Post by DERANGED DIKTATS on Sept 26, 2023 12:26:11 GMT -5
...In March 2020, the world changed. The entire school experience became a series of apps on a screen. Classes met daily in the morning on Zoom. All of the curriculum was hastily added to Schoology during the initial two-week lockdown. I still want to call it School – ology. We became intimate partners with the printer and scanner. They were necessary to scan and upload completed assignments.
The initial two-week closure was extended to the end of April. With only one more month of school after that, the district remained shuttered for the rest of that year. School would remain a computer screen.
There was a tremendous amount of uncertainty. We didn’t know how the grades would work. We didn’t know when the school would reopen. We didn’t quite understand how to find and complete the assignments. The assignments were exceptionally basic and shoddily organized. We were skeptical that we were uploading them correctly. We were not teachers. We did not expect to be teachers. We had full-time jobs.
My experience with Zoom School was so utterly terrible that I was convinced the children had to be back in school. We lived in Florida, and we were lucky the schools reopened in August the next year. Our Governor had to fight our district to open. Striking back, the district delayed the opening as long as legally possible.
To my great regret, the strength of my belief led me to send my children into a classroom that had plastic dividers between the desks and masks covering all the faces. I was still naïve enough to believe that people wanted this over as soon as possible and would act rationally. I was already wrong, but I couldn’t see it yet.
The few pleas for normalcy fell on the deaf ears of our school board. I could not understand it, but they seemed to actually enjoy it. Every time a mandate could be extended, it was. Despite strong opposition, the decisions were often unanimous.
Our Governor removed all of the state-wide mandates in September 2020, but allowed the schools to enforce their own for the time being. The school board promised dropping the mandates after the Christmas Break. I supposed that was reasonable and I accepted it. We returned in January to the same restrictions.
The board meetings blew up at that point. The dishonesty of the board and the frustrations of the parents were a volatile mix. Their authority and character impugned, the board doubled down and continued the restrictions through the end of the school year.
I finally accepted reality. I spoke with the founder of an Umbrella School, a way of homeschooling. She was fabulous. She had homeschooled her own children and was a respectable psychologist. During our brief conversation, she convinced me that Zoom School was not homeschool, and that I should reconsider my opinions. However, unfortunately, we both concluded removing my kids from school so late in the year would not work well. I had waited too long.
My children finished out that year. The school board voted unanimously to remove all mandates for the next school year. We travelled that summer. We rented an RV. An old man I play cello with told me I should write a travel blog. I did. We were refreshed. The long ordeal was over.
In the first week of the new school year, during school dropoff, an emergency meeting was called. Parents could not attend, they were busy dropping their kids off at school. In a 3 – 2 vote, the school board reverted their stance on mandatory masking. Masking and even the dividers would return.
I immediately called the Umbrella School, and Friday of that week was the end of our time in Public School. I will never send my children back to publicly ran schools.
The initial two-week closure was extended to the end of April. With only one more month of school after that, the district remained shuttered for the rest of that year. School would remain a computer screen.
There was a tremendous amount of uncertainty. We didn’t know how the grades would work. We didn’t know when the school would reopen. We didn’t quite understand how to find and complete the assignments. The assignments were exceptionally basic and shoddily organized. We were skeptical that we were uploading them correctly. We were not teachers. We did not expect to be teachers. We had full-time jobs.
My experience with Zoom School was so utterly terrible that I was convinced the children had to be back in school. We lived in Florida, and we were lucky the schools reopened in August the next year. Our Governor had to fight our district to open. Striking back, the district delayed the opening as long as legally possible.
To my great regret, the strength of my belief led me to send my children into a classroom that had plastic dividers between the desks and masks covering all the faces. I was still naïve enough to believe that people wanted this over as soon as possible and would act rationally. I was already wrong, but I couldn’t see it yet.
The few pleas for normalcy fell on the deaf ears of our school board. I could not understand it, but they seemed to actually enjoy it. Every time a mandate could be extended, it was. Despite strong opposition, the decisions were often unanimous.
Our Governor removed all of the state-wide mandates in September 2020, but allowed the schools to enforce their own for the time being. The school board promised dropping the mandates after the Christmas Break. I supposed that was reasonable and I accepted it. We returned in January to the same restrictions.
The board meetings blew up at that point. The dishonesty of the board and the frustrations of the parents were a volatile mix. Their authority and character impugned, the board doubled down and continued the restrictions through the end of the school year.
I finally accepted reality. I spoke with the founder of an Umbrella School, a way of homeschooling. She was fabulous. She had homeschooled her own children and was a respectable psychologist. During our brief conversation, she convinced me that Zoom School was not homeschool, and that I should reconsider my opinions. However, unfortunately, we both concluded removing my kids from school so late in the year would not work well. I had waited too long.
My children finished out that year. The school board voted unanimously to remove all mandates for the next school year. We travelled that summer. We rented an RV. An old man I play cello with told me I should write a travel blog. I did. We were refreshed. The long ordeal was over.
In the first week of the new school year, during school dropoff, an emergency meeting was called. Parents could not attend, they were busy dropping their kids off at school. In a 3 – 2 vote, the school board reverted their stance on mandatory masking. Masking and even the dividers would return.
I immediately called the Umbrella School, and Friday of that week was the end of our time in Public School. I will never send my children back to publicly ran schools.