Posts by urbantinker8

Alex Roberts4 said:Man... Covid really was a gift for the lazy. I’m still standing by that. I’m sitting here reading about how an entire classroom gets isolated, or a whole group—whatever. Why the whole thing? Wasn't the rule supposed to be just the infected kid and whoever they were sitting near? Seriously, is there anyone left who will actually step up and take responsibility? It’s become a joke... the ultimate get-out-of-jail-free card.

But then you have these classic school examples of people cutting corners: the elective Computer Science class for the little ones. My kid told me multiple times they didn't want to do it, so I didn't sign them up. It’s an elective! I’m not going to force them, because what is a kid even doing in that class? Learning computer parts? How to sit in front of a monitor? And of course, the school only has a handful of computers for everyone. Give me a break. The kicker is that from fifth grade on, Computer Science becomes mandatory, so... an elective is supposed to be something you *don't* get covered in the core curriculum... but apparently not here.

Once the school year kicks off and the momentum starts, most kids jump on board, a few outliers stay out, and then it's this, that, and the other. What can I say? Only a tiny handful skip Religion class, but nobody puts on the pressure for that elective because can you imagine the outcry? "You're forcing my child! Brainwashing!" Guaranteed. But this is Computer Science—or "Computer Science," if you know what I mean. A kid should choose an elective based on interest, which means having an actual opinion and using their brain, rather than just following the herd like "wherever the crowd goes, we go."

The point here is that typical situation: the kids who don't pick the elective are stuck being shuffled off to do something else. That’s why it becomes a "problem"—not because a kid is being "left out," but because someone doesn't feel like dealing with them. Honestly, if they had actually explained the utility of Computer Science right away—why it’s useful, why it’s good to learn—I wouldn't mind at all. But they didn't approach it that way; they just went with the "everyone does it" mentality. And that's the reason? Great, let's raise a bunch of Borgs without any backbone or identity. And again, the kid said no. Besides, once they pick it, it becomes a requirement and they get graded. If they pick it just to fit in and not because they care, then the drama starts all over again.

Anyway, I am certainly not forcing some damn elective on my kid. Not a single one. I don't care what everyone else is doing. I don't follow the crowd, I don't make life decisions based on what the neighbors think, and I sure as hell won't teach my child to think that way.

And don't even get me started on the Covid protocols where they lock everything down the second someone sneezes... I don't bother with it anymore. There's no point because there's nobody to talk to. It's useless. They're already starting to tally the damage regarding the kids and the fallout from these disruptions, yet they keep doing the exact same thing. They allow it to happen. I’m just lucky my kid isn't in the upper grades or high school yet. Thank God for that... because that’s when you let the weak-willed run the show.

I mean, at the end of the day, there isn't anyone—and I really do mean absolutely nobody—who can actually force your hand when it comes to picking an elective. It’s all up to you, I guess.
So, look, saying "no" isn't really enough here, and I honestly don't quite follow why you're getting so worked up about it. If you ended up deciding "yes" after all, then I suppose that's just your situation to deal with, and venting all this bitterness across the forum probably won't change anything or make you feel any better.

And, well, it seems like once again the epidemiologists are just sending entire classrooms into isolation, mostly because it’s frankly impossible to actually follow those Fuchs guidelines about who stays "left" or "right" or whatever. It's all a bit much, I guess.🤦
It seems like kids aren't really bothering with masks much lately, I guess. Some schools have even gone back to that classroom-rotation style of teaching where everyone moves around, so they’re all mixing together constantly instead of just sitting with the same small group of friends. Not to mention the whole situation with them coming and going from campus, or the weekend parties and social gatherings... it just feels like there's a lot of contact happening everywhere.
I guess it looks like we’re heading toward yet another completely fake, remote school year, which seems just perfect since we're still waiting for the entire adult population here in the States to actually get vaccinated. It feels like kids are just going to be passing this plague back and forth constantly, and who knows how many new mutations might pop up from that, or exactly how dangerous they could become for that age group—which, I suppose, is currently considered "safe." Honestly, I doubt there will be any real peace in this situation until scientists start aggressively pushing for mandatory vaccinations for everyone from infants all the way up to eighteen.🙄

mellowskipper said:If I had a kid in 5th or 8th grade, I wouldn't even send them to school on the day those tests are happening—not that it would help much. It’s just pure hyper-stress, and they aren't even using anything useful.

And here I was, thinking parents were actually still worked up about external grading systems.🙂

Susan Martin4 said:On one hand, I think it’s just plain nonsensical to reopen nightclubs and bars where people crowd together, while on the other, we're forcing kids into remote learning at home.

well, I suppose it seems nonsensical to everyone, really.
except maybe for the local authorities and the owners of those businesses, I guess.

