The Syracuse, New York, journal has sound advice for Andrew Cuomo: Remote Learning is a stopgap. Parents and students want real teachers and real schools. Stop musing about “reimagining” education. Your musings are unsound. Listen to parents and teachers. Let the Board of Regents and the New York State Education Fepartnent do their job.
The editorial begins:
Parents, teachers and students had barely come to terms with the cancellation of the rest of the school year when Gov. Andrew Cuomo dropped another bomb: Maybe, he mused, going to school in person is simply obsolete in the age of coronavirus.
The reaction from educators and parents was swift and fierce. Aides later walked back the governor’s ambiguous and tone-deaf inference that remote instruction could replace the face-to-face kind, saying it would be a supplement.
It can’t be a replacement. You know this if you are a parent with children learning at home for the past seven weeks, or a teacher trying to instruct those students. We see firsthand much is lost in translation from classroom to computer screen. It may be necessary to use remote learning as a bridge to returning to school full time, or when virus flareups close schools temporarily, but it cannot be permanent.
Kids need to go to school. And they need to go to school this fall, in whatever form the virus permits.
Despite good intentions, we can see that homeschooling is not going well for many students — most of all the ones lacking the technology to keep up, or having to share it among siblings. Special needs students are adrift. We also can feel how much being separated from their peers and mentors in a school community is damaging kids’ social and emotional well-being. They are increasingly sad, unmotivated and glued to one screen or another. Without support from teachers and counselors, stressed-out parents are struggling to keep it together.
The governor also knows that reopening schools and childcare settings are key to getting adults back to work. And yet schools are in the last phase of Cuomo’s four-phase plan to reopen the economy, alongside arts, entertainment and recreation. This is a major disconnect. Concerts and baseball games are not essential (as much as they make life more enjoyable). Education is essential.
We’re with Cuomo’s impulse to take the lessons from the coronavirus to “build back better.” What have we learned about schools? Inequities are magnified. Homes are not always ideal learning environments. Access to computers and high-speed internet varies from neighborhood to neighborhood, district to district and region to region. These are some of the issues New York needs to solve first, before it can lean on remote learning for anything beyond an emergency.
As for Gates and Schmidt, the editorial says, “Proceed with caution.”
When your only tol is a hammer, every problem looks,Ike a nail. When you ask two tech magnates to reinvent education, they have only one strategy: more tech. And the past two months have proved that more tech is not what’s needed.
What’s needed is smaller classes and the resources to meet the needs of children. Perhaps Gates and Schmidt could spare a few billions to solve real problems.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
I have been looking at posts by visual arts teachers at a forum offered by the National Art Education Association. Teachers are trying to figure out new problems. With the prospect of schools reopening, some of the most acute problems are center on disruptions in the usual practice of with “sharing” supplies and tools–crayons, colored pencils, paste and glue in containers, scissors, and more. The demand for hand washing and not touching things used by others, wearing throw-away gloves, cleaning desks, and more are a huge problems. These are made worse by scheduling shifts with priority given to extended classes in math and ELA, and expectations that “specials teachers” (e.g., art, music) should monitor halls between classes–time that otherwise might be used for class preparation.
At home and on-line learning is proving to be an exercise that magnifies the inequities in our society and in our schools. Among the many teachers who have posted about the minutia of teaching, in school and on-line, the following is one of the most eloquent and well informed. It comes from a visual arts teacher in Oregon and can be read here. https://www.nakedcapitalism.com/2020/05/public-schools-collapsing-into-a-zoom-heal.html
I enjoyed reading your link Laura!
My organization of children’s nonfiction authors, Authors on Call/ iNK think Tank, have been pioneering distance learning with classrooms of kids for ten years through the Center for Interactive Learning and Collaboration (www.cilc.org). As authors (and some of us are teachers), our programs are often in lieu of the author in-person visit, at a much lower price. Our 45min-1 hour programs work best under the following conditions, which are not possible for the classroom teacher on a daily basis.
1. They are polished, practiced performances with visuals.
2. The smaller the group of viewers, They are more interactive,. When it is only one class, we can see our audience and ask questions.
3. They are less effective with live-streaming, which can reach countless endpoints. The presenter cannot see the participants but can ask questions which students respond to in a chat. Since kids prefer fast-paced programs, the presenter has to ask engaging questions that require a one-word answer otherwise we lose engagement.
