How will schools be able to go back in September? (Continued)

irishblessing

is_that_so wrote: »

It's not negative, it's very pragmatic and involves being aware of current limitations. What you have here is just a concept, with no parameters, costs nor even a timeframe, although immediately seems to be at the heart of it. In terms of projects this is barely more than a starting point. Break it down and and flesh it out in detail and you'll see just how big that undertaking is.

Yeah, it IS what I have here because "I" am not in government and there is no where I can take this further. Of course it's only a concept. But you know what, it's not merely a concept in other countries where it is full fledged working. Some schools did it here even back in March. Our Uni's and other institutes are fully remote here, too. We have a start with the homeschool hub as well. We just need to take it further. It's big, it's not impossible.

SusanC10

All Homework so far for our 5th Class child has been online. Google Classroom. Powerpoint. Spellings and Maths online.
To get all the kids used to it and to practice.

Lillyfae

SusanC10 wrote: »

All Homework so far for our 5th Class child has been online. Google Classroom. Powerpoint.
To get all the kids used to it and to practice.

That's a great idea, pity they couldn't have had the choir practice online too though :pac:

SusanC10

Lillyfae wrote: »

That's a great idea, pity they couldn't have had the choir practice online too though :pac:

Indeed! At least that was a one-off in the end.

Mrsmum

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

Student engagement one of the biggest issues but the spin the last few months is to blame teachers, as usual

^^^ One of the main reasons I would hate a return to remote learning. Small children you can control but teenagers are the worst. You will have the diligent ones but for many many many crackpot teenagers the further they are physically removed from the school building and their teachers, the more meaningless Shakespeare or the Modh Coinniollach etc becomes. No interest and have to be hounded all the way by parents they can run rings around. There are plenty parents for whom schooling isn't given any priority but I know homes also with very engaged parents for whom the home became a warzone trying to get demotivated and disinterested teenagers to engage remotely. Some children benefit just from seeing their peers learning in school. Without that they couldn't care less and you can lead a horse to water all day long but you can't make him drink if he doesn't want to.

Deeec

Why did remote learning not work?


It didnt work because it was made too complicated for both teachers and households. It was expected that kids would work independently which doesnt work at primary level - my kids needed my help with all their work. Some video tutorials from teachers would have helped us hugely. I think all issues can be dealt with. The plan needs to be kept simple. My kids are only primary level so I cant speak for Secondary schools. Some thoughts I would have:

-
- Max 3 hrs work per day - Households cant manage a full school days work - it is too long when parents are also expected to work from home
- Stick with core subjects only - my kids were expected to do religion homework which was unneccessary.
- Tutorials dont have to be live - they can be prerecorded by teachers and viewed by kids when convenient. This would help working parents and teachers who have children of their own. A few tutorials a week would help greatly.
- A certain amount of work should be sent back to teachers for correction and feedback communicated to parents
- Teachers to be contactable by phone/email for a certain number of hours per week
- Schools should be open for a certain amount of hours per week for children who dont have access to technology/ broadband to collect work or view tutorials. Timeslots for these children must be prebooked and children must be accompanied by a parent for the duration.
- Parents, kids and teachers need to be made aware of what is expected of them.

jimmytwotimes 2013

Switching topic from online. How are schools approaching ventilation now with the weather turning? Rooms need to be ventilated but how are schools tackling this while being mindful of the cold too?

SusanC10

Our 2nd Year son came home yesterday and told me that he will be wearing under armour under his uniform and his coat and hat in the classroom once it gets colder as they were told that the Classrooms will be cold in the winter due to all the windows and doors being open.

Mrsmum

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

Switching topic from online. How are schools approaching ventilation now with the weather turning? Rooms need to be ventilated but how are schools tackling this while being mindful of the cold too?

My children have been told to bring coats and wear them all day long.

Deeec

Mrsmum wrote: »

My children have been told to bring coats and wear them all day long.

Its not going to be easy but needs must. Children usually dont feel the cold as much as adults. I feel sorry for the teachers more than the kids - it is not going to be easy teaching in a cold classroom.

wirelessdude01

jimmytwotimes 2013 wrote: »

Switching topic from online. How are schools approaching ventilation now with the weather turning? Rooms need to be ventilated but how are schools tackling this while being mindful of the cold too?

