Update from Massachusetts:

Beginning May 29th, masks will no longer be needed at recess, students can begin sharing school items in the classrooms, and no masks for outdoor activities. 

Via Twitter today:

No remote education option next year in NJ. "All students will be back in school for full-time, in-person instruction for the 2021-2022 school year. Full-time remote learning option for families will be removed."

I’m not sure that is a good idea for the next school year but, as states make their own choices, we’ll all have a front row seat to see how it works out.

One item to note - even before COVID, districts around the country were absolutely trying more online learning and some of it WAS remote. For CONTINUE READING:  Seattle Schools Community Forum: Remote Learning - What Have We Learned?

What do I know about this student? Well, I know he, she or they likes cute kittens. Or perhaps Pokemon monsters, or whatever this thing is. I know that this student is likely a fan of bubble tea, which is what appears to be in the cup. 

That's enough for any teacher to build a productive relationship, I guess. Or I'm supposed to guess. I'm told I'm not allowed to demand that students show their faces online. It's a privacy issue. 

That's hard for me to understand. I do understand I ought not to be able to see my students' homes if they choose to keep them private. However, there's an easy fix for that. On Zoom, you can be in PeeWee's Playhouse, or the Batcave, or on the moon, or anywhere. If I can set up a background, every student can set up a better one. 

In fact, I have a bunch of students who only show their foreheads. Maybe they're shy. I don't give them a hard CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: A Portrait of My Student

About a decade ago, when policy elites were bashing teachers on a regular basis, Ken Futernick was writing about the challenges that teachers face every day, including lack of support by administrators and poor working conditions. Recently, he has been creating podcasts in which teachers explain how they teach about important issues of the day, like teaching about racism and the Black Lives Matter movement, teaching during the pandemic, and teaching history in a way that is relevant to all students. He shared these three podcasts with me.

Brown University Psychology Professor Malik Boykin Teaches about Prejudice and Invites us to Dance for FreedomMalik Boykin (aka Malik Starx) is an accomplished musician and a professor of psychology at Brown University where he teaches a course on stigma and prejudice. Boykin shares two transformational teacher stories–the first from second grade when he was sent to the principal’s office for raising questions about Christopher Columbus. The second is about Dr. Jaia John, his social psychology professor at Howard University who carved out time at the start each class for students to share a poem, a personal story, or even a musical performance that had some relation to the course content. 

Inspired by Dr. John, Boykin became a social CONTINUE READING: Ken Futernick: Teacher Stories about Life Today | Diane Ravitch's blog

By April 6, 2020 my world was on its head. COVID was in NYC. I had decamped to near Lake Champlain. I was teaching, or trying to teach, via a computer. It was hard. And it was exhausting. And the news was relentless. Trump was horrible, but de Blasio and Cuomo were behaving like clowns – but clowns whose decisions affect millions of lives. It was too much. I’d lost a second cousin to the pandemic, but I didn’t know yet. And a colleague had passed in an auto accident a week earlier – maybe the trip was somehow connected. An alumni’s father died on the 4th. A peace officer at my school died on the 4th.

My school was started in 2002. I was there from the first. it is a specialized high school. But in those first years the student body was fairly integrated. A few years later we saw a shift, slow at first, and then not slow. We became one of the whitest NYC public high schools outside of Staten Island. There is a story there, a long one, about getting the faculty then our school community on board to address this, and the progress we have – and importantly – have not made. But that’s for another time.

I mention the segregation issue to mention one initiative in particular: our Local Outreach Tutoring Program (LOT). We started LOT four years ago. Me and some students did outreach to local middle CONTINUE READING: A Year Ago – remembering | JD2718

I miss being with my class. 

I see them every day, cameras, on, cameras off. A glimpse here, a glimpse there.

I saw them once, some of them, when they met me at the school to pick up their "gifts" I got from DonorsChoose. 

We saw each other in "real life!" So exciting!

I miss getting up and going out the door, fighting traffic, road raging at those who wish to make me late.

I miss rushing to get ready because I am not the teacher who is there an hour before school starts.

I miss chatting with my colleagues.

I miss high-fiving my students and teaching them that saying "Good Morning" when someone says it to you is normal.

I miss my planning time that moves at twice the speed of light.

I miss small group at the kidney table. Small group in class vs. Breakout rooms? Small CONTINUE READING: DIARY OF A PUBLIC SCHOOL TEACHER!: Head, Shoulders, No Knees and Toes. Teaching Virtually.

I had students who made me crazy, but some who were helpful. One, after I told him I was going crazy keeping up with all the mail in my box, kindly arrived every morning before I did and tossed it all into the trash. While I missed meetings and such as a result, I could always say I was never notified, and no one was able to prove otherwise. During my second year, I was in a new school with a new supervisor who was actually supportive, and I started to grow into the job a little.

