Welcome to Our Forums. Once you've registered and logged in, you're primed to talk football, among other topics, with the sharpest and most experienced fantasy players on the internet.
This is what I keep thinking about. For the most part, we have kept kids out of the fray and isolated more than other groups. How will these numbers hold up when we put them all together. Is it worth the risk to find out?
Kids have not been isolated all summer here. Pool parties, play dates, little league, youth sports, birthdays, etc all going on here.
I.e. it's not under control, therefore it's out of control. An out of control epidemic spread throughout hundreds of communities in this country.
I posted this link in the FFA (impossible to keep up with the multiple threads) - the rumor (and that's all the weight I will give it for now) is that the student who took that viral pic was suspended from school. Unclear if it's true and if it is whether it was for that or something else. I'm skeptical but then again I'm still in shocked that the fine people who are running these North Georgia counties didn't have a better plan than what they appear to have. My gut tells me that a lot of folks just threw their hands up and said, ok we will open but using cases as a fallback to close things down. Strong leadership was needed to at least say they were not going to open without a mask mandate, a plan to social distance (something like A/B schedule). What they are trying to do is madness.
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/amphtml/laurenstrapagiel/north-paulding-high-school-suspensions-for-hallway-photos?__twitter_impression=true
Or they will just stop quarantining the whole class and try to keep the positive cases quiet.
Not to downplay COVID, but per the CDC you know 21,000 school age children are hospitalized from the Flu in a year. So it appears to me that the articles fear mongering over 600 hospitalizations are the ones politicizing it the most...they don't blink an eye for 21000 hospitalizations normally. Those monsters sending kids to school during flu season must be the devil incarnate itself! There is a lot of hypocrisy on both sides. My kids started school in Georgia...my wife teaches there. They wear masks, I am not worried or sickened they are in school. Just saying...
The concern here and why it's significantly different from "just the flu" is the permanent tissue damage this virus brings with it that the flu doesn't. For example, we already know the heart doesn't regenerate tissue. Once the heart is formed that's it. We also know that this virus damages tissue. The question then becomes, long term, what is the impact on X% tissue damage to the heart (should it get there) of children. We already know that tissue damage like that in adults shaves off years of their lives.
2018-2019 influenza deaths: 34, 200.
And for me it's the incredible unknowns that still exist around this virus
Exactly. If we are going to have a vaccine by November 3rd can't we at least wait a few more months?
Only talking about children...more children are affected by the FLU than COVID....the FLU is more deadly to children than COVID. Obviously it is not the FLU, but previous sentences about children apply. Military is over-reacting about COVID due to the unknowns right now and not wanting to send COVID folks to units. The military is stricter about response to COVID than the general public so it makes sense.
Came here to post exactly this. I know a guy, big Trump supporter, was posting on Facebook last week about the crazy hydroxychloriquine doctor and sounding like the world’s biggest relativist: The experts have been wrong any so many things since March, we shouldn’t silence the voices of those challenging the conventional wisdom, etc. Yet when it comes to schools, he is 100% convinced that the science shows kids aren’t at risk.
Yeah, the aforementioned friend from my previous post was saying, “If they’re only doing half the work, they should only get half their pay.” As if it’s laziness that’s making them reluctant to teach in a classroomSchool Board voted 7-0 in favor of doing virtual only about a week ago.
I guess a petition signed by about 200 people/families got them to have another meeting tomorrow night to maybe reconsider. Of course on FB, so my wife said there was a lot of "lazy teachers don't to do anything and get paid" type of ignorant posts.
Again.... we don't know this. All we know about is short term and even then all we know is "they aren't dying right now like adults are"gobrowns33 said:
Seems like every teacher I have talked to had to work harder in the spring when they went virtual.zftcg said:
Nearly 100,000 children get Covid in late July
I thought so a few months ago when i was pointing it out, but apparently not. Might be too logical for this place
I'm not blaming you for this, but the link doesn't cite age of kids. From what I've read older kids appear to carry the virus as well as adults, but younger kids tell a vastly different story. This is a key distinction that needs vetted to make the most informed decision.
I think too many people think that distance learning is the same as working from home. They see others not working hard while WFH or they do it themselves, so they assume teachers will be lazy too.zftcg said:
Yup, most of what I have read, when the data is actually broken down vs just saying 18 and under or 21 and under, is that generally kids 10 and younger seem to contract and spread at lower levels, while 10 and older seem to be fairly close to the same levels as adults.
