow, though none of us really know how that is going to take place. Will be an interesting close of her middle school years. . . .

Will add updates as we go through the week.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - Papa John - 03-15-2020

Santa Barbara is shut down for at least three weeks starting Monday. The announcement was made in the middle of the school day on Friday, so my son's seventh-grade teachers are scrambling to come up with work for the students.

UC Santa Barbara just told its students to pack up and not return. So I'm trying to learn how to teach an online seminar when students are not required to "attend" during the time that I am teaching live.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - stupac2 - 03-15-2020

OUSD is closed, as are every other east bay district I'm aware of. My private daycare is nominally open for abbreviated hours but I doubt they'll get much takeup. (The proprietor asked for supplies, time for our accidental bounty of TP from screwing up Subscribe & Save to save the day!)

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - cardcrimson - 03-15-2020

(03-15-2020, 03:47 PM)stupac2 Wrote: OUSD is closed, as are every other east bay district I'm aware of. My private daycare is nominally open for abbreviated hours but I doubt they'll get much takeup. (The proprietor asked for supplies, time for our accidental bounty of TP from screwing up Subscribe & Save to save the day!)

Thanks for the chuckle. I've some extra dog and bunny treats piling up from the same problem. To make it worse, my daughter's bunny died a few weeks back.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - pcgoode - 03-15-2020

Up here in Alberta, all schools in the province have just been shut down. My son's private school is working on a remote platform starting Monday, but no plans announced as to when that will start to be available yet.

(03-15-2020, 12:36 PM)Hank 91 Wrote: I hope no one minds, but since the readership here comes from various corners of the country, I thought it would be a good place to take a quick survey. For those of you with school-aged children, I have two questions:
1. Is their school district currently closed?
2. Are their teachers taking any steps to continue teaching them remotely? (And how do you feel about that?)

I ask because I'm a middle school English teacher, and I'm just curious about what's going on in other places. Our district is closed through April 20th, and I'm doing my best to keep things going with various on-line resources and video sharing platforms. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - cardcrimson - 03-15-2020

My daughter is a fledgling water polo goalie, and has attended a few clinics hosted by Stanford great Jack Bowen. I was incredibly impressed with an email Jack sent out this afternoon and he gave me permission to share. Hope it helps keeps your kids focused while they're away from school. Jack also coaches water polo and teaches philosophy at the Menlo School.

"Hello Goalies,

This past weekend I had to cancel a Goalie Combine: it was the first session I’ve cancelled in 21 years of running them year-‘round. We had a full session (plus wait list) but seemed the responsible thing to do, given the news of this past week.

In all of the responses I received from goalies who missed the session, I saw two trends: First of all, our goalie community is immensely gracious and full of gratitude and truly a great community to be a part of; secondly, and my primary reason for writing, goalies just don’t know what to do over these next few weeks, and understandably so.

I do plan on running our Goalie Combines as soon as it seems viable, and will run extra sessions to accommodate the flood of increased interest over the past month.

Below I list 10 reflections and suggestions which I hope might be helpful during this time which I know is difficult for all of us, especially you as young, committed student-athletes.

1. The Injured Athlete Analogy
First, it’s worth framing where you, the age-group/high-school goalie, are in the midst of your career and training arc. To do so, I reference conversations I often have with athletes who have been injured and are out for weeks or months because of it. And this will frame the remaining comments below.

For a young person committed to their sport, as I know all of you are, a few weeks off can feel like a few months. Know that (except for those female high school goalies in Orange County who were in-season) this is the “best” time to have your sport taken away as we’re in what I call the off-off-season, with a lot of time to recover and prepare. So, that being said, we can flip our narrative and view this as a great opportunity.

When I had to sit out for 15 months my freshman and sophomore year at Stanford to recover from my goalie-related Tommy John surgery, I was fortunate enough to have this sort of mindset: and I returned Spring of my sophomore year better and stronger than I’d ever been.

Use this as a time to return better and stronger, physically and mentally and emotionally.

