4 ms·

The biggest problem I have seen is that the local school educational bureaucracy (administrators, teachers, unions) are on covid-time while our children are gro

The biggest problem I have seen is that the local school educational bureaucracy (administrators, teachers, unions) are on covid-time while our children are growing up and developing in real time. If you are on covid-time, your instinct is to delay, seek consensus from a billion parties, and basically act very slowly to adopt to the realities of the pandemic. If your school is on covid-time things change slowly unless there is top down pressure (Florida, etc) or a brave local administrator who is willing to make decisions with ambiguity (very rare). Meanwhile, children keep growing and developing. My opinion is that because we can't control child development and need for education (and social exposure) we need to make bold decisions with limited information to make sure we don't leave our kids behind. I didn't see this happen in my local public school. But, clearly, many parents have taken the perspective that they can't sit by the sidelines and wait for covid-time people to have events play out and left the public school system. I don't know if union to blame as much as people not acting with a shared sense of urgency.

ethbr0 5y ago
We optimized the public school system, by design, for stability. It turns out, it isn't very good at agility.
- mwint 5y ago
  They were incredibly agile two years (!) ago when deciding to stop working. Reversing that has been a lot harder.
  - scionthefly 5y ago
    Having worked through that, I'm wondering when exactly we stopped working. Was it when we spent long hours for a week in mid-March 2020 figuring out how to deliver instruction virtually for an undetermined period of time? Or was it summer 2000 when we were attending virtual seminars and creating collaborations among teachers and researchers, and researching how to provide hybrid instruction, and working with our tech departments and communities to figure out how to make it work? Or was it the 2020-2021 academic year when we simultaneously taught students in class and at home, trying to provide equivalent experiences in each lesson? Or was it in the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, when we were fully in person with no legal option to teach remotely regardless of conditions, and watched rising infection rates but had no recourse because the anti-mask anti-vax crowd were packing school board meetings to protest the only protection we still had and accusing us of "not working"?
    - abduhl 5y ago
      It was mid March 2020, when you spent “long hours” (I assume you mean 7, maybe almost 8?) figuring out that you could deliver instructions virtually via YouTube video for the most part. The rest of your dates are just times when you tried to find more YouTube videos or examples of you bitching about not being able to use all the YouTube playlists you curated. Any other questions? No? I’ve got one for you. Many people worked through the pandemic and had to transition workflows. What makes teachers special?
jancsika 5y ago
> If you are on covid-time, your instinct is to delay, seek consensus from a billion parties, and basically act very slowly to adopt to the realities of the pandemic. A billion parties, huh? I sought out three on a covid-related matter. Am I one of the bold heroes in your dichotomy, or does "covid-time" really squelch nine orders of magnitude down to "true?"
- harshaw 5y ago
  What I observed is my local school administrator working to building consensus from the teachers, the unions, the parents, the janitors, the athletic groups, the board of health, etc, etc. Which is a perfectly good approach for a stable system. However, there weren't enough hours in the day to build all this consensus with a deliberate and slow planning process. That's what I meant - so not a billion - but so many parties that here wasn't enough time in the day to align everyone. Meanwhile - kids were stuck in remote learning. Our unpaid school committee and paid professional clearly worked their butts off. Unfortunately, hard work isn't always good enough if your fundamental slow work mechanisms can't adopt to the reality of child development. And unfortunately, the unions appeared to be a leading group that was seeking to delay and put up road blocks to returning to school.
fineIllregister 5y ago
Seems like a mismatch to equate an individual period of time (development) to a global event (COVID). These two phases are orthogonal--children are going through their development during COVID. I feel that creates a strawman for people supporting measures to reduce spread; that they don't understand children are developing (I suspect teachers know this better than most, anyhow). Viewing the situation considering only development doesn't change this: if the rate of infection stays above one for a long stretch, there will be mass death from overwhelmed hospitals. That's been the balancing act that policy makers are striking. We've seen how that works in practice: restrictions have dropped, as vaccination rates have gone up and seasonal waves have passed. I understand why people might want more support for their children via home or private schooling; that's always been an option for those with means. It highlights that we could definitely use more resources to try to support child development: more teachers for smaller class sizes class, more space in classrooms, better ventilated spaces, expanded remote learning accessibilty, etc. Where I live, schools are asked to do more with less every year. So it's unsurprising to me that they're not super adaptable to major disruptions.

