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Forums - General Discussion - Should schools reopen?

 

Should schools reopen?

Yes 9 13.04%
 
Yes but blended model 12 17.39%
 
No 48 69.57%
 
Total:69
MasonADC on 29 July 2020

As someone going back to school in person and feels horrible about doing it, no they shouldnt.



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SvennoJ on 29 July 2020
Machiavellian said:

Its not effective because none of the schools were setup to use it at short notice.  I have been teaching online classes for over 6 years and the technology is way more advanced then current schools were using since it was basically zoom meet ups.  The thing is we have enough time to invest in those online tech to make remote classes almost as good as being in the classroom.  I will say with my years of experience that the gold standard will always be in classroom teaching but we do have the tech to make remote a very viable and solid solution definitely during this time.

As for this children are damaged by not going to school, I highly doubt not going to school for half a year or better is suddenly going to damage your child.  Kids are not porcelain dolls where they break so easily, if anything children learn to adapt far quicker and better than adults.  You really cannot regulate kids to wear a mask for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.  Even if you could if the virus is airborne then it really only takes one child saturating the air sitting in spot for a long period of time to infect everyone.  Those kids rotate from classroom to classroom and one child can effectively infect the majority of students.  Parents send their child to school all the time sick.  Some with mild symptoms some with more depending if they need to go to work. In poor neighborhoods it will be a blood bath as most of those schools are already pretty crowded in class size already.  

Hopefully they can improve online schooling here since the back to school measures all look hopelessly ineffective. (Canada)

My kids have been home since March and it is definitely effecting them. Home schooling was a pita since no one was prepared and it consisted of the teacher emailing some badly scanned text book pages with a PDF file of things to do during the week while providing access to Lexia, Prodigy, IXL, Bright space and Zoom which all had their own issues and problems to use.

Zoom meetings were nothing more than "Can you see me" "Can you hear me" "A dropped out again" "Can't hear B" "Where did C go"
Uploading work was a nightmare, feedback was non existent, materials were obviously missing and you couldn't go to the store to get stuff. Plus all those programs had their own login issues. They were also a mix of too easy and stuff the kids didn't know yet which led to lots of frustration and tears (8 and 10 year old)

All it did was turn my kids 100% against online learning, which turned into open rebellion and giving up 2 weeks before the end of the school year. Not worth the fight every day. In fact nearly all kids dropped out, many far sooner.

Since we're building up to a second wave for September / October I have little faith in the new school year :(



Machiavellian on 29 July 2020
SvennoJ said:
Machiavellian said:

Its not effective because none of the schools were setup to use it at short notice.  I have been teaching online classes for over 6 years and the technology is way more advanced then current schools were using since it was basically zoom meet ups.  The thing is we have enough time to invest in those online tech to make remote classes almost as good as being in the classroom.  I will say with my years of experience that the gold standard will always be in classroom teaching but we do have the tech to make remote a very viable and solid solution definitely during this time.

As for this children are damaged by not going to school, I highly doubt not going to school for half a year or better is suddenly going to damage your child.  Kids are not porcelain dolls where they break so easily, if anything children learn to adapt far quicker and better than adults.  You really cannot regulate kids to wear a mask for 8 hours a day, 5 days a week.  Even if you could if the virus is airborne then it really only takes one child saturating the air sitting in spot for a long period of time to infect everyone.  Those kids rotate from classroom to classroom and one child can effectively infect the majority of students.  Parents send their child to school all the time sick.  Some with mild symptoms some with more depending if they need to go to work. In poor neighborhoods it will be a blood bath as most of those schools are already pretty crowded in class size already.  

Hopefully they can improve online schooling here since the back to school measures all look hopelessly ineffective. (Canada)

My kids have been home since March and it is definitely effecting them. Home schooling was a pita since no one was prepared and it consisted of the teacher emailing some badly scanned text book pages with a PDF file of things to do during the week while providing access to Lexia, Prodigy, IXL, Bright space and Zoom which all had their own issues and problems to use.

