Chat about Novel Coronavirus - 2019-nCoV - COVID-19

In real life

Well, Charles has been dead for nearly 20 years, sadly. :(

Oh, and Eddie's just made an album.

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2020/sep/01/eddie-chacon-charles-and-eddie-comeback-album

album of the year imo. no jokes

Just had a quick listen. Not my thing, but good that he's working again.

Think that might be a tad harsh. Fancy explaining it to my teacher wife? Who had spent her whole weekend planning for next week, and every night last week working through issues from students who have missed so much through the first lock down and are now desperately trying to catch up? Or the lunchtimes she spent last week with students who have incredibly shitty home lives whose only chance of normality is time at school, even if it is socially distant.

The school my wife works at has had three child suicides in the last 18 months, and the level of issues they have had since going back has increased, every teacher there is going above and beyond to not only teach these kids but in many cases be a FOC untrained counsellor.

Would also like to know how hybrid lessons aren't complicated? I don't seem to manage them well currently

Can't work if you have your kids to entertain.

Reduced numbers of students will allow teachers to socially distance (it’s what we did in the summer).

Most parents, or at least someone, will be at home during this lockdown.

What age range are you teaching and what setting (private/state) are you currently working in?

Sort of. I have school age kids but they are secondary so don't need nearly the same amount of entertaining or supervision as younger ones. Having them in the house hardly affected my work last time round but I wasn't impressed by the amount of work they did.

I'd be more supportive of online school if there wasn't a massive lack of access to it for less well off children. Plenty of affluent private schools had fairly impressive online offerings, that doesn't really work when a chunk of your kids are free school meals.

On the other side my friend who teaches at a private school had a very hard time as she was expected to teach online/live but also had two of her own primary school children off school who needed looking after.

How about the fact that about half of the students do not have access to a device that is connected to the internet? Do they just get cut adrift?

Afraid she hasn’t got time for a zoom meeting, too busy preparing or teaching.

Hybrid Teaching at university level works fairly well I have to say (big Russel group uni), but don’t think that’s comparable to teaching actual children!

I am the same as @jellybaby have a secondary age kid and she sat across from me for a the first lockdown and barely disturbed me doing her very limited work that was provided up until the summer holiday. She has to isolate at the start of this term and they have improved, everyone now has access to Teams and Sharepoint but it isn't hybrid learning, the teacher just uploads the homework for that day and maybe a scan of a page from a textbook and the ones at home have to teach themselves which I don't consider hybrid. The teachers are very responsive to emails on questions and generally quite apologetic as half the questions are asking why we can't access the topic on teams or been unadded from a group etc.

I wonder if it varies by area. If your parents got together when their eyes met over the meat processing line and still work at the same place they are probably both expected to be at the factory.

We had the same plans here but the Government cut the requested laptop allocation by 80% last week...

Ha, Christ the school can barely afford to give the teachers laptops let alone the kids! We bought my wife a chromebook to use as the one the school provided was so poor.

Well, there you go. The issues in the state sector regarding access are huge. I guess it’s different if your students and their families are already paying for their education.

Yes, that’s a fair comment.

Ministers were worried last week that vulnerable kids would trade a free tin of beans for heroin, you really think they will give them laptops?

In some aspects, yes.

But most of it is due to chronic underfunding from the Government.

Thought they were meant to give them laptops, promised them 40 then delivered 2 in certain schools. Tories levelling up though so will be fine in the future.

Currently have a level of corruption and cronyism that would make a banana republic blush