Parents in our school have been told to make sure that their children are sent to school with appropriate layers of clothing.

Wanderer78

an interesting tweet

https://twitter.com/jayvanbavel/status/1308941880521097220

s1ippy

Deeec wrote: »

Its not going to be easy but needs must. Children usually dont feel the cold as much as adults. I feel sorry for the teachers more than the kids - it is not going to be easy teaching in a cold classroom.

Unless things have changed drastically in a manner of months since I left the profession, teachers are well used to teaching in freezing cold classrooms. I would regularly log temperatures of 12/13° last Christmas. They couldn't afford heating oil. I suspect this year the temperature will be whatever it is outside, 0 or whatever. Seems safe to me during a respiratory pandemic.

Has there been any update on the flu vaccine for children? I know there have been delays with the injection.

wirelessdude01

[Deleted User] wrote: »

Has there been any update on the flu vaccine for children? I know there have been delays with the injection.

Think I heard mid to end October for the child version.

JimmyVik

Deeec wrote: »

Why did remote learning not work?


It didnt work because it was made too complicated for both teachers and households. It was expected that kids would work independently which doesnt work at primary level - my kids needed my help with all their work. Some video tutorials from teachers would have helped us hugely. I think all issues can be dealt with. The plan needs to be kept simple. My kids are only primary level so I cant speak for Secondary schools. Some thoughts I would have:

-
- Max 3 hrs work per day - Households cant manage a full school days work - it is too long when parents are also expected to work from home
- Stick with core subjects only - my kids were expected to do religion homework which was unneccessary.
- Tutorials dont have to be live - they can be prerecorded by teachers and viewed by kids when convenient. This would help working parents and teachers who have children of their own. A few tutorials a week would help greatly.
- A certain amount of work should be sent back to teachers for correction and feedback communicated to parents
- Teachers to be contactable by phone/email for a certain number of hours per week
- Schools should be open for a certain amount of hours per week for children who dont have access to technology/ broadband to collect work or view tutorials. Timeslots for these children must be prebooked and children must be accompanied by a parent for the duration.
- Parents, kids and teachers need to be made aware of what is expected of them.

We found that we needed to take turns and really get involved with the kids education during lockdown. It was very hard at the start but we eventually got the hang of it.

Their teacher was great but it is very hard to sit with the kids on the internet. I have the same problem with needing to sit with people at work for information exchange. Its much easier face to face.

So when we sat down we were able to explain it again as needed.
The teacher was great because one of us would go on with the child in the morning and the teacher would help us through what we as parents needed to do. And they were open to questions from us whenever we wanted.
In the parents whatsapp group most of the other kids parents were unwilling to engage fully after a few weeks and the messages about the school and teacher letting them down and not doing it right were flying.
Personally we found the teacher great. As did a few other parents in the group. But the usual complainers went into overdrive on whatsapp and disengaged. As long as they had someone else to blame it on then they were happy to just give up.

What I think really happened was the parents couldnt handle it and started projecting. They had to blame someone for their own lack of effort.
It was hard for everyone. Still is. But we as parents need to get involved more than ever with our childrens learning at the moment.

HerrKuehn

JimmyVik wrote: »

We found that we needed to take turns and really get involved with the kids education during lockdown. It was very hard at the start but we eventually got the hang of it.

Their teacher was great but it is very hard to sit with the kids on the internet. I have the same problem with needing to sit with people at work for information exchange. Its much easier face to face.

So when we sat down we were able to explain it again as needed.
The teacher was great because one of us would go on with the child in the morning and the teacher would help us through what we as parents needed to do. And they were open to questions from us whenever we wanted.
In the parents whatsapp group most of the other kids parents were unwilling to engage fully after a few weeks and the messages about the school and teacher letting them down and not doing it right were flying.
Personally we found the teacher great. As did a few other parents in the group. But the usual complainers went into overdrive on whatsapp and disengaged. As long as they had someone else to blame it on then they were happy to just give up.

What I think really happened was the parents couldnt handle it and started projecting. They had to blame someone for their own lack of effort.
It was hard for everyone. Still is. But we as parents need to get involved more than ever with our childrens learning at the moment.

Was the teacher providing zoom lessons? It seems like a lot of the teachers on here were quite against that.

