NYC is closing all their schools, after having reopened them.

NYC is closing all their schools, after having reopened them.

I'm just looking at the SFUSD Dashboard for reopening and they haven't finished ANY of the shit that they could do for a reopening.

Have small cohorts/group of students been identified for reopening? - Not finished

Are general safety measures in place, including a staff testing plan? - Nope. Why the fuck not?

Have all staff been trained? - nope. Again, why haven't they?

Are instructional learning plans in place? - etc.

I get that there's a new surge going on and even SF backed up on its safety tier. However, the district clearly isn't going to do the shit that it could do. And they said they would do everything based on the numbers, but when the transmission numbers came down they didn't open anything.

They're not transparent and they're not doing the work they could do, and they aren't following their own timeline. It's frustrating as fuck.

Especially since Matilda was just sobbing over her Algebra class in the other room because she couldn't figure out how to do a problem in a breakout room over a chat box. Which, frankly, is not how I would have done well learning math.

Not being in school is its own kind of damage.

I did a lot of crying over math in a totally analog, in-person school situation. At least online you can turn off video and mute yourself and cry in private.

(I am. here, as always, to be the threatening witchy figure for the Buffistas. Does it work? Who knows? But the offer is always open.)

I kind of love this. Actually, no "kind of" about it.

I'm so sorry for all of you parents and your kids having to navigate this. I can't even imagine.

I can’t really get into a debate about the situation teachers are in about why reopening is just not a good option in California right now without getting super emotional, so I’m just going to say that I hear your frustration and it’s also a lot more complicated than it may seem.

I did a lot of crying over math in a totally analog, in-person school situation.

The math online tool of choice here is Mathspace. While it has a 4-star rating from teachers, it has .5 of a star from parents and kids. One teen's review says "MathSpace is the leading cause of teen suicide."

It's an adaptive program, so if you get problems right, you don't have to do as many. If you get problems wrong, you have to do more. (this in itself is an issue, b/c with 5-6 hours of homework a night, time mgmt is key).

But. The coding is massively fucked up. If it marks an answer wrong, you have to figure out whether the answer was, in fact, right, and you are not getting credit for it (about 15% of the time), the answer was right, but you entered it in the wrong format (for instance, the prompt is "x = _____" and you enter "9" and MathSpace marks it wrong until you enter "x = 9" so that the whole line reads "x = x = 9."), or your answer is the equivalent of the answer MathSpace is expecting, but it still marks you wrong (for instance, if you enter "square root of -3" but it wanted "negative square root of 3") or if you just literally got it wrong.

So you can understand the math completely, get the right answer to every problem, and still get a C and spend an hour or more.

There are far more tears with this then I remember from my own struggles with math.

I can’t really get into a debate about the situation teachers are in about why reopening is just not a good option in California right now without getting super emotional, so I’m just going to say that I hear your frustration and it’s also a lot more complicated than it may seem.

I get that, but they are doing a terrible job of communicating with parents. And our district does not seem to have a plan, or they are not sticking to it. They're just floating along waiting for a vaccine to take care of it for them. That's their tacit plan.

But. The coding is massively fucked up. If it marks an answer wrong, you have to figure out whether the answer was, in fact, right, and you are not getting credit for it (about 15% of the time), the answer was right, but you entered it in the wrong format (for instance, the prompt is "x = _____" and you enter "9" and MathSpace marks it wrong until you enter "x = 9" so that the whole line reads "x = x = 9."), or your answer is the equivalent of the answer MathSpace is expecting, but it still marks you wrong (for instance, if you enter "square root of -3" but it wanted "negative square root of 3") or if you just literally got it wrong.

So you can understand the math completely, get the right answer to every problem, and still get a C and spend an hour or more.

What a fucking nightmare! Matilda's anxiety would be off the charts with that. Like, I'd seriously need to sedate her to do math in that environment.

I'm so sorry for all of you parents and your kids having to navigate this. I can't even imagine.

Pix, I should OF COURSE have added teachers into that list. Again, I really can't imagine.

Our school district has made a bad situation for teachers completely untenable.

I keep thinking this should be a great opportunity to redesign how we educate kids, taking into account all the post-Industrial Revolution / Information Age insights and capabilities as well as social and economic needs.