Spring Break!  Finally.  This week was rough but great on some levels.  Last week CY had a special program to let kids vent about virtual learning and after the session I had the best levels of participation ever.  I wish we'd stated this sooner and did it once a month or so.  Thursday we had Fun Day -- you'd think that wouldn't be a thing in a virtual environment but I made it work.  First I showed a mildly inappropriate film (The Frighteners) then we played some games.  It really was fun -- well, I had fun and I think most of the kids did, too.

Lots of chatter on the internet about opening schools.  Funny thing is -- schools are opening and many were already opened.  I go back to the building on April 12 (one year and one month since I've been in the building) and I'm sure there is some plan that we are not yet privy to to bring back students.  Right now it's just preK to 2, two days a week per cohort, and Wednesday set aside for cleaning.  We're going to be trained on this hybrid model which I'm hoping is transmitting my lessons live so both cohorts get the entire lesson rather than me doing the lesson twice and kids being on their own to do work remotely.  They are not very good at independent work, although this experience has improved this skill for some students.  

Everyone talks like they know what goes on in schools.  The thing is, everything we are witnessing with this pandemic and the close of school is really just exposing what is wrong with our education system.  I always have a certain percentage of students who don't do any work.  There are those in the middle who do some of the work.  And then there are those who do all of their work.  Those who don't do their work -- they get a packet or some one-on-one test and we give then a D and pass them on.  This has always been true, now you're just seeing it.  I thought the same thing when there was a video going viral of a kindergarten student who cried for almost the entire class on Zoom.  His mother was heartbroken -- but guess what?  There were kids that cried every day in their real classroom, too.  Will we do anything about these wrongs?  Probably not.  We'll just continue to blame the pandemic and remote education.