Larry Walker24 said:Tomašević:
"Look, we’re starting a new school year. Honestly, the stats aren't the big deal here. What actually matters is that we aren't touching any of the rights students already have regarding textbooks and supplies.

On a brighter note, we managed to pull some funding from the EU over the last few months to help with classroom aides. We're looking at tripling the number of aides funded by those EU grants. We'll have 925 aides on board this time, which is a record—that covers about 1,049 students.

As for keeping classes running, nothing is changing there. We've already got transportation sorted out for the kids who have to travel to schools outside their immediate area."

I suppose it's fine that we have aides, especially since we don't even have actual school buildings anymore.🎉
Nothing at all, just an empty field. #Kolinda
🙂

Jesse Bailey91 said:Question: what happens if a specific teacher or professor gets sick? Does that mean they drag both the left and right substitutes from the faculty lounge along with them? 😛

If that actually happens, we’re already short a few professors who need replacing. It's a mess.

How did things play out during the last period?

Looking back at that period, I guess one way to have avoided that whole mess—where professors were basically forcing mass self-isolations by sitting just to the left or right of someone—might have been different, though I suppose the Secretary didn't specifically mention whether they were sitting opposite or behind them, either.🤣Regarding that whole business about being exposed within two meters, they basically decided on this "solution" where none of the close contacts get sent to quarantine because... well, masks. I guess that's just how they're handling it now.😉😉

I guess it’s just one of those things where sometimes people who come into contact with it end up getting sick, and other times they just don't, which seems to be the way it goes, I suppose.
For the most part, things were pretty cheerful and actually quite interesting, I guess.🎉

Susan Martin4 said:Look, I’m just speaking in broad strokes here

Honestly? I’ve got a gut feeling that by the time this school year rolls around, either the preschoolers or the kindergarteners—or maybe both—are going to be catching delta. From everything I’ve been reading, it seems to be tearing through kids like wildfire.
The older folks in my house are all vaccinated, including the grandparents, so... yeah. Fingers crossed for the best.

So, if they haven't already picked it up, there’s a massive chance they'll catch it in a classroom setting this year without any masks being used.

pure chaos🤣🤣

Robert Hernandez11 said:Look, if they just had the guts to admit they have absolutely no clue what’s coming and that every single option is on the table. They claim classes will start with these "minimal measures" that supposedly evolve as things change...
🤷
And then they drop these ridiculous claims—like, oh, we won't need to isolate everyone, just the two or three kids sitting directly to the left or right of someone... Sure, maybe that works in an elementary school where a teacher can actually keep their eyes glued to every kid's movement during recess 🤷
.
But in middle school? High school? Give me a freaking break. Don't insult my intelligence. ☕

They can keep telling us that mass isolation isn't necessary, but once those infection numbers inevitably spike, they'll just find some new excuse about a "rapidly spreading variant." You know, one of those strains that doesn't just move side-to-side, but spreads forward, backward, and diagonally too.

Michelle Nelson4 said:What part of this isn't making sense? Honestly, I find it quite amusing to watch people cheer for pure populism, essentially trying to convince themselves that things will somehow settle down when, in all likelihood, the chaos is just going to escalate. It’s that endless "Snow White syndrome" where everyone keeps repeating the same wishful thinking—that once everything finally settles and returns to some mythical version of "normal," everything will be perfect. As if cosmic justice is going to wave a magic wand and suddenly fix everything just because, heaven forbid, our one precious life is passing us by while we deal with this ongoing mess of a pandemic for the second year running. If we all just collectively pretend everything is wonderful and pretend nothing has changed, surely a magical vortex will appear and make it all come true, right? 🤣

Exactly, that’s the point.👍

Susan Martin4, don't you worry about a thing; the little ones in kindergarten won't even notice.
Of course, the ability to follow these rules varies from one school district to another, but generally speaking, elementary teachers handle it pretty easily—it's much simpler than managing a preschool. In our local schools, the younger kids didn't even have to wear masks in the hallways. They just wore them in the classroom. And gym class was usually held outside whenever the weather allowed.

Michelle Nelson4 said:There is absolutely no way these twenty kids are going to stick to two weeks of regular classes. It’s just a matter of time before at least one more kid catches it, and then suddenly you’ve got five or six of them stuck in quarantine. Before you know it, someone else gets hit, and there go another five or six... 😂

Then you have the "smart" parents who will refuse to let their kids get tested just to avoid having them end up in isolation. But then those parents might end up getting sick themselves. If a parent can't dodge the testing, they’ll be stuck in a ten-day quarantine, while the kid might miss the window for a positive test result. That means the child ends up home for ten days of parental quarantine plus another fourteen days of self-isolation. And honestly, if the other parent tests positive a few days later, you could be looking at even more time out of school.