ethbr0 5y ago

We optimized the public school system, by design, for stability. It turns out, it isn't very good at agility.

mwint 5y ago
They were incredibly agile two years (!) ago when deciding to stop working. Reversing that has been a lot harder.
- scionthefly 5y ago
  Having worked through that, I'm wondering when exactly we stopped working. Was it when we spent long hours for a week in mid-March 2020 figuring out how to deliver instruction virtually for an undetermined period of time? Or was it summer 2000 when we were attending virtual seminars and creating collaborations among teachers and researchers, and researching how to provide hybrid instruction, and working with our tech departments and communities to figure out how to make it work? Or was it the 2020-2021 academic year when we simultaneously taught students in class and at home, trying to provide equivalent experiences in each lesson? Or was it in the beginning of the 2021-2022 school year, when we were fully in person with no legal option to teach remotely regardless of conditions, and watched rising infection rates but had no recourse because the anti-mask anti-vax crowd were packing school board meetings to protest the only protection we still had and accusing us of "not working"?
  - abduhl 5y ago
    It was mid March 2020, when you spent “long hours” (I assume you mean 7, maybe almost 8?) figuring out that you could deliver instructions virtually via YouTube video for the most part. The rest of your dates are just times when you tried to find more YouTube videos or examples of you bitching about not being able to use all the YouTube playlists you curated. Any other questions? No? I’ve got one for you. Many people worked through the pandemic and had to transition workflows. What makes teachers special?

jancsika 5y ago

> If you are on covid-time, your instinct is to delay, seek consensus from a billion parties, and basically act very slowly to adopt to the realities of the pandemic. A billion parties, huh? I sought out three on a covid-related matter. Am I one of the bold heroes in your dichotomy, or does "covid-time" really squelch nine orders of magnitude down to "true?"

harshaw 5y ago
What I observed is my local school administrator working to building consensus from the teachers, the unions, the parents, the janitors, the athletic groups, the board of health, etc, etc. Which is a perfectly good approach for a stable system. However, there weren't enough hours in the day to build all this consensus with a deliberate and slow planning process. That's what I meant - so not a billion - but so many parties that here wasn't enough time in the day to align everyone. Meanwhile - kids were stuck in remote learning. Our unpaid school committee and paid professional clearly worked their butts off. Unfortunately, hard work isn't always good enough if your fundamental slow work mechanisms can't adopt to the reality of child development. And unfortunately, the unions appeared to be a leading group that was seeking to delay and put up road blocks to returning to school.

fineIllregister 5y ago

Seems like a mismatch to equate an individual period of time (development) to a global event (COVID). These two phases are orthogonal--children are going through their development during COVID. I feel that creates a strawman for people supporting measures to reduce spread; that they don't understand children are developing (I suspect teachers know this better than most, anyhow). Viewing the situation considering only development doesn't change this: if the rate of infection stays above one for a long stretch, there will be mass death from overwhelmed hospitals. That's been the balancing act that policy makers are striking. We've seen how that works in practice: restrictions have dropped, as vaccination rates have gone up and seasonal waves have passed. I understand why people might want more support for their children via home or private schooling; that's always been an option for those with means. It highlights that we could definitely use more resources to try to support child development: more teachers for smaller class sizes class, more space in classrooms, better ventilated spaces, expanded remote learning accessibilty, etc. Where I live, schools are asked to do more with less every year. So it's unsurprising to me that they're not super adaptable to major disruptions.