Deeec

Jimmyvik it sounds like you had a good system going and you received alot of support from your childrens teachers. In our case my husband was out of the house at work and working longer hours than normal. I was working in my finance job at home while homeschooling my 2 school going children and also looking after my toddler. I was still expected to work 6 hours per day in my job. I also put huge importance on my childrens education and ensured that their work was done every day. It was huge pressure to juggle all this. The only contact we had from our childrens teachers was 1 email per week detailing what we needed to get done. We couldnt even send back completed work to teachers - we were told not to. More interaction from the teachers would have been greatly appreciated in our house. This was the approach taken by the school principle - I know it wasnt the teachers fault. Im sure you appreciate that every household has a different set of circumstances. I can ensure you there was no lack of effort on my part! I can appreciate that some parents opted out and didnt try.

JimmyVik

HerrKuehn wrote: »

Was the teacher providing zoom lessons? It seems like a lot of the teachers on here were quite against that.

They were. There would be 10 kids on at a time on zoom for an hour in the morning. Parents could go on and ask questions with them if they wanted.

Then in the afternoon anyone could just call the teacher to ask questions and get help. Including the parents
Though only us and one other set of parents used to do that.
The rest just moaned on whatsapp that they shouldnt need to teach their children, that that was the teachers job. I think they were just stressed tbh, as were we.

JDD

I think all the different experiences above, including the ones where remote learning worked well even if it needed lots of parental input, shows that there needs to be a DES approved common system of remote learning for primary schools.

There will not be one system that suits everyone though. I think we have to accept that.

And for primary schools, there will not be a system that does not require at least two hours of uninterrupted parental input every day. No matter if it's seesaw or google classroom or teacher zoom calls or whatever they implement. That probably means, if you have two kids in primary school, that you will need permission from your boss or firm to be unavailable for four hours every weekday. Perhaps less if there's two parents at home. This will be viable for some people, not for others. In fact, probably not for a significant minority of children, and this is where those children will be at a disadvantage. But we will have to accept that, because we know that remote learning is vastly vastly inferior to in class learning and lots of children will be left behind.

Some might think that the principals who only sent out one email a week and didn't want work to be corrected, were doing it because they were giving their teachers a paid holiday. I don't think that was the case. I think they did that so that families could balance their work, and stress, with homeschooling. The benefit of sending out the full week's list on a Sunday night or Monday morning was to allow parents fit that work around their own work schedules, rather than send it out piecemeal every day and then feeling like you were letting your kids get behind if one or two day's work wasn't completed. And probably the same for asking that work not be sent back in for correction. If you didn't get the work done with your kid, well, no one was going to be chasing you, no one was going to know, and that reduced stress on one thing.

Of course, kids don't learn much at all on this method of one-email-a-week, but I guess in Mar/Apr many principals thought this was a temporary situation, and once it became clear the schools would not go back (that wasn't until May) it probably seemed too late to change tack, just for a month's worth of work.

Jinglejangle69

So the high numbers in donegal traced back to communion and confirmation gatherings.

Interesting.

wirelessdude01

Jinglejangle69 wrote: »

So the high numbers in donegal traced back to communion and confirmation gatherings.

Interesting.

Birthday, communion and confirmation parties. Also a wake and a house of construction workers.

From what I heard patient zero for all this was someone who worked in Dublin and came home for the weekend and attended a gathering in a house and it spread from there.

HerrKuehn

JimmyVik wrote: »

They were. There would be 10 kids on at a time on zoom for an hour in the morning. Parents could go on and ask questions with them if they wanted.

Then in the afternoon anyone could just call the teacher to ask questions and get help. Including the parents
Though only us and one other set of parents used to do that.
The rest just moaned on whatsapp that they shouldnt need to teach their children, that that was the teachers job. I think they were just stressed tbh, as were we.

It would be interesting to have a poll on the teaching forum to see how many would be willing to provide that kind of remote learning. As I have mentioned a few times, we had the weekly email experience and TBH, I think if that is the kind of remote learning the school has in mind, I don't think they should even bother.

JDD

Jinglejangle69 wrote: »

So the high numbers in donegal traced back to communion and confirmation gatherings.

Interesting.

