We have a rising 2nd grader and another child in pre-K. At this point in time we are planning on home schooling both of them for at least a year. My wife has been diligently researching our options over the past couple of weeks but it is overwhelming.
Just learning the different approaches of Classical, Charlotte Mason, Montessori, Unit is a big start. We've used Montessori pre-schools and my wife leans that way, but if we send my 2nd grader back to public school for 3rd grade I wonder if we may do him harm. My thought is Montessori might be great if we are able to commit to possibility of long term home schooling even when Covid is under control.
Then there is coming up with actual curriculum. Many approaches encourage parents to design theior own, while others (mostly classical it seems) provide daily lessons. I know Montessori is "follow the child", and is less about work books but you still need to keep up with standards, etc.
So I thought I'd launch a discussion on parents who might already be home schooling and could provide guidance and thoughts on their experience.
I'll throw out we do prefer interactive, teacher involved as opposed to putting our kids in front of a screen all day.
Honestly, I would rely on the public/private school curriculum as guidance and especially for pacing, but plan on putting together supplemental material as I doubt what the schools provide will be sufficient on it's own.
So use their framework, but put together supplemental materials on your own.
I would reach out to each teacher in August, explain what you are doing, and ask for a general pacing guide to help you prepare.
This will be beneficial two fold, in the sense that it will help you organize, but also keeps your kids on the same pace as others in their grades so when they re-enter the school the following year, they won't skip a beat.
I don't know if that helps, but that's my plan. I have a rising 3rd grader and 1st grader.
Also - depending on what state you live in, you will most likely need to certify each year with the local school district. If where you live is anywhere like the NYS school system they will give you an extremely hard time.
My local rep tells me their hands are tied.
If they publish a plan we can live with we might reconsider home schooling, but it would have to involve full virtual classrooms. Even then, we don't want our son in front of the computer all day.
I have a feeling my wife might take this and run with it, and never send them back - which is why I am interested in the non-traditional methods. She really enjoyed most of the at home learning, except for the meager work the school's provided. She came up with a lot of her own. We just refinanced again to lower our monthly payment so it might make it easier to sacrifice her career (dental hygienist) even when things are safe for her to work.
For the math, they generally have a short (3-5 min) video before each concept followed by practice questions and "quizzes".
IXL is another one that are school used to finish this year. It's interface is a notch below Khan's, though still good, and it lacks the instructional videos (as far as I know) but it was great for practice problems (Math and ELA). If you've got the time to teach the material and just want something to help guide the curriculum and provide practice, I'd definitely recommend it. Not sure on the cost though.
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I'm not speaking for Dennis, but I imagine this is a Covid related decision vs. a personal one. And frankly, most kids are going to be spending significant time at home come fall, just reading the writing on the wall.
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Both my kids went to public school and thrived off it. I would worry they wouldn't learn to interact with other kids. Both my kids played sports in High school. My daughter played three varsity sports and was valedictorian of her class and now is playing Varsity softball and studying Engineering got a 4.0 her first year at Smith college. My son Graduated college a year ago and is doing great. I would never take my kids out of school unless you really had to. Oh and m wife is a special ed teacher and she would never do it as well. Seen kids that comeback and have no social skills.
I'm not speaking for Dennis, but I imagine this is a Covid related decision vs. a personal one. And frankly, most kids are going to be spending significant time at home come fall, just reading the writing on the wall.
Yes, this is a Covid based decision. The work given to our son to finish 1st grade was not nearly enough to challenge him. On top of that we don't want to put him in an environment that is going to be chaotic, unstable and possibly unhealthy. I feel bad for teachers this year. Either way they are going to get flack for either not enforcing health policies, or needing to police them.
Ultimately, we just don't see putting a 7 year old in an environment without his parents where he needs to wear a mask, and be responsible for the well being of his household.
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In comment 14929360 mdthedream said:
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Both my kids went to public school and thrived off it. I would worry they wouldn't learn to interact with other kids. Both my kids played sports in High school. My daughter played three varsity sports and was valedictorian of her class and now is playing Varsity softball and studying Engineering got a 4.0 her first year at Smith college. My son Graduated college a year ago and is doing great. I would never take my kids out of school unless you really had to. Oh and m wife is a special ed teacher and she would never do it as well. Seen kids that comeback and have no social skills.
