Teachers/Educators Thread • Page 15

Summers off makes no sense: Former US Education Secretary Arne Duncan calls for year-round schooling

Fuck off, Arne!

 

Hate to say it, but I agree. Not sure I agree w the rationale presented because I didn’t read, but as a concept, I would love to see us shrink summer vacation down to 2-3 weeks, and then extend other breaks or create new ones throughout the year.

 

It miiiight be a good idea but he's mentioning increasing hours/days in the classroom and I just don't see that working out well for anyone involved. Anyone who's been in the classroom knows we're already at our wits end after 185 days with these kids lol.

I could maybe get on board with smaller summer break and increased breaks elsewhere. But that summer away from students is a necessity right now for the mental health of almost all educators lol. I imagine a lot of families like having summers to travel and be with family as well, not to mention the summer camps and such that would suffer.

I'd be lying though if I said wouldn't like to maybe have a couple weeks off in the fall and the winter. I sometimes envy my private sector counterparts that take lovely vacations in September and October to places that are less crowded and have more tolerable weather in those months.

 

3 weeks on 1 week off baby. Or less and just give me 4 day weeks. I say that but I also would rather just have summer lol

 

Haven’t started teaching yet but I think I would prefer summer over going year round with more small breaks

 

How does the typical American school year look? In the UK we have a 6 week summer break, two weeks off at Christmas and Easter, and then one week off in the middle of each term, so terms are usually broken into two chunks of 6 or 7 weeks. Am I right in thinking the American summer break is longer?

I think the long summer is good and necessary. Scrapping it just plays into the myth that education happens at school and nowhere else. If we want kids to not lose out too much during the pandemic I believe we need to become less reliant on school, not more. Show young people how they can be learners out in the world. Summer is a great opportunity for getting outdoors, exploring, taking trips to places that are stimulating and can satisfy kids natural interests. Losing that would do more harm than good I feel. Not to mention its just a necessary break for both students and teachers, neither can be going flat out all year round.

My only reservation about long holidays is obviously they can be tough for working families in terms of childcare. But there are clear ways we could do more to support those families if we choose to.

 

It's slightly different in every state and even by school district, but, in general, the summer breaks here will be roughly 8-10 weeks I believe. Last year our last student day was on June 12th? I think? And our first student day this year was August 31st. So about 10 weeks.

For Christmas we get off anywhere frm (counting weekends) 9-15 days or so depending on what day CHristmas falls. Like last year Christmas Eve was on a Tuesday, so we had off Monday the 23rd, so our last school day was all the way back on Friday December 20th, and then our first day back wasn't until January 6th because our district always gives us off January 2nd and they weren't going to make us come back for ONE day on January 3rd only for the weekend to hit lol. So those years are the best when it lines up for us to get a long christmas break.

Easter or Spring Break as it's known here is usually just one week off from school + Good Friday. But that definitely varies wildly.

Beyond that, the days off are VERY varied by district and state. Our "marking periods" in our district (which are basically half a semester) typically end up being roughly 38-40 days of classes, which I suppose is roughly 7-8 weeks.

 

Kids are so bored and unengaged. I can barely get the remote kids to write full sentences. And of course I’m blaming myself through all of this.

 

Just told my current employer that I'll be done there in December. Student teaching starts in January.

 

Friday marked our last day of in person instruction for about three weeks. Faculty have been on campus 4 days a week since the beginning and students the same since early October. The exhale of getting to the end of the day Friday was absolutely enormous. When we come back after break, we will be virtual for the first week, and then two grades each day for the two weeks before winter break.

We’ve been the most aggressive school in the area with reopening and we fucking crushed it. 0 transmissions or exposures, I think a few total cases that took place through club sports, but those kids never made it to campus. Everything we did from 730-330 worked as well as it could have.

as fucked as it is that we have been back and have seemingly made all the wrong decisions as a school, I’m super proud of our teachers and students for doing everything the right way.

 

Student teaching is the worst part about teaching. Survive that (and covid) and you’ll be great.

 

Pretty good chance I'll be doing it via distance learning which is...weird and not what I would have expected when I started my program haha

 

We pulled the trigger on going back to all remote yesterday.

We gave it a good run. No confirmed COVID cases throughout the entire District until the last week of October, and then the bottom fell out. Mostly issues with staffing (due to required quarantines). We had transitioned our entire 6th grade to remote learning a few weeks ago, and then 7-12 last week and now the entire district yesterday.

We say we're going to try and come back in January but...I don't see it.

 

I should add, we've actually seen zero evidence of spread inside of our buildings, and our county health department backed us up on that in a public press release to the community.

Our health and safety protocols were really working (we believe).

