My students have very clearly figured out that having to wear a mask for eight hours while attending classes in rooms that do not contain their teachers– because we are either at home because we put in paperwork to be or because we are currently in quarantine– is not actually any better than just being at home. I never had big numbers of kids in any given class since we made the switch to hybrid– subtracting out about a third from any given group for kids that are staying at home then divide them again by their last names means that about 10 was as big as any group was going to get, and the vagaries of statistics meant that I had a couple groups as small as three or four. A few weeks later, my biggest group today was four kids, both my partner teacher and my co-teacher are out because they’re close contacts for COVID– one of them has been sick, and is being tested today– and I had two classes with zero in-person students.
Turns out I can probably stop hassling the school board to shut down the schools, because my 8th graders are making that decision all by themselves. I have 142 8th grade students. Twelve showed up to physical school today.
We are spending too much money on buses, class coverage (I keep writing “subs” and having to delete it; there are no subs. Subs make $100 a day. If a teacher has to cover a class, that’s $35 an hour, and teachers are covering every single class) and just fucking keeping the lights on and the buildings heated for an entire grade’s worth of in-person learning to be twelve kids. I bet it will be fewer tomorrow, too; one or two of this group is going to go home and tell Mom that they only had one class with more than one other person in it and that’s gonna be it for them.
But hey, it’s not like my tax dollars pay for this or anything.
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My kid sorely misses being able to hang out with her friends. But they know that I fall into the high risk category, so they make do with facetime with the friends.
But they really love being able to run out to the kitchen and bathroom whenever they want. And they’re making straight A’s, so no complaints there either.
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It looks like my district (CCSD, Las Vegas) is going to keep things remote until the Winter Break. I guess the infection rate is bad enough that they’ve decided that no one can even work on the school site (which many of my fellow teachers were doing and are now complaining about…). There was a lot of grumbling that we were going to go hybrid after Thanksgiving. I guess the climbing infection rate screwed that plan up.
I taught fully online (university level) for six years and that was our bread and butter, so we spent months and lots of money making the systems work, etc. And I can tell you that I know of no version of hybrid that really works. Given how poorly everything is funded it’s all been on the backs of teachers and a lot of parents that this has gone “well” at all. I know that online can work, but it really requires a lot of people get their acts together and focus on what can be done and what can be done better. Ugh. And I teach robots, so you know that’s a challenge when no one has any robot kits at home to work from and some kids are trying to get by using someone’s smart phone to check in. This pandemic is a wake-up call… y’all that say Education is so important. How important is it, really? Is it only for those who can afford to have the cool equipment at home and stay-at-home moms/dads or do we really believe that everyone should get quality education?
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