Schools complicating hybrid and remote learning schedules.

[HeatherC]

The problem with doing “live” teaching is what do you do for young kids with parents that aren’t home, kids that have to go to daycare during the day if school is not in session because their parents have to work?

That is a big problem for sure.

 

[disneyjunkie]

It has come to my attention that the remote schedule for HS does not start till 10 in my district. Can someone please tell me why? Normal school schedule starts at 815 tell me why after all this time they cannot get up for that time. This needs to just stop. Why do they need THIS accommodation? I guess if you are up all night playing Fortnite you need to sleep later!

Maybe they are trying to accommodate the kids that have to help younger siblings.

Last spring several of my students ( 2nd grade) relied on older siblings or cousins to help them with remote learning.

 

[disneyjunkie]

It looks like NYC will be going with a hybrid model. My school will have 3 cohorts. The first two cohorts will attend all day twice a week. The last cohort will be completely remote. No students will be in our building on Fridays. All students will do remote learning on Fridays.

Teachers that requested teach remotely due to health issues, will be responsible for the remote cohort. The remote teachers may be teachers from your school or they may be teachers from within your district.


One of the issue here will be trying to ensure siblings attending schools in different districts have similar schedules.

 

[mousefan73]

It has come to my attention that the remote schedule for HS does not start till 10 in my district. Can someone please tell me why? Normal school schedule starts at 815 tell me why after all this time they cannot get up for that time. This needs to just stop. Why do they need THIS accommodation? I guess if you are up all night playing Fortnite you need to sleep later!

We loooooved it when our virtual days started that late. I have teenagers where their ability to focus is 1000% better than 7/8 am and no they are night up all night. One reason we had wacky schedules was to accumulate families where laptops / network are shared Among siblings and parents. Some of our calls were at 5 pm so parents could work in the morning and kids have laptops later.

 

[roomthreeseventeen]

We loooooved it when our virtual days started that late. I have teenagers where their ability to focus is 1000% better than 7/8 am and no they are night up all night. One reason we had wacky schedules was to accumulate families where laptops / network are shared Among siblings and parents. Some of our calls were at 5 pm so parents could work in the morning and kids have laptops later.

Yeah, I would say this is a good change. All research points to the fact that teenagers naturally do better with a later start time.

 

[kaytieeldr]

It has come to my attention that the remote schedule for HS does not start till 10 in my district. Can someone please tell me why? Normal school schedule starts at 815 tell me why after all this time they cannot get up for that time. This needs to just stop. Why do they need THIS accommodation? I guess if you are up all night playing Fortnite you need to sleep later!

For years, studies have indicated high schoolers need more sleep than they normally get - 8-10 hours nightly https://www.cdc.gov/features/students-sleep/index.html "One recommendation to accomplish this is to start school later https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/07/22/teens-need-more-sleep-to-succeed-in-school specifically "School start times can be pushed back. It is important to recognize that teenagers are wired differently than either adults or young children. Their circadian rhythms program them to stay awake later at night. Even those who try turning the lights out at an early hour may find themselves unable to fall asleep quickly; however, as many parents know all too well, trying to rouse a teenager before dawn can sometimes take Herculean effort. Nonetheless, with some notable exceptions, the vast majority of high schools in this country start before 8:30 a.m., with 43 percent starting before 8 a.m. The American Academy of Pediatrics recommends school start no earlier than 8:30 a.m."
https://www.usnews.com/opinion/knowledge-bank/2015/07/22/teens-need-more-sleep-to-succeed-in-schoolStarting high school classes at ten would accomplish this.

 

[JM23457]

It has come to my attention that the remote schedule for HS does not start till 10 in my district. Can someone please tell me why?

Have you asked the district why? It's possible they have a valid reason.

Are in-person classes taking place, as well? If so, it might be because they're staggering bus schedules (to save money and/or allow more buses to hit the same routes for distancing) with the high school students going last. And the remote learning schedules might be linked to the in-person learning schedule, for staffing reasons.