Hardly surprising. A big family gathering, with lots of adults and older relatives who haven't gotten together in six months. Probably lots of hugging and sitting close together.

If you saying that is clear that children are the main reason the virus spread in Donegal, I'm not sure communion/confirmation gatherings are the one to hang your hat on. From my own experience, a communion gathering has way more adults than children. After all, all the children's friends have also made their communion that day and are having their own family parties. So apart from a few cousins that might be there, it tends to be way more adults than children.

A big gathering, an indoor restaurant or house, alcohol, family who might not have met up in a while, no wonder it spread like wildfire. I'm not saying it isn't possible the kids didn't spread it too, but it's much more likely it was the adults.

wirelessdude01

HerrKuehn wrote: »

It would be interesting to have a poll on the teaching forum to see how many would be willing to provide that kind of remote learning. As I have mentioned a few times, we had the weekly email experience and TBH, I think if that is the kind of remote learning the school has in mind, I don't think they should even bother.

I did the zoom thing and the most from a class of 24 that ever came on was 11 for the very first one. Once Leo announced they weren't going back to school engagement even from the good children/parents literally fell off a cliff.

Can't suit everyone.

Deeec

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

I did the zoom thing and the most from a class of 24 that ever came on was 11 for the very first one. Once Leo announced they weren't going back to school engagement even from the good children/parents literally fell off a cliff.

Can't suit everyone.

This is why live online contact doesnt work. Parents also have to attend online meetings for work which may have clashed with kids zoom meetings. Pre recorded would work better for everyone.

JimmyVik

Deeec wrote: »

Jimmyvik it sounds like you had a good system going and you received alot of support from your childrens teachers. In our case my husband was out of the house at work and working longer hours than normal. I was working in my finance job at home while homeschooling my 2 school going children and also looking after my toddler. I was still expected to work 6 hours per day in my job. I also put huge importance on my childrens education and ensured that their work was done every day. It was huge pressure to juggle all this. The only contact we had from our childrens teachers was 1 email per week detailing what we needed to get done. We couldnt even send back completed work to teachers - we were told not to. More interaction from the teachers would have been greatly appreciated in our house. This was the approach taken by the school principle - I know it wasnt the teachers fault. Im sure you appreciate that every household has a different set of circumstances. I can ensure you there was no lack of effort on my part! I can appreciate that some parents opted out and didnt try.

We were both working too so it was hard to find the time too. We live in different houses so took turns. I dont know what we would have done if we had a toddler . Its not easy - thats for sure.
The teacher even called us a couple of times in the evening to see how we were getting on. She must have tried some of the other parents too, because the night I got called whatsapp lit up with "The cheek of that teacher calling me at 6pm. Do they not think i have better things to be doing than taking calls from them." then replies like "Me too. I just didnt answer. Their number is xxxxxx in case you want to block it." REally crazy stuff. I put it all down to stress. Nearly flipped over tiny things myself a few times during lockdown (not school related)

Hopefully this will all be over asap.

HerrKuehn

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

I did the zoom thing and the most from a class of 24 that ever came on was 11 for the very first one. Once Leo announced they weren't going back to school engagement even from the good children/parents literally fell off a cliff.

Can't suit everyone.

No, you can't suit everyone. I personally don't think remote learning works for anyone other than motivated older kids. A lot of working parents balance their day around having the kids actually in school. This isn't my situation before someone tries to bite my head off with claims that schools aren't babysitters. The fact is that having kids in school is important for a lot of working families, so it does provide a kind of "babysitting".

wirelessdude01

Deeec wrote: »

This is why live online contact doesnt work. Parents also have to attend online meetings for work which may have clashed with kids zoom meetings. Pre recorded would work better for everyone.

Ohh I know that.

I also did prerecorded stuff only to be told by some that they wanted zoom.

As I already said you can't please everyone.

Deeec

wirelessdude01 wrote: »

Ohh I know that.

I also did prerecorded stuff only to be told by some that they wanted zoom.

As I already said you can't please everyone.

If DES implemented a standard approach you wouldnt have to deal with this messing of people wanting what suits them. Probably the ones wanting zoom didnt even bother attending when you facilitated it!

Im all for remote learning during this time but it needs to be kept as simple as possible so less people can look for reasons not to participate.