I'm not speaking for Dennis, but I imagine this is a Covid related decision vs. a personal one. And frankly, most kids are going to be spending significant time at home come fall, just reading the writing on the wall.
Yes, this is a Covid based decision. The work given to our son to finish 1st grade was not nearly enough to challenge him. On top of that we don't want to put him in an environment that is going to be chaotic, unstable and possibly unhealthy. I feel bad for teachers this year. Either way they are going to get flack for either not enforcing health policies, or needing to police them.
Ultimately, we just don't see putting a 7 year old in an environment without his parents where he needs to wear a mask, and be responsible for the well being of his household.
What I bolded is key, but in their/my defense, you have to understand we literally had ZERO time or warning to prepare to move online for the rest of the year. It happened in a weekend. I believe this year will be much more organized online and we are more prepared.
That said, based on the bolded statement and my own experience, even with more advanced notice and time to prepare, I would STILL supplement the material based on the limitations (currently) of the online model.
As I said in my initial post, reach out for pacing for the year from their teachers (basically what and when things are going to be taught) and then prepare your own supplemental material accordingly.
All of the teachers and administrators I work with are preparing for a remote start, and have been since even before the school year ended, despite what they are saying publicly. There is private communication, and then there are press releases.
Personally, we are on the fence. My two younger children (10 and 7) really struggled with remote learning and getting them to sit and do assignments was often a struggle. My daughter, in particular, was very lonely and felt isolated. Both craved in person instruction. So, they would both prefer to return to school. My oldest (15) woke up every morning before everyone else, got on the laptop, and worked all day until he finished the daily assignments, regardless of how long it took. He seemed to have no trouble with subjects like Algebra 2/Trig and Chemistry remotely, but a lot of classmates did. He goes to one of the top HS in the city/state/country and we were shocked that only 1 teacher provided any form of actual instruction in the way of 1 day a week 30 minute zoom session with all students on mute. He is fine either way, but seems to be leaning toward returning to school.
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I respectfully disagree that this year will be better. Imo, we will be home at some point if not to start. However, everyone seems to be giving off the impression they are doing everything they can to open schools. Because of that, the remote part isn't being developed the way it should. And if we start off the year like this again there is little to no training for teachers. Schools are focused on the wrong shit as usual like how are they going to observe teachers instead of saying how can we make this work for students?
All of the teachers and administrators I work with are preparing for a remote start, and have been since even before the school year ended, despite what they are saying publicly. There is private communication, and then there are press releases.
Good. I work in NY and specifically the NYC DOE. Imo, there is no other option but remote learning yet they keep wasting all their time discussing anything but.
Personally, we are on the fence. My two younger children (10 and 7) really struggled with remote learning and getting them to sit and do assignments was often a struggle. My daughter, in particular, was very lonely and felt isolated. Both craved in person instruction. So, they would both prefer to return to school. My oldest (15) woke up every morning before everyone else, got on the laptop, and worked all day until he finished the daily assignments, regardless of how long it took. He seemed to have no trouble with subjects like Algebra 2/Trig and Chemistry remotely, but a lot of classmates did. He goes to one of the top HS in the city/state/country and we were shocked that only 1 teacher provided any form of actual instruction in the way of 1 day a week 30 minute zoom session with all students on mute. He is fine either way, but seems to be leaning toward returning to school.
I never did live instruction. Kids don't show up where I am at so I had to have a better plan. I either found youtube videos or other videos that specifically taught what I needed to go over and posted those with the assignments. If not, I created voice over videos on my computer with the specific types of math problems the kids needed. Then I would have a Google Meet time once a week where if kids still had issues they could ask.
This was really the only option that worked for me. My wife is also a teacher and we have 2 young kids. Having us find time to teach a topic the same time every day or 3 times a week is near impossible. Plus, and more importantly, my students could not be asked to be on my time every day. You'd not only have to coordinate that with all their teachers but not all kids have their own devices. As I said, I work in the city and most kids didn't have technology. They had to apply for a tablet and they were only given one per household. So, if a student had siblings then they had to coordinate when they could get on the tablet.