Required face masks, every student had a personal portable desk shield, hand sanitizer in every single classroom and all throughout the hallways, good physical distancing in the classrooms, no sharing of materials, etc.

 

are you in a private school or well-funded public school system? if not, all the more impressive. congrats on what sounds like a resounding success, given the circumstances.

 

I got a message from a student today that they tested positive, I’ve had at least 4 others message me the last few weeks that they were missing class to get tested

 

Public...I wouldn't say any public school system is 'well-funded' haha (at least in Ohio). Pretty much everything we purchased was through a $240K(ish) grant we received from the state to use on PPE. We also received a lot of donations from various vendors we work with for PPE.

Another thing I forgot to mention originally was that we encouraged all of our teachers to take their classes outside if they could. That helped a lot too, however, with the weather turning, we can no longer do that.

But yeah, everyone (staff, parents, community, health department) has been very pleased with our protocols. The only complaints we got from some parents is that we were doing too much or going overboard.

 

Tomorrow is my first day back in the building officially. No students until the 14th. Tomorrow is ansynchronous anyway and we have to leave by 11:15 so it's literally jsut a day for us to come in and get our stuff set up.

And it's a waste because our state is close to having its 2nd metric go red which is SUPPOSED to make us automatically go hybrid, but of course our governor is trying to insist now that no it doesn't automatically mean that and schools should continue to try to go hybrid and etc.

Meanwhile we're months away from a vaccine and the numbers here are skyrocketing. So yay!

 

I'm so done with this school year.

I'm a special education teacher who teaches freshman English. My district has been fully remote all year long and teachers have been working in the building. I don't know what most of my students look like and wouldn't be able to pick them out of a crowd of people. The level of engagement is pathetic and I am constantly torn between blaming myself, blaming the students, and blaming the situation.

We're on a block schedule with A/B days where classes meet twice a week for 75 minutes. 75 minutes is a lot for one period but the instructional time lost throughout the week is definitely felt. On Fridays we have (a)synchronous days where students with D's and F's have to sign onto our Zoom class for 30 minutes to get extra help and students with A's, B's, and C's work on assignments asynchronously. These days are a complete waste of time because 30 minutes isn't enough time to do anything productive, especially with students who are already unengaged and failing.

Today I met with a student during one of these periods who is still missing a summative assignment that we did in October for Of Mice and Men. She had to write a claim and provide evidence to back the claim up. I helped her write a claim, gave her two quotes to use, and all she had to do was answer a few questions about the quotes and she would be done and be passing my class again. But after I gave her the evidence she stopped working and walked away from her computer or something because she didn't do shit the rest of the period and didn't respond to me trying to get her attention both through voice and chat. Once class was over she closed the document. It's beyond frustrating because I did the hardest part for her and she just couldn't bother with the rest.

My class is already "easy" enough as it is, but I have definitely scaled back on a lot of stuff due to remote learning and the unique situation of this year. As a special education teacher I am much more concerned with the students demonstrating core skills than all the bells and whistles of everything else when it comes to assignments, so I am a pretty lenient grader even when using a rubric. But most of these students aren't even opening the document and are putting in zero effort. What's the point of spending hours trying to make boring curriculum engaging and accessible when they won't even bother to open the god damn document look at it? This whole year feels like a waste and I'm just over it.

Three out of my five classes today had zero students show up and honestly I was happy. I didn't have the energy today to have the same conversation with the same students about "okay here is what missing work you have you can still finish these and you will be passing" "okay sounds good" "okay do you know where to find them? what do you need from me to help?" "nothing I'm good I'll do it" and then nothing happens.

Does that make me a bad teacher? Maybe. And if it does, honestly I don't care right now lol. All I want to do right now is to take a nap and then play World of Warcraft tonight and not have to think about this school year from hell.

ALSO, I realize compared to a lot of others I have it good and have not been at risk of catching COVID because we're fully remote. My mom's district is doing hybrid shit and she had students in her classroom most of this school year up until this week and I am constantly worried about her catching COVID and getting sick. So I'm very thankful I don't have to worry about that, BUT STILL, this year is the worst and I'm done with it.

 

Just got my student teaching placement. I'll be in a kindergarten class. Hybrid class so at least some level of in-person teaching. Nervous but excited.

 

starting at a new school on the 22nd. didn't think I would be the type of teacher to leave halfway through the year, but this year has been so rough, I figured why not at least apply and see what happens.

it's going to be chaotic moving into a new school. they're hybrid and I've been virtual all year, so that will be different. and three brand new classes to teach after teaching the same classes for a few years.

but, I think (hope?) I'm making the right call.

 

today's the first day with students at the new school. still nervous, but it should hopefully go well.

 

thank you!

 

How is it going?