Slate: “It Feels Like There’s No Winning”. “Christopher Pinto is a high school math teacher at the Lamar Consolidated Independent School District outside of Houston. His school only decided to take on a hybrid model—both online and classroom education—less than a week before the fall semester started, even though it had gone fully remote in the spring. Thus, families got to choose between in-person learning and virtual, but teachers were expected to show up unless they had health issues. Pinto is immunocompromised—he has Type 1 diabetes—and applied to get a medical waiver so he could teach remotely, but he was denied. He still had some hope that the school’s hybrid approach would suit him better, since remote learning was so isolating, but it’s not normal at all. On Wednesday’s episode of What Next, I spoke with Pinto about the hybrid learning experiment being tested all over the country, and why teachers feel so alienated right now.”
teaching
Trump’s war on TikTok could hurt these teachers: ‘My family will be screwed’ (Los Angeles Times)
Los Angeles Times: Trump’s war on TikTok could hurt these teachers: ‘My family will be screwed’. “An executive order targeting the popular video-sharing app TikTok made doing business with its Chinese parent company, Bytedance, illegal starting on Sept. 20. The order sparked a flurry of speculation: on the legality of the action, on the legitimacy of its claims that TikTok posed a national security threat, and over which U.S. company might try to buy the app and save its tens of millions of users from oblivion. For teachers on GoGoKid, which is also owned by Bytedance, it raised more urgent questions.”
Daily Beast: At Least 4 Teachers Have Died of COVID-19 Since Start of School Year
Daily Beast: At Least 4 Teachers Have Died of COVID-19 Since Start of School Year. “Two teachers died in Mississippi and AshLee DeMarinis, 34, a teacher at John Evans Middle School in Potosi, Missouri, died on Sunday. The coronavirus had already devastated schools before the summer break. In New York alone, 75 Department of Education employees died from COVID-19, including 31 teachers. The American Federation of Teachers said 210 of its members have died of the virus.”
University of Arkansas: College of Education and Health Professions Site Enhances Online Teaching, Enables Collaboration
University of Arkansas: College of Education and Health Professions Site Enhances Online Teaching, Enables Collaboration. “[Derrick] Mears, who teaches educational technology to practicing teachers and prepares instructional designers in the College of Education and Health Professions, is now a pro at teaching remote classes. His expertise is in high demand now, as his peers seek to give students a great education amid the pandemic. Mears is just one of several professors in the College of Education and Health Professions sharing online teaching expertise, or hard-won wisdom from the past few months, on a new website called COEHP Together: Remote Teaching Collaborative. Mears’ Flipgrid tip is among many he’s shared on the site, which is divided into three sections: organizing, interacting and evaluating.”
News Center Maine: Maine Dept. of Education launches online learning platform ‘MOOSE’ for teachers, students, and families
News Center Maine: Maine Dept. of Education launches online learning platform ‘MOOSE’ for teachers, students, and families. “MOOSE features an online library of asynchronous, interdisciplinary, project-based modules aligned to the Maine Learning Results for grades PK-12. Over the summer, more than 200 Maine educators from across the state developed nearly 100 modules to populate the first quarter of content.” It’s not geo-restricted; I wandered around and looked at modules for a few minutes.
Route Fifty: One State Offers Training To Help Teachers Combat Pandemic-Related Stress and Anxiety
Route Fifty: One State Offers Training To Help Teachers Combat Pandemic-Related Stress and Anxiety. “Teachers, counselors and staff members at K-12 schools in Connecticut will be offered free training from Yale University to address the stress, isolation and anxiety that they—and their students—have been experiencing since the Covid-19 pandemic closed schools in March.”
Adventures in the New Humanities: We’re in the Zone, but it’s The Twilight Zone (St. Olaf College)
St. Olaf College: Adventures in the New Humanities: We’re in the Zone, but it’s The Twilight Zone. “Everyone I’ve talked to is nervous/worried/scared. The very thought of teaching seems considerably more daunting than it did last spring. Last spring was an improvised endeavor; this fall we had ample time to plan. Expectations are high. One need only communicate with a first-year student to read, or hear, or virtually see that they are exclamation-point and squeaky-voiced excited. Returning students are looking forward to returning and hoping for a version of what Warren G. Harding might have called ‘normalcy,’ even though they too might be hearing eerie music in their heads. And we, despite all our fears, concerns, worries, and insecurities, have high expectations for ourselves. As an institution, we have always taken teaching seriously, but in the Twilight Zone of what The New York Times calls the ‘strangest year,’ there is no normalcy, only shifting sands.”
