deadbq03 said:
htxag09 said:
Kind of amazing how stringent and non innovative schools are being when it comes to going back to in person.
Obvious solution, there are millions of unemployed Americans right now. Have a program to let them substitute if it really becomes that big of an issue. Will it be perfect? Absolutely not. Will it take adaptation and maybe they are just babysitting while a teacher does the lesson? Maybe. But it'll be a lot better than 100% virtual.
I'd 100% substitute teach right now.
I said it on a different thread and I bears repeating here: we could come up with lots of creative solutions if politicians were willing to cough up more money to address it.
The biggest sympathy I have with teachers isn't their health, it's the fact that no matter what their school district chooses to do, their job gets much harder. Any "dual" or hybrid solution would be extremely challenging without adding extra faculty to help.
Personally, I think kids ought to go back, but things should've been planned and budgeted for at the state and maybe even national level to help schools do that. But hindsight is 20-20. Back in May it looked like we had this thing beat and it'd be a moot point in Aug.
This is a good point. As a teacher my hands are tied based on what the TEA, county, and my district decide to do with little input from us. I am fine teaching in-person or online (I can't speak for the experience for elementary students but my high school students found my online instruction very effective) but asking us to do both is basically doubling the amount of work and planning that we normally have to do. I wish that we had received better guidance and leadership at all levels over the past few months, but it is a moot point now with school starting back in a few weeks.
One last thing. I am a high school teacher so I only have that perspective to rely on. But just for the record, I will also say this: Even though we are required to start the school year virtually this year (for at least the first 3 weeks unless Dallas county extends it), a lot of teachers I know are busting their butts to learn new tools, technologies, and strategies to effectively teach our students virtually. For most of us we had to hit the ground running in the spring and not ever teacher rose to the challenge. I hope that with time over the summer for reflection and training, things will be different in the fall. I taught summer school completely virtually and I would say that what I did worked very well (covered about 90% of the normal curriculum with several parents emailing me to compliment my teaching style and effectiveness).
While it isn't as good as in-person instruction, it is tremendously underselling a lot of hard-working professionals when people imply that virtual learning is completely trash,100% ineffective, and that unskilled, untrained subs just baby-sitting kids in person would be more effective than those kids learning in a virtual setting.Those of us who are being forced to teach in such a setting are working very hard to make sure that our students don't fall behind in their learning.
