Howdy. I've been thinking about how I am going to teach my class online. I'm not very worried about it; I think I will be able to provide plenty for them to do to reach the Common Core standards we are required to teach. My mainstream class will read Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, and all of that unit that I do every year in person can be done remotely pretty easily. It won't be the same or as good, but it will suffice, I hope. We were also going to do a mini-unit on how to do well on standardized tests, but I'm letting that go by the wayside for now because I suspect the Minnesota Comprehensive Assessments will be canceled this year. If not, I can pretty easily do that remotely as well.
I would like the students to also keep a journal of their experience now because hopefully something like this will never happen again and it is something I think they will be glad they had a personal record of. I am trying to come up with a list of questions they can answer that will inspire them to write more than, "I slept in and then played video games all day." So I'm trying to think of good questions.
We don't have to- no, we are not allowed to- start "school" again until the end of March. Now is the time to develop and research ideas and I'm grateful for the time to do it.
Our school is part of a cooperative of other charter schools across the state and there is correspondence between the schools about issues surrounding the closure. One letter I read today was from a school leader who has a problem because their nutrition coordinator (lunch guy) decided not to come in to work anymore because his wife is pregnant and he doesn't want to put her at risk. The leader will have to hire someone else to come in and do that job because someone has to come and make the kids' lunch and serve it to them. He was looking for ways to get out of paying the guy. So shitty. But that's what happens when schools are forced to function on budgets that don't allow for taking care of their employees. And then, to add insult to injury, public charter schools are required to jump through additional hoops to make it harder to "steal" students from the home district. We have to hold 20% of our revenue back and keep it in the bank. We can be shut down if we don't let that 20% sit in the bank. Regular public schools don't have to do that. If they run a deficit for three years the state will take over their budgeting but they don't get shut down.
For now, all of our employees at our school will be able to be paid through the end of the year. I'm grateful for that too. I have to say I'm a bit concerned about when we get on the other side of this; when all the rules that have been suspended in order to not let the 99% collapse will be put back into place, and we are all back on that razors edge of making it and not making it. Will we all just go back to life as we knew it? Or will we stand up and stand together and say no thanks, we deserve universal "free" health care, Amazon and other super rich corporations and people should pay their share, and our kids deserve benefits from birth to make sure the next generation gets off to a good start? I hope so.
On the home front Mitch and Kira and I are hunkered down together. We have been watching documentaries (Hillary on Hulu today), I cleaned the pantry, and we are prepping to paint Sam's old bedroom for Kira to move into. We are not going nuts yet.
I would like the students to also keep a journal of their experience now because hopefully something like this will never happen again and it is something I think they will be glad they had a personal record of. I am trying to come up with a list of questions they can answer that will inspire them to write more than, "I slept in and then played video games all day." So I'm trying to think of good questions.
We don't have to- no, we are not allowed to- start "school" again until the end of March. Now is the time to develop and research ideas and I'm grateful for the time to do it.
Our school is part of a cooperative of other charter schools across the state and there is correspondence between the schools about issues surrounding the closure. One letter I read today was from a school leader who has a problem because their nutrition coordinator (lunch guy) decided not to come in to work anymore because his wife is pregnant and he doesn't want to put her at risk. The leader will have to hire someone else to come in and do that job because someone has to come and make the kids' lunch and serve it to them. He was looking for ways to get out of paying the guy. So shitty. But that's what happens when schools are forced to function on budgets that don't allow for taking care of their employees. And then, to add insult to injury, public charter schools are required to jump through additional hoops to make it harder to "steal" students from the home district. We have to hold 20% of our revenue back and keep it in the bank. We can be shut down if we don't let that 20% sit in the bank. Regular public schools don't have to do that. If they run a deficit for three years the state will take over their budgeting but they don't get shut down.
For now, all of our employees at our school will be able to be paid through the end of the year. I'm grateful for that too. I have to say I'm a bit concerned about when we get on the other side of this; when all the rules that have been suspended in order to not let the 99% collapse will be put back into place, and we are all back on that razors edge of making it and not making it. Will we all just go back to life as we knew it? Or will we stand up and stand together and say no thanks, we deserve universal "free" health care, Amazon and other super rich corporations and people should pay their share, and our kids deserve benefits from birth to make sure the next generation gets off to a good start? I hope so.
On the home front Mitch and Kira and I are hunkered down together. We have been watching documentaries (Hillary on Hulu today), I cleaned the pantry, and we are prepping to paint Sam's old bedroom for Kira to move into. We are not going nuts yet.
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