Every year was a little better, until this one. I'm doing the best I can, and I'm not getting into any particular trouble beyond that of being chapter leader. That's perpetual, and I've grown used to it. I'll go so far as to say helping people is very rewarding and despite my complaints, I ultimately love doing it.

But man, this year is my second worst.  Online learning thing is just not what I signed up for. I would never have lasted in a job that entailed sitting at a desk, and that's the job I have now. While we may open wider next year, I don't think we're going back to doing what we actually do. 

In our school, we had until March 8th to negotiate with students to resolve NX grades. I had a few on the borderline, pushed them a little, and managed to get them to pass CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: My New Job

After I wrote a post on the dilemmas of hybrid teaching a few days ago, I heard from two teachers for whom I have the highest respect. In my judgment, their comments are worthwhile for readers of this blog.

Steve Davis teaches in the San Francisco Bay area. I met Steve 15 years ago when I observed his lessons for a study I was doing at the time. We have remained in touch all of these years through email and his comments on posts to this blog. He gave me permission to use his comment.

I have been teaching remotely for 100 days.

When we go back to the classroom it will likely be in the hybrid model (with responsibility for teaching both in-person and remote simultaneously). We already know which students have opted to continue to learn remotely and which students will return for in-person instruction.

The majority of students will still be remote.

You can’t just teach to the 5-10 students in front of you. It’s unrealistic to expect remote students to just follow along with the broadcast of in-person instruction. You need to closely monitor the remote students and frequently check for understanding, which mostly happens through text (many/most remote students are loath to have their cameras on or speak). That leads me to believe that the best practice may be to continue teaching the whole class (in person and remote) through video conferencing and other digital platforms. I will be in the room, and some students will be in the room, but we will still interact in the digital CONTINUE READING: Teachers on Dilemmas of Remote and Hybrid Instruction | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice

I have been regularly documenting what’s been working and what hasn’t been working, along with my fears and concerns for the future.

Now that the semester is ending next week, I thought it would be useful – for both readers and for me – to share some practical reflections.

Before I do that, however, here are some of my past pieces (that have appeared here, at the British Council, and in The Washington Post, in case you’re interested:

Distance learning and English Language Learners

A teacher’s deepest fears about 2021: Students who disappeared, covid-19 myopia and six more

First Quarter Report On What I’m Doing In Full-Time Distance Learning & How It’s Going

I’m Worried About My Students – Very Worried. And Here Is What I’m Planning To Do About It

Personal Reflections On My 2020 Professional Experiences

Okay, now for some key recent practical realizations and changes I’ve made related to teaching online:

1) Don’t require homework outside of Zoom classroom time.

This has been my policy all year with my English Language Learners classes since I teach them five days a week.  That’s because I voluntarily teach four extra classes each week for no pay.  I point that out not to demonstrate how “wonderful” I am, but to point out how empty much of the rhetoric from our district leadership is about equity and justice.  Our school’s ELLs are thriving with this extra support, and it’s CONTINUE READING: Five Key Lessons I’ve Learned About Distance Learning This Semester | Larry Ferlazzo's Websites of the Day...

Most readers of this blog Zoom for work, birthdays, anniversaries, and sadly, for funerals in these surreal pandemic times. Then there are the millions of students who received instruction on Zoom from preschoolers to high school seniors. Many of those Zoomers, maybe all, are Zoomed out. Not only Zoom but other devices and software stretch the limits of pandemic patience. Whatever devices and software readers use, I have collected cartoons that poke an elbow in the ribs and hope that they will tease out a smile. Enjoy!

We’ll soon hit a full year of trying to figure out how public education works (or doesn’t) during a pandemic. Some of the experience gained may be specific to 2020 – the social and political dynamics of which have not been even remotely encouraging (see what I did there?). I’d respectfully suggest, however, that many of the “lessons” learned along the way apply to most forms of remote, virtual, or online “education,” whatever the surrounding climate.

I’ve numbered them in order to make my observations seem more carefully weighed and thoughtfully considered. Seriously, doesn’t even the illusion of someone having a coherent plan and consistent ideology seem insanely comforting these days?

#5: States and Some Districts Are REALLY Committed to Testing and Pointless Paperwork

One of the most crippling aspects of long-distance learning is what it does to our ability to “connect” with students, individually or en masse. The thing most of us signed on for – that idealistic, touch-lives-and-help-kids stuff – has been reduced to the point of near-extinction. What remains strong, however, is the bureaucracy and nonsense we’d mostly learned to tolerate. It’s always been annoying, but it’s traditionally been overshadowed by the meaningful bits.

Not this year.

Many districts are plowing ahead with “virtual PD” and hoping that if they simply CONTINUE READING: Lessons From Pandemic Teaching | Blue Cereal Education

Maybe the only advantage to teaching remotely is that you can fart anytime you want.