Or, teachers might have reported low engagement/attendance at virtual early morning classes last spring, & they want to avoid that recurring this fall.

But since every district's plans are different, the only way to know is to ask them.

 

[FlightlessDuck]

I've worked in school administration software for 20 years

Schools always complicate things more than is necessary. 6 day or 2 day cycles when your week is 5 days? Seriously? 32 periods? Are you joking? Period 1 is 8am on Monday, 10am on Wednesday, and 2pm on Friday??? It's infuriating.

 

[DLmama]

We're completely virtual until at least December. The schedule we've been given follows a normal school day. Log in at 8am and the teacher will take "attendance." Core studies with live instruction for a total of 2 hours, then independent work for 3 hours. A couple of 10 minute breaks and lunch are built in.

DH & I both work out of the house and DS12 has challenges staying on task, so this should be interesting to say the least. I am glad that the district seems to have their act together and there is a plan. The spring was chaotic for everyone.

 

[bookwormde]

The biggest weakness I see is that many districts are treating all students and families the same (which has not been best practice for decades). Some are differentiating for higher risk teachers but not all

Some students can be very successful with full distance learning, particularly older kids. some can do hybrid and some really need a high level of in person. Some students or their family has risk factors that make the exposure from school not rational, for some working is essential, either personally or societally. Some can do a little of either and some may be able to make one of there models work some of the time but not all the time.

Some school staff (and their families) are low risk and it is reasonable to provide in person/hybrid, those at high risk need to handle work remotely.

What the community infection rate is will in great part will determine the maximum balance.

We know that for fidelity in meeting CDC standards, schools can only be 20 to 35% of capacity, we know that keeping students and teachers in a cohort limits spread and facilitate tracing and limits the need for isolation (using subject immersion is one way). Add onto this how modern a ventilation system the building have and if it is adapted for the COVID must be factored in.

While there is no guarantee, those that use a really hybrid model using all of the above will have the best chance of both staying open and providing reasonable learning progress for students including those who were already at risk from both an educational and health perspective while keeping a workforce that where it is already hard to find enough teachers as in tact as possible.

Many of the schools that do not make "smart decisions" will have to re close when infections break out in the school, and may cause a rapid rise in community transmission outside of school

 

[Skippy918]

I've worked in school administration software for 20 years

Schools always complicate things more than is necessary. 6 day or 2 day cycles when your week is 5 days? Seriously? 32 periods? Are you joking? Period 1 is 8am on Monday, 10am on Wednesday, and 2pm on Friday??? It's infuriating.

We had an 8 day cycle with a modular schedule. Each day was different. Everyone wrote their schedules on index cards to carry around and also posted said schedule in their lockers. This was all in the pre internet days.

 

[bushdianee]

Our district was set to go back on this coming Tuesday with a 2/3 plan where kids with last names 1-k would go M,T and kids l-z would go Th, F and alternate Wednesdays. Yesterday, after the teachers had been back for 4 days setting up their rooms they announced they are going all virtual for the first quarter and all fall sports are suspended. They are in the process of handing out new iPads to every student and said that the online learning will be about 3-4 hours a day. Most people are happy that the kids aren't going back since our numbers keep rising but aren't happy about the the last minute notice.

 

[kaytieeldr]

I've worked in school administration software for 20 years

Schools always complicate things more than is necessary. 6 day or 2 day cycles when your week is 5 days? Seriously? 32 periods? Are you joking? Period 1 is 8am on Monday, 10am on Wednesday, and 2pm on Friday??? It's infuriating.

It makes sense if they're rotating the schedule - something like 6th period is 2 PM Monday, then 9 AM Wednesday, and 1 PM Friday?

