JaxBill
Footballguy
Flip side of the online education rants-
My wife is a 5th grade teacher at a small Catholic school. Two homerooms per grade. She teaches science and language arts to both homerooms. Before this crisis, the class had vastly underperformed. Several kids barely were promoted from 4th grade. Quite a few ESL kids.
The school has seen declining enrollment since previous principal was in over his head and previous pastor ran parish into ground since he really just wanted to retire. Early in the pandemic, the diocese announced that her 42k salary (and teacher salaries acrosd the board) would be frozen and not see her next step raise - similar to 2008 when they did the same and never made up for it.
Unlike the public schools who lengthened spring break to come up with plan, the diocese basically said figure it out over a weekend. After several failed plans, they finally arrived at a schedule where the other teacher would do a zoom class at 10 am and my wife would do one at 1 pm. Class is recorded and posted online (schoology).
Sounds simple right? Well my wife has been busting her ### with 12 to 14 hour days. Every kid that has a work sheet assigned, the kid has to scan and upload while she downloads the image, marks it by hand, notes what questions they missed, records the grade. Everything is manual using hard copy books/workbooks retrieved from school. The previous administration did not take my wife's advice a couple years ago to go with a certain book company across grades since they would then throw in online access for free.
She has to provide lesson plans and assignments 7 to 10 days out. Everything is posted there. Yet several kids refuse to do the work. You think she enjoys having to track down 2 week old missing English homework? She is forced to because the administration wants to give them every to avoid failing. You think she enjoys having a student turn in an overdue assignment at 10 pm then getting pinged by the mother at 7am wondering why the student's grade wasn't updated yet?
Like everything else with this crisis, your experience is very local.
My wife is a 5th grade teacher at a small Catholic school. Two homerooms per grade. She teaches science and language arts to both homerooms. Before this crisis, the class had vastly underperformed. Several kids barely were promoted from 4th grade. Quite a few ESL kids.
The school has seen declining enrollment since previous principal was in over his head and previous pastor ran parish into ground since he really just wanted to retire. Early in the pandemic, the diocese announced that her 42k salary (and teacher salaries acrosd the board) would be frozen and not see her next step raise - similar to 2008 when they did the same and never made up for it.
Unlike the public schools who lengthened spring break to come up with plan, the diocese basically said figure it out over a weekend. After several failed plans, they finally arrived at a schedule where the other teacher would do a zoom class at 10 am and my wife would do one at 1 pm. Class is recorded and posted online (schoology).
Sounds simple right? Well my wife has been busting her ### with 12 to 14 hour days. Every kid that has a work sheet assigned, the kid has to scan and upload while she downloads the image, marks it by hand, notes what questions they missed, records the grade. Everything is manual using hard copy books/workbooks retrieved from school. The previous administration did not take my wife's advice a couple years ago to go with a certain book company across grades since they would then throw in online access for free.
She has to provide lesson plans and assignments 7 to 10 days out. Everything is posted there. Yet several kids refuse to do the work. You think she enjoys having to track down 2 week old missing English homework? She is forced to because the administration wants to give them every to avoid failing. You think she enjoys having a student turn in an overdue assignment at 10 pm then getting pinged by the mother at 7am wondering why the student's grade wasn't updated yet?
Like everything else with this crisis, your experience is very local.