Zoom meetings were nothing more than "Can you see me" "Can you hear me" "A dropped out again" "Can't hear B" "Where did C go"
Uploading work was a nightmare, feedback was non existent, materials were obviously missing and you couldn't go to the store to get stuff. Plus all those programs had their own login issues. They were also a mix of too easy and stuff the kids didn't know yet which led to lots of frustration and tears (8 and 10 year old)

All it did was turn my kids 100% against online learning, which turned into open rebellion and giving up 2 weeks before the end of the school year. Not worth the fight every day. In fact nearly all kids dropped out, many far sooner.

Since we're building up to a second wave for September / October I have little faith in the new school year :(

I agree those online system are junk and probably something we did 7 years ago.  Instead the tools I use for teaching online actually have virtual desk on cloud servers where you can log into your machine at anytime anywhere.  The teacher have full view of all the desktops and can jump in remotely to help individual students when needed.  Also the tool allowed the teacher to break out students into groups of one to many depending on the project.  The good part about this is that the teacher can help students that are having issues who would normally just sit and say nothing in class because they do not want to be noticed as falling behind. The tech is even better now since I stopped teaching but this is a private company.  If we could get even a fraction of the investment we put into our military all schools could be up and running with an advance simple setup in probably about 2 months.  It would be pushing it but there are companies that are skilled in this stuff. Unfortunately, I do not see that investment coming anytime soon so these outdated online classes will be the norm for a while.



SvennoJ on 29 July 2020
Machiavellian said:

I agree those online system are junk and probably something we did 7 years ago.  Instead the tools I use for teaching online actually have virtual desk on cloud servers where you can log into your machine at anytime anywhere.  The teacher have full view of all the desktops and can jump in remotely to help individual students when needed.  Also the tool allowed the teacher to break out students into groups of one to many depending on the project.  The good part about this is that the teacher can help students that are having issues who would normally just sit and say nothing in class because they do not want to be noticed as falling behind. The tech is even better now since I stopped teaching but this is a private company.  If we could get even a fraction of the investment we put into our military all schools could be up and running with an advance simple setup in probably about 2 months.  It would be pushing it but there are companies that are skilled in this stuff. Unfortunately, I do not see that investment coming anytime soon so these outdated online classes will be the norm for a while.

That sounds amazing! I wish we had that here yet unfortunately the schools can't even hire extra cleaners so the kids will have to clean their own desks to remain covid free.... I really don't know what to do in September with my wife being in the severe risk group. Missing school is still better than growing up without a mother.

We'll get more info tomorrow, hopefully also about the home learning plans.


I also talked to my dad today who lives in the Netherlands. It's baffling how different the advice is there. In the Netherlands they say kids under 12 can't spread covid so all back to class without measures in two weeks. Up to 18 has less risk so they can be in near full classes as well as long as they stay away from the teacher.... Here they say, above 10, same risk as adults to spread the virus. Under 10 still a risk but half of that between adults. Kids need to wear face masks to school but not during lunch hour, thus pointless. No measures to keep the air filtered etc.

This is back to school in Thailand


I'm getting tired of the arguments here that cases are mild in children, so better to send them back to school, completely ignoring the risk of passing it on to the parent and grand parents. School starts beginning of September here, right in time for the second wave to start building :/



VAMatt on 29 July 2020
Ka-pi96 said:
VAMatt said:
Education is critically important, so we should get government totally out of it. Then, individual schools, students, and parents can make the decisions that are right for them.

With that said, and since we do have government involved, I think schools should be open and parents and students should decide if they want to go the normal way, or a hybrid system.

Could not disagree more. Because it's so important the government definitely should be involved! We don't want kids to be brainwashed.

Sure the government can't be fully trusted in that regard either, but they're a lot more trustworthy than most parents and *shudders* religious schools.

Governments are essentially the same as religious schools in terms of brainwashing.  Parents... Harder to say.  But, governments (essentially all that have ever existed) use continuous streams of propaganda to make people believe whatever they want them to believe.  That's who you want teaching kids?



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gergroy on 06 August 2020

So... my district changed to a 4 day a week schedule with Friday’s being virtual... not sure how having Friday off will help stop the spread...🤷‍♂️ Utah also updated their guidelines so that any student or teacher that has been in contact with somebody that tests positive will have to quarantine for two weeks... so one positive student could force 8 teachers and hundreds of students to quarantine... and probably their families as well... there is no way that this is going to be sustainable...