How to educate children during a pandemic is a quandary that families, educators, and government leaders are dealing with across the nation. What should we do?
Like many, my ideas related to this have wavered over time--the more I learn, the more I lean in the direction of as much safety as possible. I don't think it's worth trying to push forward a shoddy-at-best in-school program that runs the risk of infecting people when we could focus on virtual teaching/learning until this pandemic is dealt with in positive ways. A few months of lost education will not kill a child, family member, or teacher, but an unleashed pandemic might harm or kill them. So what can we do?
Virtual School from November through February Break
Across the state, go virtual.
First, make sure that every child and teacher has a good tech tool and WIFI.
Also make sure that families making under $200,000 with children under 12 get a hefty monthly childcare stipend that they can use in any way they want to support childcare and virtual learning.
This is the right thing to do for the following reasons:
- Children at home buys time to work on getting a handle on this pandemic. Right now numbers are rising, and they are rising amongst young people--those young people will likely not die, but they will spread that illness to family members and teachers who may die. Stop that risk now by going to virtual teaching/learning.
- Make sure public health measures for other businesses are tight and shared in order not to spread the virus in communities.
- Focus on what it means to promote a high-quality virtual learning program. Put into place loose-tight programs that teachers can use as guides as they teach their students.
- Keep MCAS--I do think we need a measure to see what happened across the state with learning--who did show progress during this time, and who did not. The scores may surprise us. Of course, this should be one measure, and the measure should be evaluated with other measures and used to inform, not punish anyone.
- Increase testing and contact tracing in the state to learn more about what's happening, and continue to work on vaccines and vaccine administration plans.
- Re-evaluate virtual learning in February and decide if it will continue until April or throughout the year.
- Consider giving families the choice to have their children repeat a grade next year or go ahead. That will take the pressure off everyone to rush academic growth at a time when people are so sick, worried, and facing a large number of other hardships. For example, if your child is in second grade this year, you can choose to have them repeat that year. If your child is a high school senior, they can repeat their senior year and then worry about college and more next year. One repeated year of school is not a big deal considering these children likely have long lives.