2. Habits
Now that I have your attention, before moving to the goalie-related comments, I want to point your attention elsewhere. A brobdingnagian majority of you have, at the least, a 21-28-day break from school along with nearly every water polo training and tournament having been canceled. This is a lot of time to do things which take a lot of time for which, until now, you didn’t have.

As much research shows, it takes 21 consecutive days to break a bad habit and form a good one. So, here’s your gift: find that habit you’ve wanted to form—whether it has to do with your nutrition, reading/writing, stretching—and do it. Start tomorrow.

3. Get ahead on your school work
You’re going to have work due from now through the summer and, now, you’ll have a lot more time to do that work and, more importantly, to get ahead on the work due when you return to school and training.

So, given that these hours are fixed—i.e. you have X hours of work to do in March and April whether you do it evenly over this time or not—and given that you’re going to want to be in the pool as much as possible when that becomes an option, front-load your work now in order to subtract from those fixed hours, and then you can get back to your training full-throttle when that time comes.

4. Focus on healthy eating
When I was in high school I attended a goalie clinic given by 3-time Olympic goalie, Craig Wilson. I remember one thing from this day: at some point, he discussed nutrition and said some version of, “I don’t drink soda. Never have. Soda is just terrible for your body and you’re trying to fuel your body.” So, I stopped drinking soda.

But, a more big-picture realization came from that: what you eat really does fuel your body. So, especiallywhen you’re not training, now is the time to really focus on that. And, given Point #2, above, doing this for 21 days can literally change your tastes so this habit can continue when you’re back to training. I experienced this 3 years ago when my wife and I decided to become plant-based. I felt like I was giving something up: that I’d have to “cheat” with a steak or hamburger every few weeks. But, now, those things look genuinely unappealing to me and a plate of whole grains, fresh vegetables, and lentils sounds like four-star high-end culinary excursion. The point being: pay attention to what you’re eating, especially when you’re trying to be your best in one of the toughest sports known.

5. Take care of your brain
As many of you have trained with our Bowen Goalie Combines for at least a year, you’ve likely done our goalie-meditation at least once (we do this during our Playoff Focus and then again during the Summer Goalie Focus prior to JO’s). We’ve done it for 21 years, and I did it with the 1996 Olympic Team repeatedly with our team psychologist in preparation for the Olympics and I even did it with my own high school team when in high school.

The science supporting meditation is ubiquitous: meditating—and not just sports-focused meditation—has proven benefits well beyond aiding someone in their pursuit of blocking water polo shots. I’d love to go into it here but to even start writing about the magic of the human brain would take a 5-page intro. Suffice it to say, the experts agree.

So, here’s another item which typically results in students saying, “I just don’t have the time.” Now, you do have 15 minutes per day. I highly recommend it."

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - cctop - 03-15-2020

San Francisco's public schools are closed for two weeks leading into Spring Break. I wouldn't be surprised if they remain closed into April and beyond. Originally my 10th grader's baseball team planned small-group workouts to stay in shape, but those were cancelled as well.

The city has also closed all rec centers and libraries to use them to care for kids whos families depend on the schools for childcare and meals. Elementary school kids are in the rec centers, while middle & high school kids are in the libraries where they have internet access to complete their school work.

My 10th grader has already received assignments for the next two weeks through Google Classroom. For actual instruction his math class is mostly using Khan Academy while Spanish is using Duolingo. Art has given him drawing assignments that he can do on any paper available and email a photo. Biology has sent worksheets and PDF files. Humanities is the most complicated: he and two other kids have to collaborative on a Google Doc to answer a set of questions after reading teacher-assigned links, then they have to each record 5-minute presentations and upload them to YouTube. All together he has 2-3 hours a day of work.

My 6th grader has received a couple of assignments using Google Classroom, but not a full schedule like his brother.

As for how I feel about it, I'm happy that the teachers are trying their best to keep the education going, but I can already see it won't be a replacement for actual in-person instruction. My younger one is auto-didactic enough that he will do fine. My older one really needs direct adult supervision. He can't sit at a computer for more than 20 minutes without getting distracted, and he's not detail-oriented enough to keep track of the enormous amount of information that was just thrown his way. It's going to be a lot of work for the teachers to make sure that the kids whose parents aren't as involved in their education don't get left behind.