Oh, please, no way. Has anyone ever actually heard of a virus spreading horizontally through schools? It’s never happened before, right?! 😲
Everything is going to be just fine.🤣

I don't really get why everyone is acting so surprised, I mean, the logic here is basically identical to what we dealt with last year, it’s just been rebranded under this whole "relaxation of measures" label, I guess.🤷
The virus itself is pretty much confined to those two meters within a classroom setting; it isn't hanging out under the desks during break time or lurking on the subway, let alone during any social gatherings outside of school hours.
If you maintain that two-meter distance, then honestly, anything goes.👍
It’s all the same stuff, really, except they’ve ditched those infamous bubbles from last year—those things were such a headache at the start of the previous term. Once they realized it was impossible to track who someone had actually been socializing with when they weren't sitting in their assigned seat, they just started sending entire classrooms into quarantine.🙄

The only real shift is that now, thanks to Dr. Fauci and his grand investigations which didn't exactly uncover anything we didn't already know, they probably won't be isolating whole classes anymore, regardless of how things look. But I suppose that doesn't have much to do with seating charts; it's more that he showed us how to prioritize mental health, since apparently, that was a concept nobody had considered before.

In plain English—it’s actually a messier situation because not all the kids will be on equal footing when it comes to keeping up with the curriculum. You'll have twenty students listening to the lecture in class, while five of them are stuck at home doing remote learning for two weeks.
Then, when those five eventually make it back to their desks, there’s going to be this expectation that they’ve somehow kept pace perfectly with the kids who were physically present. There won't be any extra time set aside for special catch-up sessions for those five kids who were isolated, and the exam is going to happen right on schedule, whether that works for them or not, I guess.

northerntiger9 said:Here’s one of the links: grade retention rates

Last school year, we had 125 first graders repeating the grade—up from 132 the year before, though back in 2016/2017, that number was down to 114. The real spike was in 2015/2016, when 154 first graders were held back.

And northerntiger9 makes a fair point (if I remember correctly which county she's from 😬):

According to Department of Education data, the highest retention rates have consistently been in Midwestern and Virovitica-Podravina County regions—and local teachers tell us it mostly involves Rom students or kids coming from underprivileged, struggling families.

The article goes into more detail about this and school deferrals, if anyone actually feels like reading...

Given the specific group we’re talking about here, I suspect that data isn't really representative of the general population in America, and I doubt those kids failed a grade because the material was too advanced or they hadn't practiced their reading enough.
It’s almost as if delaying them would change nothing in this scenario.🙄

urbanowl81 said:I’d estimate about 200 first graders repeat the grade every year.

True, they can get an individualized education plan if the situation calls for it.

Got a link?

fadedridge902 said:The school reform promised us "life skills," but we got nothing. In reality, the whole thing is a mess. There's this massive, suffocating pressure on kids to be at the top of the class with a perfect GPA. Meanwhile, trade schools and vocational paths get totally ignored. Kids—especially the ones prone to perfectionism—get hammered by teachers and parents telling them they have to be flawless at everything. It just kills their self-esteem. Why aren't we teaching actual life skills like home economics, digital literacy, or how to manage money? Most students today lack basic independence, largely because parents are too soft on them. You end up with this weird gap where a kid might be a genius academically but is an emotional wreck who can't function on their own.

I guess we shouldn't have expected much more than that.
I mean, when you set out to implement a massive overhaul that seems to exist just for its own sake—sort of lacking any deep understanding of how one move triggers the next, and without much coordination between different departments or stakeholders—you pretty much end up with this kind of mess we're staring at now, which I suspect we'll be dealing with for years to come.
It’s probably too late to turn back, though, because so much taxpayer money has already been poured into this rather aimless project.
so help us god.

Brandon Newman95 said:The Scandinavian model?

not really.
it's more like the American way.😬

A total lack of actual stakes just leads straight into pure boredom.☕
It’s honestly such a shame that B. Wild and her entire following didn't seem to grasp that.
In this obsessive push to make everything feel "easier," more "playful," or somehow more "accessible," they’ve swung too far in the opposite direction, and now we're left with something that feels incredibly shallow—just overly simplistic, repetitive, and lacking any real intrigue.
And then there are those moments where you can see the outcome coming from a mile away for absolutely no reason at all...
I suppose we should really think about what we're doing to our kids.
If a child starts developing an intense phobia of being scared at age eight, only to spend the years until eleven essentially coloring, doodling, and singing through life, I imagine they'll find school quite riveting.

I mean, yeah—everything just feels so much more shallow these days. It’s all too easy, far too simplistic.😬
Honestly, if you look back, the textbooks used in the first, second, and third grades were pedagogically miles ahead of the junk they're pushing now.🙂
Nowadays, through fourth grade, it seems like kids are mostly just playing around and coloring; they might pick up a few bits here and there, I suppose, but it’s hardly challenging for them at all.
It’s actually been proven that overdoing the drawing, coloring, singing, and reciting can really just burn kids out.