Compared to live teaching, remote teaching introduces so many new challenges. I think the biggest challenge is that teachers don’t get to leverage a personal connection with their students. Hearing a pep talk from a teacher in a small square on your screen just doesn’t have the same effectiveness. And with all the windows on my screen and the technologies, I’m not able to build relationships the way I did before. Delivering content has its own challenges. In a live classroom, I can feel the energy of a class that is getting it, but on Zoom with students looking tired it is hard to gauge.

Last spring when we switched to full remote in March, the main technology I used was Zoom with chat and breakout rooms. I wasn’t so happy with my effectiveness so this year I made sure to improve things. Now I have a daily flow that I am quite proud of and I am sure my students are learning very well because of it.

I made a series of videos which I put on a playlist to share with other teachers who want to be more effective remote teachers.

Here is the playlist https://youtu.be/8CH8tZ8gS8s

There are currently 6 videos up and if people seem to like them, I will make more. The first video shows the hardware I used in school to maximize effectiveness. The second video is how I did a similar setup from home. The third video is what I sent to parents ahead of CONTINUE READING: My Remote Teaching Tips Videos | Gary Rubinstein's Blog

The New York Times published an article recently by Natasha Singer–one of the best reporters on education issues in the Times–about the toll that the pandemic is taking on teachers. An extraordinary number say the burden of teaching remote classes and in-person classes is not sustainable. Large numbers of teachers are planning to retire, or have retired.

All this fall, as vehement debates have raged over whether to reopen schools for in-person instruction, teachers have been at the center — often vilified for challenging it, sometimes warmly praised for trying to make it work. But the debate has often missed just how thoroughly the coronavirus has upended learning in the country’s 130,000 schools, and glossed over how emotionally and physically draining pandemic teaching has become for the educators themselves.

In more than a dozen interviews, educators described the immense challenges, and exhaustion, they have faced trying to provide normal schooling for students in CONTINUE READING: Teacher Burnout in the Pandemic | Diane Ravitch's blog

Deborah Rosenthal starts her virtual kindergarten class on Zoom every morning with a song — today, it's the Spanish version of, "If You're Happy and You Know It." Her students clap along. There's a greeting from the class mascot (a dragon), yoga, meditation and then some practice with letter sounds: "Oso, oso, O, O, O".

Rosenthal teaches Spanish immersion in a public school in San Francisco's Mission District. Most of the families are low-income, and many are now affected by COVID-related job loss. She has taught kindergarten for 15 years, and she loves how "hands-on" "tactile," and "cozy" it is to work with 5-year-olds.

But this year, she's spending 10 or 12 hours a day on, basically, her own home production of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood En Español. "It's a very two-dimensional experience," she says.

Few people would tell you that online kindergarten was a good idea, or frankly even possible. That was, before 2020. The number has fluctuated as cases rise across the country, but throughout this fall pandemic semester, between 40 and 60 percent of students have been enrolled in districts that offer only remote learning, according to a tracker maintained by the company Burbio.

And even in hybrid districts, some students have been learning remotely, either part or full time. In short, online learning is the reality for a majority of students this fall.

We are still starved for data on what this all means. The earliest standardized test scores coming out show modest learning loss for students in math, but there are worries that the most at-risk students are not being tested at all.

For this story I talked to educators in six states, from California to South Carolina. For the most part they say things have improved since last spring. But they are close to burnout, with only a patchwork of support. They said the heart of the job right now is getting students connected with school and keeping them that way — both technologically and even more importantly, emotionally. Here are five lessons learned so far.

1. The digital divide is still big and complex.

Eight months after schools first shut down, how many students still can't sign on? We don't really know, and that's a problem, says Nicol Turner Lee, director of the Center for Technology Innovation at the Brookings Institution. "We've not done a CONTINUE READING: 5 Things We've Learned About Virtual School In 2020 | 89.3 KPCC

School districts nationwide are facing a worsening teacher shortage because of the coronavirus, further complicating the tough decisions about whether to have in-person classes.

Why it matters: When teachers test positive, fall seriously ill or are self-isolating from potential exposure, many districts don't have enough substitutes to keep up.

Where it stands: There's early evidence children and schools are not major vectors of the virus, especially with proper social distancing, ventilation and mask requirements, but the risk for adults at school is not zero.

• Districts in Tennessee, Michigan and Maine and many other parts of the country have dozens of teachers absent at a time and had to close classrooms.
• Since the beginning of the 2020-21 school year, at least 751 Arizona teachers have resigned or quit, according to the Arizona Schools Personnel Administrators Association.
• The risk of infection has also triggered some early retirements and sick-outs.

What they're saying: Teachers have demanded more personal protective equipment and better CONTINUE READING: America's teachers are running on empty - Axios