Sounds like you and your district are doing excellent work there Fiver!HI54UNI wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 4:38 pmGenerally speaking I would agree. We shut down a year ago and didn't finish out spring of last year. We did some online stuff but weren't really prepared for it. We have been back in school full time, in person since August 14. I know people don't like standardized testing but we do a fair amount of it because while not perfect it can help us spot trends. Usually over the summer kids lose a little as you would expect. This year they lost a lot.UNI88 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 21, 2021 9:56 am
I would guess that on average, students have gotten half of what they would have from in-person learning over the last year - that's a lost semester of academic learning. Fiver, would you agree? You can sit in your bubble and think kids are fine because they can go to school remotely but the learning isn't the same and the loss of social interaction is taking a toll on their mental health.
When we started back we also offered an online only option for kids as well. About 8% of our students chose that option. Totally parental choice, no proof of need, medical reasoning, etc. At the start of the 2nd semester in January the school board voted to end that. Now you have to have something in writing from a doctor to do online. We did that because 75% of the kids choosing the online option were failing one or more classes. If there is no parental supervision about what kids are doing it is a recipe for disaster.
My son had to quarantine for 2 weeks and he absolutely hated it. And he doesn't like school but online was even worse. We've had no spread in school. Every case has been contact traced to family or someone outside of school. That goes for both teachers and students. We've also added extra counseling services this year because of the increased stress kids are under.
As mentioned before, my youngest who was a solid D student is now mostly A’s and a few B’s. So it’s not all gloom and and doom for everyone. Then again he was probably a candidate for alt learning all along. Had the brains, but school has frustrated him both academically and socially since middle school.
I empathize with parents of younger kids and those where both patents work.
There were no great choices in dealing with this part of the pandemic but I’m guessing decades from now were not going to bemoan the lack of education for this generation who missed a year of in-class learning. They’ll somehow recover and go on to lead productive lives. Who knows, maybe there are some hidden benefits to surviving a pandemic that will provide a net improvement over the issues we had as a culture, pre-pandemic.