4. It works best after the kids have read an author’s book. But most of the time that has not happened.
“Remote learning: stopgap not solution”
Once the foot
Is in the door
Point is moot
Forever more
Short poem, but it describes anything related to so-called reform. All of it is a slippery slope leading to privatization. The wealthy keep pushing for more, and they are never content. Their objective is the massive transfer of wealthy from working people to the already wealthy, and, of course, the demise of public education.
Never v Forever
Forever more?
Or Never more?
Mind the store
And stop the Core
Here’s the long version
https://dianeravitch.net/2017/10/31/somedam-poet-edgar-allan-poe-the-raven-betsy-devos-and-common-core/
that part of the wealth disease which is killing an entire planet: they are never content
“The Wealthy want it all”
The wealthy want it all
A third or half won’t do
The wealthy want the Fall
And other seasons too
The wealthy want the land
And want the seven seas
They even do demand
The flowers, birds and bees
The wealthy will not rest
Until the earth is theirs
And manage to bequest
The remnants to their heirs
(Sorry, for some reason I got cut off.)
It works best for very small groups as tutorials. Especially if the pprograms are shorter and given over a period of time with assignments in between sessions.
It is not effective if the group is unruly. The remote presenter has very little in his/her tool box to command order and respect if unable to command engagement from the git-go.
There is a place for distance learning but it requires motivation to learn from an audience. Motivation has always been
Motivation has always been the key to learning and Carnegie’s libraries were his attempt to make learning from books public. Abraham Lincoln read the law on his own before taking the test to pass the bar. How many can still do that? How many are autodidacts who can teach themselves whatever they need to know? Are we breeding autodidacts in our schools?
Three-year-olds are built to learn. It is a struggle. There is frustration. But they persevere. How many 12th graders are still willing to engage in that struggle? Only those who have experienced the joy of learning.
This article is available to anyone. I am not a subscriber to the Chicago Tribune.
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Teachers in face masks? Staggered attendance? Lunch in classrooms? How and when Chicago-area schools will reopen remains elusive, despite ‘Restore Illinois’ phase-in plan.
MAY 11, 2020
When classrooms went virtual more than six months into the school year, Daniel Michmerhuizen leaned on the relationships he’d built with his students at Chicago’s Benito Juarez Community Academy.
If remote learning continues in the fall, the freshman civics teacher knows that, without the opportunity to get to know his students in person, he’ll have to find new ways to get them engaged.
“They come from a variety of elementary schools to high school. How do I bring them together and build those relationships in a remote, digital environment?” he said.
Just what school will look like come fall remains an open question, even with Illinois’ new plan to reopen the state in phases.
“We may see the start of school in a remote fashion. We may see a combination where some children are allowed to come to school on certain days, or we take the upper grades and we are able to spread them out in a school building with social distancing norms, or we may be able to come back full force,” state Superintendent of Education Carmen Ayala said last week in a Facebook Live conversation with state Rep. Emanuel “Chris” Welch. “We just don’t know, but we have to be ready.”
School officials in Chicago and the suburbs are worried about the uncertainty of how Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s plan for reopening the state amid the coronavirus pandemic might affect millions of children in Illinois when school resumes in some form in the fall…
https://www.chicagotribune.com/coronavirus/ct-coronavirus-illinois-schools-phase-in-reopen-20200511-27jyc3gcgbgnnbdp6pgtg4ku7y-story.html
Viral Explosion
When classes went virtual
The techies went viral
And touted their race
All over the place
The virus is deadly
And so is the medley
That uses the mace
Of tech in our face
The Great Divide
We see there is a Great Divide
That separates us all
And shiny tech will not elide
Division by the Wall
Teaching Across an Abyss of Silence (by Belle Cheaper)
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176699/tomgram%3A_belle_chesler%2C_teaching_across_an_abyss_of_silence/#more
Self correct changed Chesler to Cheaper
The nitwit programmer strikes again.
“The wealthy keep pushing for more, and they are never content.”
What if, the ” insatiable appetite” was the “flag” of a broken spirt?
What if, the actions of the broken, are attempts to fill a hole, in the middle of their soul?
Does the damnation of the broken, make them whole?
Would another “essay” about “them”, mend their broken heart/spirit/soul?
