Tuesday, March 10, 2020

Virtual Learning Bombarded My Day {10 of 31 Slice of Life}

I woke up to a text message with a screen shot of an email sent to my grad school daughter.  The summary was her university is putting face to face classes on hold and all classes are moving to remote learning til the end of the month.  Students can stay on campus or come home.  She's actually living in an apartment doing an internship so she's not on campus in classes.  She's twenty minutes away and will stay independent down there.

Early afternoon, I was reminded - seriously I never thought about my other college daughter in the morning when another screen shot email came through via text messaging.  She's an undergraduate student and was being urged to come home for remote learning for almost five weeks.  I could hear her anxiety through the phone.  I asked if she was feeling okay and/or if she was scared.  This part of coming home was not making her anxious.  It was the unknown about her courses.  How would she learn sewing construction remotely?  Three assignments are due next Wednesday so are those due dates staying the same?  I told her teachers would figure that out and communicate with her. 

We have a teacher work day to complete report cards and got an email today that the first two hours have to be spent figuring out remote learning in the event we close school.  Ohio has three reported cases tonight and I learned just one case in our district will have us all staying home.  I think we need to be aware of work that will put parents as teachers  - they aren't teachers.  I think we need to be aware of worksheets being used to fill time.  I think we need to realize we can't provide 6 hours and forty minutes of work each day remotely.   

I think there are things we have ready to go for authentic participation.  

Thank you Two Writing Teachers for fostering this writing community and offering this challenge.


3 comments:

  1. This going online has it's ups and downs. Doing a class in a hastily constructed online platform could be nerve-wracking. But I posted today my enjoyment of a good phone call and email correspondence with family the very day I decided to socially isolate for the sake of my 91 year old mother who lives with me.

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  2. This hits home in a very real way, wow! I can't imagine teaching remotely for an entire day, let alone 14 days. I hope this does not come to your district and I pray for those districts who must close.

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  3. So very true! I hope we will all be thinking about ways to be more creative and engage our students with authentic, self-directed learning. I am worried about my college students too. They are on spring break this week and I expect many are very anxious not knowing what's going to happen next week.

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