But then again... I guess that's just life preparing them for the real world.🙂

Michelle Nelson4 said:Well, good morning! (And wow, I just realized we’ve hit 94 pages already.) Just thinking about how much actual content is packed in here compared to those flimsy modern paperbacks you see in every Target or Barnes & Noble. It's incomparable, really.
It reminds me of when a kid gets assigned a teacher who expects absolute perfection—every single math problem solved, every little drawing colored in perfectly... 🙂

https://vdocuments.site/edo-vajnaht-...-c5a1kole.html

But then again, we had our own versions of "good morning" parts two and three back in first grade 😉😉
https://vdocuments.site/dobro-jutro-...vne-skole.html
https://zrno.files.wordpress.com/201...ro-jutro-3.pdf

I suppose everything taught in first grade today has been simplified as much as humanly possible, if you ask me. And I guess that same logic applies to second and third grade as well.

Gary Martin12 said:The daycare center boasts an incredible staff of specialists, yet I haven't heard a single word from them. I initially reached out regarding a speech therapist because my son was struggling with certain letter sounds and his speech was quite unclear. Suddenly, I was handed a referral for a psychologist too! The specialist concluded everything was fine, while the speech therapist just told us to join their long waiting list for treatment. We ended up doing all the exercises ourselves at home, and he actually mastered his pronunciation. Then, after finally reaching the top of that waiting list eighteen months later, they told us there wasn't much left for them to do with him.

I've noticed he isn't quite as quick or articulate as the other kids his age. I’ve scheduled a private evaluation with a speech pathologist to assess his readiness for kindergarten, so we'll see what they say. Hopefully, I'll get some solid feedback that gives me grounds to appeal the school district's decision. It seems like some kids don't even need to be held back just because they're in therapy, so I'm skeptical about how much I can achieve here, but I have to try. He has made such massive strides in the last six months that I truly believe an extra year of prep would only benefit him.

I am honestly just baffled. Everyone else seems to brag about how easily they requested a grade retention without any major hurdles or negotiations, yet I'm hitting a brick wall. Thanks everyone for the advice and comments!

So, essentially, the school doctor, the speech therapist, the educator, the psychologist, and the special education specialist all think there's no reason to hold him back—only you see it.
Just relax, maybe read to him, talk with him, watch some fun educational shows together, and I'm sure things will work out fine.

Rebecca Clark6 said:California is moving toward a universal C model for everyone

Robin Grant said:Exactly. Down in San Diego, kids in grades 1-4 have their spring break pushed back to April 19th. Everyone else—specialized elementary classes, high schools, and even the seniors—is strictly remote.

Reasonable.
Wait, 🤦can you drop a link to those details?

hiddendriver34 said:The folks over in California have basically geared up their entire lives just for the peak season. For them, it’s all about catering to the tourists and nothing else.
We'll just have to wait and see how the rest of the states decide to play it.

Just tourists. It’s kind of terrible, really.
😢And honestly, seeing how everyone is totally backing that one loudmouth guy... he's basically that one person who walks into a room and just takes over everything. He's completely embedded himself.

Robert Hernandez11 said:Maybe it's because some people can't tell the difference between Washington, D.C. and the rest of California? 🤔

I have no idea what the current numbers are—but honestly, I don't buy that everyone is heading back to physical classrooms right after the break. You might see elementary kids back, and maybe high school seniors, but everyone else will likely be stuck online for at least another week.
My heart just bleeds for those war profiteers, though; they’re going to miss out on all those students who were supposed to be sitting in their lectures. Such an irreplaceable loss for our education system.

unknown, I know I'm being incredibly cynical today—but that's just how my day is going...☕

perhaps.😬

unknown:

I'm not entirely sure what today's numbers look like—but I honestly find it hard to believe that every single student is going to be back in classrooms in person right after the break. I suppose elementary school kids might, but high schoolers, maybe just the seniors. Everyone else will likely stay online for at least another week. I mostly just feel bad for the war profiteers, since those students they were counting on for their lectures will miss out on such an incredible experience. It's an irreplaceable loss for our education system. unknown, I know I'm being incredibly cynical today—it's just one of those days, I guess...☕

🤣
I don't know, I try not to obsessively track all those statistics so I'm not quite sure how things have been trending over the last few days, though I did stumble upon that statement from the official in San Francisco suggesting schools might extend the break or pivot back to remote learning again.🤦

driftingtinker said:The numbers are looking lower than I expected... honestly, if things don't pick up significantly by tomorrow, nothing from the C model is going to matter in NYC.

are they even running tests these days?🤔
or rather... they test fifty people, forty-five come back positive, and then it sounds great because they conveniently leave out how many people they actually tested.🎉 🐔