Is “scolding” them, the path for their “redemption”?
Google’s answer to all that anticipated pushback? A fuzzy, feel-good ad thanking the teachers/parents for all they do….a distraction from their actual tech-takeover goal…instead of a chicken in every pot, it’s now a Chromebook for every kid…https://www.google.com/search?q=google+ad+thanking+teachers&rlz=1C1CHBF_enUS857US857&oq=google+ad+thanking+teachers&aqs=chrome..69i57j69i64l2.6261j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
“Access to computers and high-speed internet varies from neighborhood to neighborhood, district to district and region to region.”
Why don’t they just do that? Accomplish that. Focus on it and finish it.
Too boring? Not profitable enough?
It would probably be very encouraging for Americans if we could see “our leaders” actually complete a task in response to a specific problem.
It must be difficult to do because they all have been yammering about it for a decade but they haven’t done it, so it’s not like it’s not ambitious enough. Don’t “reinvent” anything. Just provide a universal internet utility. Surely all these geniuses can manage that. They would have huge public support and it’s an actual accomplishment.
I think ed reformers and Gates don’t focus on concrete and tangible “improvements” (like internet access) because they think they’re too smart and valuable to do the sort of “good government” work that gets your hands dirty.
So we get “reinventing” and “reimagining” while 40% of kids don’t have the basic infrastructure they need to function. Other countries have done this. We’re incapable of it in the United States? That’s just way too hard for us? Instead we’ll sell schools 10 billion dollars worth of ed tech junk that poor kids can’t access anyway?
They think kids will need remediation for missing 3 months of school, right?
That would be a good project for Bill Gates. A national summer mediation project.
He’ll have to forgo taking over public schools and “reinventing” them – he won’t have time, he’ll be so busy providing practical and useful assistance, but what a great contribution that would be and it has a start and a finish. It’s a HUGE job. Show us they can start and finish that one and then they can move on to world domination 🙂
Luckily, we already have public school systems in place so really the expensive work is already done.
NO! NO remediation! I’m sick of that term. It just means that the Powers That Be want the kids to take a bunch of time consuming and money wasting tests once the kids come back to school.
We have never had LESS reason to do standardized testing than we do next year. And yet my district is floating doing a bunch of standardized tests to, “see where kids need to be remediated when they come back to school.”
There are TWO vital factors that provide overwhelming evidence that brick-and-mortar classroom instruction with a highly education, professional flesh-and-blood teacher, and flesh-and-blood student peers in the same room and that is SQ and non-verbal communication. These two can only be learned in a physical environment off-line.
While IQ is questionable and is not an indicator of future success, SQ is, and SQ only develops in a face-to-face, social, physical environment where children and adolescents interact in real-time instead of isolated on-line in a virtual environment that offers far too many distractions.
“Social intelligence is the ability of a person to tune into other people’s emotions and read the subtle behavioral cues to choose the most effective response in a given situation. And Social Intelligence will be the future! The reason is simple. Well! Every interpersonal interaction has an emotional subtext to it. And most of that emotional undertone gets manifested less through words and more through the nonverbal behaviors like gestures, expressions, postures, vocal cues or for that matter, the way one has shaped one’s personal environment.” …
“As a result, social intelligence – the SQ – will be the keystone skill for the success and fulfillment in future.”
https://www.socialigence.net/blog/difference-between-iq-eq-and-sq-the-social-intelligence-and-why-sq-is-the-future/
In addition, “There have been a number of studies on the complex topic of nonverbal communication with varying results. However, most experts agree that 70 to 93 percent of all communication is nonverbal.”
How can anyone learn how to sense non-verbal cues if they are isolated at home sitting in front of a screen designed to distract and mislead?
“Nonverbal Communication: How Body Language & Nonverbal Cues Are Key”
https://www.lifesize.com/en/video-conferencing-blog/speaking-without-words
For sure, Trumpy Dumpty “might” have a useless high IQ, but he has a non-existent SQ.
I-QED
If Trump has high IQ
No further proof is needed
That IQ tests ain’t true
And sure should not be heeded
Yep, Trump is evidence that IQ means beware of the idiot that thinks he is so smart he knows it all.
IQ actually stands for Idiocy Quotient in some cases.
This is particularly true of the Mensanites who feel the need to brag about their IQ.
Marylyn vos Savant is a perfect example.