Good Morning America: Teachers are writing their own obituaries as schools near reopening amid COVID-19
Good Morning America: Teachers are writing their own obituaries as schools near reopening amid COVID-19. “A group of Iowa teachers have sent their own mock obituaries to their governor in hopes she’ll revisit plans for reopening schools. ‘I’m very scared,’ 7th grade teacher Kerry Finley of Iowa City told ‘Good Morning America.’ ‘Are we going to wear scrubs? Are they going to amend the dress code? If we are going to do this, we are going to have to do this the way the hospitals did. We need training. We can’t just say, “OK, go back.”‘”
Urban Institute: Teaching Through the COVID-19 Crisis
Urban Institute: Teaching Through the COVID-19 Crisis. “Teachers’ challenges will vary by region, district policy, years of teaching experience, demographics of students, and, especially, their age. Though much of the discussion about teacher challenges has focused on health concerns of teachers older than 50, midcareer teachers and younger teachers may face their own challenges as they continue to educate from a distance or plan for returning to school this fall.”
Educating Through a Pandemic: From a Kansas Showdown Over Campus Closures to California’s New Tool to Measure Learning and New York’s Surge in Homeschooling Families, 11 Ways Schools & States Are Adapting to COVID-19 (The 74)
The 74: Educating Through a Pandemic: From a Kansas Showdown Over Campus Closures to California’s New Tool to Measure Learning and New York’s Surge in Homeschooling Families, 11 Ways Schools & States Are Adapting to COVID-19 . “Regardless of in-person or remote instructional plans, district officials, teachers, advocates, and researchers are also heavily engaging in conversations around student assessment, citing grim findings on the impact of school closures on children’s academic achievement.”
American Independent: Teachers union supports strike over Trump’s ‘chaotic and catastrophic’ reopening plan
American Independent: Teachers union supports strike over Trump’s ‘chaotic and catastrophic’ reopening plan. “The American Federation of Teachers, which represents 1.7 million school employees, issued a resolution on Tuesday saying it will support any local chapter that decides to strike over reopening plans. The group says school buildings should open only in areas where coronavirus infections are low enough and if schools enact certain safety measures.”
Virtual school: Teachers want to improve but training varies (Phys .org)
Phys .org: Virtual school: Teachers want to improve but training varies. “With remote learning part of an increasing number of fall reopening plans, districts are facing pressure to improve after many students got left behind this spring in the scramble to close schools during the coronavirus pandemic. But investment in training varies widely. While some school systems have offered new guidance on teaching from afar, many educators feel like they’re on their own.”
Reality Check: What Will It Take to Reopen Schools Amid the Pandemic? 5 Experts Weigh In on What New Roles Teachers Should Play (The 74)
The 74: Reality Check: What Will It Take to Reopen Schools Amid the Pandemic? 5 Experts Weigh In on What New Roles Teachers Should Play. “This is the fifth in a series of invited responses to some of the big, unanswered questions facing America’s schools as they prepare to reopen in the fall. The Center on Reinventing Public Education, in partnership with The 74, fielded responses from a diverse roster of educators and policymakers in order to promote creative thinking and debate about how we can collectively meet student needs in an extraordinarily challenging school year, and beyond.”
Back To School: Teachers Are Ready To Quit Rather Than Put Their Lives At Risk (BuzzFeed News)
BuzzFeed News: Back To School: Teachers Are Ready To Quit Rather Than Put Their Lives At Risk. “This spring, a teacher in Dallas was invited to the high school graduation of the first class of students she had taught when she became a teacher a little over a decade ago — but the ceremony was canceled because of the coronavirus pandemic. Now, just a couple months later, facing an uncertain plan for reopening schools, she’s applying for jobs in the private sector and considering quitting teaching altogether.”
The Hill: Teachers union president dares Trump to sit in classroom amid coronavirus ‘and breathe that air’
The Hill: Teachers union president dares Trump to sit in classroom amid coronavirus ‘and breathe that air’. “The president of the nation’s largest teachers’ union hit back at President Trump over his demand that schools resume in-person classes this fall, saying reopening cannot take place without guaranteeing the safety of students and staff.”