I also did attendance for my whole school which is the largest middle school in NYC. So many kids were on in the middle of the night. Therefore, live instruction doesn't make sense for our student population. Plus, I like the fact the students have the videos the way I post them and can go back and watch it as many times as they want whenever they want. Live instruction on the computer is awful for a lot of students imo.
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and home schooling. Home schooling is a commitment by your to educate your children using a state approved curriculum. You can potentially keep your child home in the Fall, but have their education provided remotely by your student's teacher(s).
Personally, we are on the fence. My two younger children (10 and 7) really struggled with remote learning and getting them to sit and do assignments was often a struggle. My daughter, in particular, was very lonely and felt isolated. Both craved in person instruction. So, they would both prefer to return to school. My oldest (15) woke up every morning before everyone else, got on the laptop, and worked all day until he finished the daily assignments, regardless of how long it took. He seemed to have no trouble with subjects like Algebra 2/Trig and Chemistry remotely, but a lot of classmates did. He goes to one of the top HS in the city/state/country and we were shocked that only 1 teacher provided any form of actual instruction in the way of 1 day a week 30 minute zoom session with all students on mute. He is fine either way, but seems to be leaning toward returning to school.
I never did live instruction. Kids don't show up where I am at so I had to have a better plan. I either found youtube videos or other videos that specifically taught what I needed to go over and posted those with the assignments. If not, I created voice over videos on my computer with the specific types of math problems the kids needed. Then I would have a Google Meet time once a week where if kids still had issues they could ask.
This was really the only option that worked for me. My wife is also a teacher and we have 2 young kids. Having us find time to teach a topic the same time every day or 3 times a week is near impossible. Plus, and more importantly, my students could not be asked to be on my time every day. You'd not only have to coordinate that with all their teachers but not all kids have their own devices. As I said, I work in the city and most kids didn't have technology. They had to apply for a tablet and they were only given one per household. So, if a student had siblings then they had to coordinate when they could get on the tablet.
I also did attendance for my whole school which is the largest middle school in NYC. So many kids were on in the middle of the night. Therefore, live instruction doesn't make sense for our student population. Plus, I like the fact the students have the videos the way I post them and can go back and watch it as many times as they want whenever they want. Live instruction on the computer is awful for a lot of students imo.
I completely get the issues you raise. But, NYC absolutely was giving devices for the individuals, not households. However, if you applied for a device from the DOE, it was only an iPad, which does not lend itself to all remote learning, esepcially when typing assignments. Fortunately, my kids were able to score laptops from their schools. So, I am exploring this from that perspective. You have certainly raised valid concerns as to why live instruction often is too difficult to manage.
The sad part is that the DOE doesn't seemed to have learned anything over the last few months and the Fall is shaping up to be a big shitshow.
Now they are trying to play catch up with everything. They keep focusing on blended learning which is a combination of some students in and some home. Anybody with half a brain understands it is IMPOSSIBLE to have blended learning. The logistics don't work but they have spent MONTHS on this and the best we have now is "we are working on a plan". Sorry, if you don't have a plan by now it ain't working.
Lets go over some logistics to show why it can't work. They want no more than 10 people in a room. That means 1 teacher and 9 students. You'd have to have 4 groups for every class to accommodate that. Not happening. Lets round to make this easier. If there are normally 30 students in a class then break it up into 3 groups. That's 10 students. Every school needs their own plan. One plan we were discussing is having 6th graders come in one week, 7th the next week, and 8th the week after. We'd have 1 grade a week which is a third. However, since we'd have 3 groups per class that means every classroom would be occupied. That also means we'd need 100% of staff for 1/3 of the students. So, simple question: if we are always at work covering classes during the day when are we actually remote teaching? The answer is we aren't.
Okay, even if we had tike during the day which we don't, where are we teaching? If every classroom is occupied with students then are we walking around in the hallways and teaching while we are walking around? Again, makes no sense.
Then we have to talk about cafeteria and phys ed. If we cannot have those large group gatherings then we actually need MORE staff to cover these classes as there would only be a handful of adults watching over them. Students would have to stay in their classrooms during lunch and phys ed. Again, not feasible.
