Governor Laura Kelly of Kansas announced that all schools are closed for the rest of the school year.
Governor closes Kansas schools, puts most state employees on administrative leave
Be prepared to hear about more states doing the same.
No one knows how long the global pandemic will continue, but there’s no end in sight.
I heard from a friend of mine today who is still teaching English in Southern California school district. He’s about twenty years younger than me. He said that starting this week, the teachers in his district are working from home, and they already had workshops on how to do it.
I didn’t think to ask him until now if his district had already provided laptops for all of the students or just the students that did not have them, so they could access the internet from home to get their assignments, ask questions, et al.
The public school district for my community in the SF Bay Area (where I retired) sent out an e-mail last week that described they were doing the same thing my friend said. A lot of public schools already offer classes online and partner with local community colleges, too, so the infrastructure already exists.
Public school districts were doing this in a limited way back in the 1990s, when I was still teaching in Southern California. I retired in 2005.
A woman I know who teaches 6th grade in Indiana said that many of her students just do not do the homework from on line. Evidently they need a teacher to motivate them. “Ain’t” progress wonderful. Students should just be another machine.