I wish I were able to take these two weeks off work and home-school the kids. I actually think it'd be a lot of fun to do some work outside and get away from the regular classroom experience.

The kids themselves are slightly miffed they don't actually have an extra two weeks of vacation but they are resigned to their fate.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - winflop - 03-15-2020

My younger son came home from Santa Clara on Monday. His one final turned into a quiz and he had three papers to write last week.

They are virtual learning until at least April 13. Technically they can still be in their dorms but why the heck would anyone unless they had no alternative (i.e., international student who might not be able to return).

Our expectation is that the entire Spring Quarter will be done remotely. We are considering whether to enroll him for the quarter or not.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - CardinalSagehen - 03-15-2020

I have three different perspectives here in Palo Alto. My wife is a high school teacher at Gunn, my son attends JLS Middle School, and my daughter is a 4th grader.

The district does not seem to be equipped for or expecting any real-time distance learning. At the high school level, this week, they plan to assign a uniform set of work across the district, by subject and grade level, using Schoology. Teachers have to go in for a couple hours tomorrow to let students pick up Chromebooks (if needed) and coordinate with their departments on the assignment. After this week, it may change and teachers may be able to get back to their own curriculum. We’ll know more tomorrow.

In my son’s 6th grade class, his two teachers sent an email saying they would assign the week’s work on Schoology by noon on Monday and help/support via Schoology during the week.

In my daughter’s 4th grade class, they were sent home on Friday with a one-pager with guidelines for how much time to spend on each subject per day and which resources to use (Khan, a packet of essays that they’re supposed to read, etc.) There doesn’t seem to be any firm expectation of the grade school teachers to adapt to distance learning. Her teacher is fantastic and a good family friend of ours, but he’ll be teaching preschool, second and fifth grade in his own home, while his wife tends to patients at Stanford Hospital. That’s emblematic of the situation.

Assuming my wife’s prep load isn’t too burdensome, at least for this week, she will be able to keep our own kids on a schedule and help them through their work. I’m thankful for that. She’s also been planning some afternoon get-togethers with another family. It’s important that kids experience some normalcy through all of this, especially with their own risk (and ours, frankly) being so low. We are being careful not to spend time with grandma and grandpa, though.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - Snorlax94 - 03-15-2020

(03-15-2020, 12:36 PM)Hank 91 Wrote: I hope no one minds, but since the readership here comes from various corners of the country, I thought it would be a good place to take a quick survey. For those of you with school-aged children, I have two questions:
1. Is their school district currently closed?
2. Are their teachers taking any steps to continue teaching them remotely? (And how do you feel about that?)

I ask because I'm a middle school English teacher, and I'm just curious about what's going on in other places. Our district is closed through April 20th, and I'm doing my best to keep things going with various on-line resources and video sharing platforms. I'd be interested to hear your thoughts on this.

1. Yes, 6th and K, for 4 weeks
2. For the most part, there’s nothing so far. The K teacher sent account information to use a math app.

I was expecting more, but it seems the decision was last-minute and there wasn’t much time to prepare, so maybe more is coming.

I would love the 6th grade to continue their progress against their curriculum. I was hoping they would be sent home with their math, science and social studies workbooks. In a perfect world, I’d love daily videos and homework, and I wish kids could drop off and pick up graded homework, quizzes and papers.

I am also very concerned about the social-emotional and physical toll for a generation of children, losing valuable social time, exercise, arts, emotional support and experiences. I would love support there, as well. One friend said she set up a skype playdate and that it went better than expected. It’d be great if the school could facilitate virtual socialization/get-togethers, and recommended arts exposure (i plan on having the kids watch the sequel to Kenneth Clark’s Civilization — Civilizations, free with Amazon Prime. Any other recommendations?)