Lets talk about staff members that are at high risk. They can stay home. I already showed situations where we need more than 100% of our staff in the building to cover classes. What happens with those that stay home or call in sick? Getting subs isn't the easiest thing in the city and if nobody shows up what do you do with the kids? You can't just throw them in another room.
Lets talk about money. The city is already prepping people for cuts. Every area needs to make cuts after what happened. Schools are no different. I can argue that it'll be more expensive to run a school with the business as usual approach than just having remote learning.
Here's another big topic; Daycare. If we have blended learning then our students would be home 67% of the time. For those that know how daycare works, you pay for the spot. If your kid is going to school every third week then most places will still charge to hold that spot. So, while your kid is going 67% of the time you are really paying for 100% of the time. And teachers have an issue too. Most teachers don't live in the city so if a teacher has to go in to work but their home district isn't open then what do they do with their kids? Now, I think the state will make that call over individual districts but it could happen individually.
Long story short, blended learning is the least likely option. To me it is either all in or all home. Blended learning sounded great at first but once you think about it for 5 minutes you start to realize it is impossible for most schools. There is even more that goes into it but I think everybody gets the point.
The survey sent home to parents and older students was a joke. It only offered options of blended learning or complete remote learning for response. There were no open response items on the survey and it was your typical BS DOE survey that simply meets the checkbox of giving parents a "voice", but offering no real solutions or data.
What MS are you at? Your school and you seem to have done a fantastic job. My kids are at what is normally a fabulous elementary school with a great staff and high performing kids and my oldest is at Brooklyn Tech. We were less than impressed with what they put out.
My 2 youngest had their morning meeting daily for 30 minutes and then a bevy of assignments each day. Some were designed by the teachers and some were straight from the online curriculum/textbook. They were overwhelmed, especially when teachers posted a week's worth of assignments on Monday for a 2nd grader. All she saw was assignment after assignment and became paralyzed by it all. I'm not going to lie, we became overwhelmed as parents trying to help them navigate. They wanted to be independent, so didn't always want us on their laptop and checking email. We tried to at least focus on the core subjects. I aimed for a minimum of 1 math assignment, 1 writing, assignment, and reading every day. Sometimes they met it, and sometimes they didn't. Both receive related services and thrived in those sessions with the interaction. The providers did a great job supporting the classroom teachers by checking with them weekly what was being worked on and incorporating that into their sessions. FABULOUS!
My oldest, a sophomore at Brooklyn Tech was initially overwhelmed because each teacher assigned over an hour's worth of work. After a week or two, the school intervened and limited work to about 40 minutes per subject. He still spent more time than that, but it made a huge difference. He managed to do everything on time, plus extra credit assignments. A lot of other kids struggled to keep up. He also managed to keep up with 2 AP classes and took both exams. We'll see in a couple of weeks how he did, but based on past results, I am expecting exceptional results.
Again, this is with each kid scoring a laptop from their respective school. So, there is no fighting over devices. If there was, I have to say my HS student would have won out because he was legitimately working from 7:30 am until the evening for most of the time schools were closed.
Our office was the same. The weeks leading up to closing, our leadership was huddled in conference rooms concerned only with how we will score ELA and Math exams, with no thought at all to what will happen in our office. The week leading up to school closures, people in our office were getting very anxious. Finally, on Fri. 3/13 I asked one of our Leadership team for a staff meeting, because even hearing there is no news is still a valuable interaction and update. Our ED called the meeting at 3:30 on Friday. When we raised that at least 2 people in other departments in our building were at work all week with serious symptoms and not sent home, he refused to follow-up with other management because it was just a rumor. The following week one tested positive on Tuesday. The office was technically open the next day, claiming the cleaning crew cleaned until 3am. Under the best conditions, this crew's idea of cleaning is spraying a nice smelling cleaning product and walking away. I have no confidence that building was cleaned. I doubt even that employees area was ever disinfected. This is the organization we are dealing with. I ended up opting to work from home those first days until the office officially closed Thurs. 3/19. I was actually sick and tested positive a week and a half later. Between 3/13 and today, as an office, we have received exactly 6 emails from our ED. 6. This is the organization we are dealing with.