One more point about this: I might feel more reassured about the lesser relative danger to children if there were any proven scientific explanations for it. Instead everything I've read involves a lot of hypotheses about T-cells and kids being exposed to other coronaviruses and such. Or, as @acarey50 says, it may just be because we've done a better job of socially distancing our kids. The point is, we don't really know, and until we do we should proceed carefully and not jump to conclusions.
I'm going to generalized based only on anecdotal evidence (and not a whole a lot of it) so take it for what it is worth.
My friend works for a Catholic School who are unfortunately using this as a recruiting opportunity. She was just informed that all the teachers will be required to attend a 4 day retreat the week before school opens. I do not understand how people are this dumb.
Sounds like they might be related to the folks running my office who think it's a good idea to continue doing potlucks in the conference room
To be fair, one of the biggest problems with distance learning is that it exacerbates inequality. Well-off, highly educated parents -- the type that would be able to set up their own home-schooling program -- should do fine with distance learning. Low-income families -- who may not have reliable devices or Internet connections, and whose parents may not be at home because they work essential jobs -- could fall farther behind. Also, special needs children of all income levels could have particular troubles.
Yes, it is a huge advantage for the smart kids with reliable tech. I have done homebound instruction before. This is when a kid is hurt or sick and can't attend school for a long period of time. The teachers send their work home and a teacher is assigned to work with the kid a couple hours a week at their house. One kid I had was a genius. I would give him his geometry work, come back the next week and ask if he needed help. He said "nope, easy stuff. I have actually moved past where the teacher was since it's all so easy." Basically all I did for the kid was sit there and administer his tests to ensure he wasn't cheating. This kid would be fine in any kind of learning environment. I have also worked homebound with kids who it took the full 2 hours for them to sort of understand 1 or 2 simple theorems. Those kids are in deep #### with remote learning.
Also, I saw first-hand last spring the opposite risk with my then-9 year old. He's incredibly smart, but I think all the teachers were encouraged to go lowest common denominator and make sure they didn't try to overwhelm the struggling kids. So he did fine with distance learning, but I'm worried we may not be pushing him as much as he needs.
Yeah that was absolutely the case. We were instructed to basically only cover the most essential content and trim things down so it was manageable for everyone. We didn't want to overwhelm any students or families during the uncertainty of the pandemic. I think now that we all have unfortunately become somewhat comfortable with the current state of things, teachers will be more willing to challenge kids.
Fingers crossed.
Good points
Short-term I generally agree with you. Medium- to long-term, we need to get caseloads way down, implement widespread testing and contact tracing, allocate money to schools, and ensure that they can reopen safely. The only reason we're facing this Sophie's Choice is because we've spent the past six months screwing our virus response up so badly. Other countries have done all these things despite not having a vaccine. It's not impossible.Good points
I'm not advocating for remote learning now and forever. The smartest minds are saying we should have a vaccine next year. Absolutely nobody knows what the long term consequences of getting this is yet. I think it's better to remote learn as much as possible until then. My biggest fear is that in 5-20 years from now we have millions of Americans, and people around the world for that matter, that have serious health problems from contracting the virus. We need to err on the side of caution IMO.
My roommate was a teacher of 3-4 year olds at a university-based preschool in spring. For about 6 weeks in March and April, she and her aides did about as good a job as possible with zoom lessons for the 16 or so students. She sent lesson plans and materials in advance so the parents could assist. Some kids had short attention spans and were not receptive to virtual lessons. Others did well. When the school closed in May, since parents didn't wanna pay $1,400 or more for virtual lessons, she started private zoom lessons, at their insistence, with 5 kids, 1 or 2 at a time, 30 to 40 minutes, and was very successful in several pre-k readiness topics, including phonics, subitizing and even robotics using ozobot, which was the Friday fun lesson that develops algorithmic type skills in theory. She delivered a box of materials to their homes, since manipulatives are important at that age. These kids and parents were the best and most motivated, so it might not transfer to other kids. Actually, there was one kid whose parents would rent a room twice a week for lessons. She just started a job at a YWCA that has more secure funding than most private preschools. Next year, she'll be a public school teacher.
Not sure about the Spring but this is the hardest I've ever had to prepare for a new school year.
I am kind of jealous as I am in limbo waiting on decisions and am trying to prep for like 5 different possibilities.
