Monday, July 20th, 2020
Last night EM should have boarded a plane for Istanbul to arrive in Hamburg today. That has obviously not happened. I should have left in two weeks to spend a few days with mum before heading on to Berlin for a five day Aikido Seminar with 13 teachers from 12 countries. That is not happening. All summer plans have been cancelled.
During today’s staff meeting management expressed their expectation that there would be no business travel this fiscal year, so working form the US for the next twelve months, not a nice prospect. Instead we are captivated in our home in Bethesda trying to make the best of a terrible situation – like everyone else. At least we do manage to get our pool slots, even if for next Thursday I only managed to get a lane in the indoor A-pool a sad windowless affair, despite signing up at 7:02, two minutes after sign-up opened. I will see if maybe someone does not show up to claim their lane in any of the other pools; it has happened. Otherwise I guess the A-Pool is still better than no pool.
EM is now particiapting in a summer math class, working as a babysitter three days a week and has joined the community pool dive team. Summer school has proven challenging, which is disconcerting as it is the dry run for virtual schooling recommencing at the end of August. As a result I have written to the Board of Education.
Ladies and gentlemen,
I am writing today with some feedback on the summer school learning experience.
Firstly, I commend MCSPS for ensuring equitable access to education, making Chromebooks and connectivity available to those in need and supporting teachers in developing the skills needed for remote delivery. Understandably remote teaching and learning especially following the ad hoc transition has not been without hiccups. I understand from the recent Board of Education meeting that a lot of thought and work has gone into the design of the remote learning summer school program and that this is a preview of what virtual learning will be like as of the beginning of the school year. Given the this, I would like to share our experience and some arising concerns.
My daughter is taking the summer school Pre-Calculus class to be better prepared for her SL IB math course, not because she needs the credits. She set out highly motivated and with the ambition to get a head start. At the end of the first week she was in tears and desperation. On day six I wrote to the BCCListserve and the neighborhood Listserv to engage a tutor.
The entire concept appears to be self-paced learning for the kids, largely based on study packs made available at the beginning of the week with each new section opening after the previous section has been completed. These packs are complimented by videos for students can watch and which are to provide explanations of the content in the study packs. In addition, the Pre-Calc A and B teacher each hold two zoom meetings a week with what may be instructions. Then there is an optional additional check-in where students held by each teacher enabling students to ask questions. De facto the entire course is self-taught and some elements are not explained anywhere; neither in Khan Academy videos, which are very helpful, nor in other YouTube sources my daughter searched for as she was preparing for the check-in test due on Friday afternoon. She had specific questions as a result of her “self-paced learning” which were critical to get answers to for the mandatory weekly progress check, and there was no way she could get them; leading to said melt down. For example, the Apex instructor explained certain numbers and instructed to “plug them into the calculator”, sadly there was no instruction on how to do that/ what “plug into the calculator” meant.
This experience, mirrors what “teaching” had been like for the last three months of the school year and is deeply disconcerting as it is learning in a largely instruction free environment. While I fully understand that the last three months of the past school year were a scramble to adjust to a very different environment, I do not believe this is a model feasible for the coming school year, in particular for seniors and the two year IB DP students as our children will be competing for university admissions with students from all over the country and the globe whose educational instruction goes beyond self-pace learning.
Given that for seniors generally the first quarter leading up to early admissions is the most important, it is incomprehensible why, if students are brought back for any face to face teaching at all, you would bring freshmen to bond with teachers - which change every 6 months anyway - first rather than the seniors for whom this is the all decisive year in their schooling.
For IB DP students specifically, I fail to see how the current model can adequately prepare our students to rise to taking exams benchmarked at a global level in a largely instruction free environment. For HL they may at least be familiar with the general expectations, but I fail to see how new SL courses are going to be delivered to ensure students have a similar depth of learning as elsewhere in the world without parents recruiting additional tutors.
I would encourage MCPS to rethink the virtual teaching schedules to allow for livestreamed / interactive in person zoom real time instruction (for all or most subjects) following the regular school schedule of seven classes a day every day of the week. One or two days of “self-paced” might work, but five days with occasional check-ins is not working. From my own work experience, I realize that everything virtual takes longer. So, to facilitate meaningful interactions for Q&A, maybe individual class times need to be extended for as long as students cannot return to school. I understand that all of our teachers are working hard, and have families to deal with at home, nonetheless, please consider some timeframe during which they respond to student’s emails. It cannot be that teachers disappear for days and weeks.
With the virus continuing to be rampant in the US, it is a highly likely scenario that children will not be returning to school. Today the US has 3.95 million reported cases of which just over one million have recovered; compared to 8.2 million recovered of the global 13.9 million reported cases. It begs the question why the USA is performing so poorly on every count. Meanwhile the occupant of the WH continues to spout nothing by lies and rubbish.
Everyone knows testing is not enough, numbers are rising, the virus is out of control and no, young people will not just recover in a day. How else to otherwise explain medial facility shortages? Could do the world a favor und just shut up?
There is good news on a viable treatment developed in the UK, which has so far been tested on 229 people. While not a massive number results are encouraging, showing 79% of persons treated did not develop severe symptoms and were twice as likely to make a full recovery. The inhaled product is a formulation of a naturally occurring protein, known as interferon beta, that Synairgen has previously said may be deficient in those with greater susceptibility to the new coronavirus, such as the elderly or those with heart and lung complications or diabetes. While early days, this is encouraging as a viable treatment may be even more important than a vaccine. I like the fact that it is inhaled.
Also the vaccine develop by Oxford proves safe after having been tested on 1700 people. It is now rolled out to 30,000 people. The same appears to apply to one of the vaccines in development in China.
In Portland Federal assault style troops last night attacked mothers forming a cordon between police and mostly peaceful demonstrators. The administration is now planning to send more assault troops to democratic cities to act against BLM protestors.
This is not good news. It feels like the administration is waging war on the Amercian people of discenting political views.