3/31
The sun was back for Tuesday though it came with some overnight white stuff. That’s such good news. We all need light and vitamin d and the reminder that the world still turns as it always has. Carrie’s morning announcement included a live shot of the Mahoney fields free of snow and wet and Canada geese. It was a beckoning images, for me 25 miles away and from a different era almost. The song that has been winding through my mind for several days is Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi: “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.” Never been truer than now.
For teachers and administrators in all schools, the big idea is wrestling with setting reasonable expectations for learning in this rather unreasonable environment. We will soon begin using Jumprope again to track student progress toward some sort of proficiency. The big question is what’s a reasonable measure of proficiency under these circumstances. It is not the same as it was. We can do little to mitigate against stress, family disruption, poor Internet connectivity, and crippling malaise. Phone calls and emails home are happening on a daily basis, yet a percentage of our community still isn’t in the game. At the same time the other end of this colorless spectrum has kids and parents who are asking for more to do to keep going. At the least we need to track “attendance” as mandated by the State. That is the least, though, and not what we want for our community. The new Distance Learning Guidelines spell out our upcoming process. That is still under consideration.
I got one of the best written emails of the year late in the day. A 7th grader asked how he and his 2 friends could video chat together since Meet won’t allow students to open meetings and they can’t download any other apps like Zoom. He even promised to not “Zoom bomb” if I set them up with something. His sincerity was palpable. It reminded me that most kids are trying their best all the time, even when their best isn’t very much. Those kids don’t have other devices to Snapchat on, apparently, and he clearly saw this need as something our school could help them out with. I wish I had a better answer than further research is needed....And I hate to come to that frequently visited point of saying “that’s all we can do.” We are in the business of building the future and throwing up our hands isn’t the way it’s done.
Don’t it always seem to go....
16 days down.
spk
><>
The sun was back for Tuesday though it came with some overnight white stuff. That’s such good news. We all need light and vitamin d and the reminder that the world still turns as it always has. Carrie’s morning announcement included a live shot of the Mahoney fields free of snow and wet and Canada geese. It was a beckoning images, for me 25 miles away and from a different era almost. The song that has been winding through my mind for several days is Joni Mitchell’s Big Yellow Taxi: “you don’t know what you’ve got til it’s gone.” Never been truer than now.
For teachers and administrators in all schools, the big idea is wrestling with setting reasonable expectations for learning in this rather unreasonable environment. We will soon begin using Jumprope again to track student progress toward some sort of proficiency. The big question is what’s a reasonable measure of proficiency under these circumstances. It is not the same as it was. We can do little to mitigate against stress, family disruption, poor Internet connectivity, and crippling malaise. Phone calls and emails home are happening on a daily basis, yet a percentage of our community still isn’t in the game. At the same time the other end of this colorless spectrum has kids and parents who are asking for more to do to keep going. At the least we need to track “attendance” as mandated by the State. That is the least, though, and not what we want for our community. The new Distance Learning Guidelines spell out our upcoming process. That is still under consideration.
I got one of the best written emails of the year late in the day. A 7th grader asked how he and his 2 friends could video chat together since Meet won’t allow students to open meetings and they can’t download any other apps like Zoom. He even promised to not “Zoom bomb” if I set them up with something. His sincerity was palpable. It reminded me that most kids are trying their best all the time, even when their best isn’t very much. Those kids don’t have other devices to Snapchat on, apparently, and he clearly saw this need as something our school could help them out with. I wish I had a better answer than further research is needed....And I hate to come to that frequently visited point of saying “that’s all we can do.” We are in the business of building the future and throwing up our hands isn’t the way it’s done.
Don’t it always seem to go....
16 days down.
spk
><>
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