There has been a lot of tv about the re-opening of our schools. There seems to be three options. Do everything over the internet, do nothing over the internet or do three days not over the internet and 2 days on the internet (give or take). Anyway, they are also making sure that you will be in a class and that class will have a teacher who will handle the live as well as the all the internet stuff for each of her teachers.

I would submit that what they should do is have specific teachers for live teaching and specific teachers for online teaching. I am sure that there are teachers who will prefer one or the other, and I suspect, whichever a teacher chooses it will probably be the one she/he is most good at doing. Right now a single teacher handles both and I have seen several teachers, on tv, explain it all and its very confusing as each side (internet or live) has its problems, equipment, etc. I think that having teachers for each side, thereby giving the child, basically, 2 teachers, would probably be the best way to do this the easiest and best way. If I were a teacher I would prefer to do one or the other as trying to do both, at the same time, would be disaster and, I fear, that is probably where we are going to be headed.

Thoughts?

If you want to open schools for in-person teaching, there is a right way and MANY wrong ways to do it. The big problem is maintaining some distance between students. That's why many schools only have half their students there at any one time. First of all, the ideas that kids don't catch it, and then don't spread it are pure BS. They have few symptoms (at least to the original variant), but they catch it at the same rates as adults, and spread it just the same, but for fewer days. Still enough to give it to their entire family, easily.

Some of the new variants result in more symptoms for kids, but that may just be because they spread more. More victims = more symptoms. So it's masks, distance, hand washing, lunch delivered to their desks or outside tables, lots of ventilation, half day there & half day remote, for now. Schools with enough funding can run $5 tests on anybody with any symptom or exposure, to find the infected before they spread it a lot. Teachers should be required to be vaccinated, or just work via zoom.

One useful idea is no lunch on-site. Remote morning kids can eat before they come, and remote afternoon kids can eat when they get home. Free lunch kids can all be remote afternoons and take their provided lunch home with them.

I agree with what you are saying. I was saying that they should have a teacher for in person teaching and another for internet teaching. Up here I just found out that one school is breaking up the live and internet teaching between morning and afternoon teaching/schooling. This means that the teacher has to be setup to do both tasks on the same day! That is crazy. I watched one teacher explain how she copes (not very well). Too much stuff going on. They should break up the teaching between those who do live teaching and those who do internet teaching, I think.

Probably lots of common sense answers to this problem, but school boards are political entities directed by higher political entities and have entered the realms where simple common sense is turned topsy-turvy by political motivations and a complete lack of experience or knowledge on the parts of the directors.

I suspect the problem is not so much a lack of experience as a lack of understanding what they are dealing with. Most of those involved with schools are involved in SCHOOLS. They don't understand what they have now is a completely different problem, which has little to do with education, and a lot about surviving what is, quite possibly, the worst medical problem we have ever had and WE have done a lot to make sure it just keeps on going. This isn't really so much about education as a population at war with itself which is more important than just education.

Its almost as if a good share of our population has taken time out of reality to deal with their own bullsh*t and have failed miserably. I think we are living in very strange times and, if we survive, this time is going to get its very own reference name although I have no idea what its going to be it will exist.

JGW - I suspect that the people in education DO know they’re dealing with a completely new problem. They probably are also well aware that their expertise is not in the area of solving medical problems.

Sometimes I t educators don’t get enough credit for understanding the problems they’re facing right now and for trying to come up with solutions to incredibly complicated problems. The logistics alone are incredibly complex; add to that, the effective teaching of multiple subjects, an$ God knows parents are in much the same boat.

Two new papers came out the other day about Covid in sleep-over summer camps. The first was about some camps that went the whole none yards on masks, testing, and quarantine measures: The results were just a few positive test cases of Covid over the two months. The second paper was bout a similar time period in Florida summer camps: No safety measures at all, and as you would expect it was a disaster.

This is very similar to what we see in schools. Schools can be opened safely by following all the CDC and state guidelines. In states where the governor has declared war on public health measures and insists on firing school boards that establish mask mandates, the results are dismal. These people insist on perpetuating the myths that kids do0n't get Covid, and kids can't spread Covid. At the start if the pandemic, everybody was hiding their kids in the basement, so those were true. Now that kids are back out in public and schools, kids get sick and spread Covid to teachers, other kids, and family members. Some kids end up in hospitals, some on ventilators. and some end up dead.

**sheepishly raises hand**

Dismal, yes I know.

Educators are indeed facing an entirely new set of circumstances and problems.

Each of those requires forethought and funding. We can't even get enough bus drivers to get the kids to school here. Funding for education is and has always been laughable.

Greger, nobody in any way holds you responsible for your Governor's moronic actions. The only possible blame you might have is you failed to travel back in time and drown him in infancy, but we all share that fault with regard to Hitler.

Florida schools are 5000 teachers short of being able to give students even one teacher.

There are 4000 other school positions open as well, bus drivers, custodians, and clerical help...

American workers are currently engaged in a low-key general strike.