 

[HeatherC]

Our district was set to go back on this coming Tuesday with a 2/3 plan where kids with last names 1-k would go M,T and kids l-z would go Th, F and alternate Wednesdays. Yesterday, after the teachers had been back for 4 days setting up their rooms they announced they are going all virtual for the first quarter and all fall sports are suspended. They are in the process of handing out new iPads to every student and said that the online learning will be about 3-4 hours a day. Most people are happy that the kids aren't going back since our numbers keep rising but aren't happy about the the last minute notice.

Things are literally changing each day. So hard for parents and staff.

 

[Colleen27]

The problem with just doing things on the normal schedule is that a lot of kids aren't available for learning during the day or won't be supervised well enough to keep to ordinary schedules (a middle schooler home alone probably isn't going to be up and logged on at 7:15!) Some of the schools around me only got 30-40% participation with trying to maintain real-time school schedules, because kids weren't in school. They were at home without reliable internet, or they were with a sitter, or they were at Grandma's, or they were home alone with siblings and didn't wake up for normal school times. In our distance learning surveys, a large chunk of our families expressed a strong preference for asynchronous lessons, so parents could supervise learning on their own schedules rather than trying to find caregivers willing and able to do so while the parents worked (or slept - we have a couple of second-shift families who let the kids get on the parents' schedule when everything else stopped).

The other issue is the workload for teachers who are going to be teaching both in person and online. Uploading new lessons a couple days a week, on a block-type schedule, for the families who have chosen remote learning is preferable to teaching a full day and then also formatting, editing and uploading daily lessons for the remote group. Obviously this doesn't matter so much for districts that aren't offering anything in-person, but most around me are leaving it up to the families. So teachers are going to have to do both in-person and remote lessons.

 

[bookwormde]

So teachers are going to have to do both in-person and remote lessons.

This should not be needed except for very small schools/district or some of the specialty HS classes, if the districts put in the up front work, of course it appears that to many are just winging it or doing what is administratively convenient

 

[QueenIsabella]

I just wish our schools would tell us what we're doing. We're on remote learning for the first 9 weeks, that much I know. But I have no idea if there will be real-time classes, videos available, etc. Orchestra should be fun. Ditto for gym. BTW, classes start in a week, letting us know any day now would be nice...

 

[mrsheppo]

School starts next Monday and we really don't have much of an idea at the present time. My DD middle school will be hybrid and group A will attend Monday, Wednesday and Friday with group B attending Tuesday and Thursday and then the following week the groups will switch days. The other days they will have online learning. They also will have different coded days known as maroon and green. Maroon days kids will have periods 1,3,4 & advisory. Green days will have periods 2,5,6 & advisory. We have no idea what the district plans for the distance learning. A friend of ours who is a SPED teaching assistant said she has really not received much directive yet. Currently the county Health District has recommended not to open schools and the Teacher's and Principal's union have also been pushing for strictly remote learning for the first 9 weeks but the school board voted against it.

 

[Colleen27]

This should not be needed except for very small schools/district or some of the specialty HS classes, if the districts put in the up front work, of course it appears that to many are just winging it or doing what is administratively convenient

I wouldn't consider the public schools around me to be "very small" (graduating classes of 200 and 250, respectively) but they both have a number of classes, particularly in the hard and social sciences an foreign languages but also in upper level math and in English electives) that are only taught by one person, who teaches that class to several periods each day. And at the elem level, it doesn't look like there are going to be enough families opting for distance learning to divide them into classes by that choice. If they did, they'd have two full classrooms in person and one remote class at the neighborhood elem, but the district has decided it would be better to have three 2/3 full classes (for the sake of spacing), even though it means the teachers will have to juggle teaching in both in person and remote methods.

 

[kaytieeldr]

They also will have different coded days known as maroon and green. Maroon days kids will have periods 1,3,4 & advisory. Green days will have periods 2,5,6 & advisory.

That's silly. What if you're colorblind? Seriously? If I had input into this schedule, I'd label them Even and Odd days - and assign the appropriate periods to the appropriate days.