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - UltimateCard - 03-16-2020

Can’t vouch for these but I’m seeing lots of suggestions on my Facebook feed (I work on environmental literacy):

Scholastic remote learning resources (by grade level): https://classroommagazines.scholastic.com/support/learnathome.html

Virtual field trips:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1SvIdgTx9djKO6SjyvPDsoGlkgE3iExmi3qh2KRRku_w/mobilebasic
https://adventuresinfamilyhood.com/20-virtual-field-trips-to-take-with-your-kids.html

TedEd (by subject):
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1lUzad8RFMU8cFwCLMeTv7bq1R3ctmdAo1MvZ-NOobpY/mobilebasic

Homeschooling resources can be adapted. Good luck with the young ones (mine are older now)!

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - Hank 91 - 03-16-2020

Thanks for all this. It's interesting to see the similarities. We were notified at 10:30am on Friday that we'd be closed until April 20th, so there was essentially zero time to prepare. I wasn't even able to talk to my first period class about it, for example. Even though it was abrupt, it obviously wasn't a surprise, so I've been thinking for a couple weeks about what this would look like.

The good news is that my seventh grade students have done a lot of digital and on-line work with me, all stuff to supplement what we do in the classroom. So at least we're all used to the different platforms. I use Google Classroom, which has become fairly standard, but my favorite addition this year -- and I'm so grateful that I added it -- is FlipGrid. It's a platform that allows me to post videos, five minutes or shorter, for my classes to watch and then respond to with their own videos. So I can give them mini-lessons to explain curriculum, and they can still see my face and hear my voice.

The big problem in our district, however, is that not all of our students have the same advantages that mine do. There are families on the other side of town who don't have wifi, for example. There was even concern that some parents would still send their kids to school this morning because word hadn't gotten to them about the closure. For most of us that's hard to believe or understand, but some families are truly that isolated.

To combat this, there are plans to have students or parents come to the schools to pick up work and turn it in later, but right now we still haven't gotten any concrete plans about this. We're trying to flatten this curve, our learning curve, as well.

Finally, if anyone here has a middle school student and you think I can answer any questions or help you with any curriculum, please message me. I'd be happy to help. Oh, and later this week I'm going to post a Hiatus Reading List. I'll post a link here for anyone interested.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - Papa John - 03-16-2020

Hank, my son's public junior high school has the same digital divide issues. The usual free wifi places like the nearby Starbucks and local branch library are all unavailable. I have no idea how the school intends to solve this issue, but at least they're maintaining the free meals program for families in need.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - akiddoc - 03-16-2020

One of my jobs is at a Federal Clinic in San Leandro. We have many disadvantaged patients from Oakland, San Leandro, and Hayward. There is no attempt that I can see to have online school. Most of the families I see have one connection to the internet - a phone. Although everyone in the Oakland Hills or in Rockridge, or even in most of San Leandro will have regular computers and internet access, sizable numbers will not.

All three districts are distributing food.

All three districts resisted closing. I think they were more concerned with food and the cessation of leaning than with infectious disease. This past weekend someone or something - likely the governor's office - changed their minds.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - Mick - 03-17-2020

(03-16-2020, 09:44 PM)akiddoc Wrote: One of my jobs is at a Federal Clinic in San Leandro. We have many disadvantaged patients from Oakland, San Leandro, and Hayward. There is no attempt that I can see to have online school. Most of the families I see have one connection to the internet - a phone. Although everyone in the Oakland Hills or in Rockridge, or even in most of San Leandro will have regular computers and internet access, sizable numbers will not.

All three districts are distributing food.

All three districts resisted closing. I think they were more concerned with food and the cessation of leaning than with infectious disease. This past weekend someone or something - likely the governor's office - changed their minds.

RE: Schooling During Covid19 Closures - cardcrimson - 03-17-2020

(03-16-2020, 12:00 PM)Hank 91 Wrote: Finally, if anyone here has a middle school student and you think I can answer any questions or help you with any curriculum, please message me. I'd be happy to help. Oh, and later this week I'm going to post a Hiatus Reading List. I'll post a link here for anyone interested.

Thanks for the offer! So far, my eighth grader is taking this well and working hard on her studies and homework, but we're only in day two of twenty (at a minimum).