In Santa Clara County, CA (Silicon Valley), a group of 40 principals got together in person a few weeks back to discuss reopening plans.
And they got COVID.
Is it any wonder that teachers don't trust that they will be kept safe?
Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
311–320 of 954 posts
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#312Earlier quoted context omitted.
Even if that is a cause, so? But the real issues revolve around a lack of oversight, small budgets, corruption, and exclusionary practices that hurt already marginalized groups. Edit: "your mask is slipping" isn't a productive characterization. What I meant was, your statement comes off as bias - "tribes", "the left", "protecting itself against competition" all scream pro-capitalist propaganda on a topic that, frankl…
>Also, your mask is slipping What are you insinuating?
It's pretty funny whatever it means, because I'm pretty much the least masked person on the internet. Here you go!
https://twitter.com/bpodgursky
bpodgursky@gmail.com
https://github.com/bpodgursky/
I have one username, and it's my name. It's all in my profile too. I don't pretend anything.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#313Earlier quoted context omitted.
Where does she work that pays $30k for an experienced teacher? Teacher pay sucks
She's in Colorado. The teachers' union agreed to a pay cut & freeze during the Bush financial crisis; pay had had only started to rise again a few years ago. This is somewhat of a digression, but the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that requires a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly. The people taking these jobs typically must have some other way of supporting their family; eit…
My mother has been a teacher for ~10 years in Colorado and makes $75k in jeffco.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#314Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are 74 million children CDC says that 1.7% of COVID cases belong to children. [2] Among children, CDC says 1.8% of cases required hospitalization. [2] >>> 74000000*0.017*0.018 A dumb kid is better than a dead kid, I agree. But are 74M dumber kids worth less than 25000 ICU visits in the entire country? [1]: https://www.childtrends.org/indicators/number-of-children [2]: https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/69/wr/mm69…
There are plenty of examples of distance learning working well. Assuming it is a failure seems willfully blind to me. This spring we rushed into something unexpected. We've had time to improve. But it seems that instead of focusing on improvements people are focused on their agenda.
Kids don't learn like adults. They can't replace teachers and peers with computers, not permanently.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#315My wife is a teacher and starting school (in person) in a week and a half. There’s no answers to questions like: - Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away? - When a teacher gets sick, what substitute teacher is going to want to teach an exposed class (also, they’ll be making sub plans with covid?)? - When they’re sick are will they be getting additional sick leave? - Do they get wo…
> Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away?
It pains me to admit that this didn't even occur to me as part of the topic of teachers being sent back. The human aspects of students-teacher relationships. I feel I've been desensitized to this after exposing myself to a constant stream of news, and now I'm thinking further about what other aspects lie behind other headlines. Thank you for sharing this
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#316Earlier quoted context omitted.
> has not failed people the same way it has in the US Not yet. It ain't over yet though, even though it might seem like it elsewhere. Basic facts are: herd immunity is prohibitively expensive from the fatalities perspective (although it may be our only long term option), a vaccine is not guaranteed to ever exist, and C19 is now endemic, so it will come back. Oh and also, for the society to function people must be abl…
If a vaccine cannot happen, neither can herd immunity. I read it has been eliminated in New Zealand, so elimination is possible with good government: https://edition.cnn.com/travel/article/new-zealand-coronavir...
> elimination is possible with good government
Good government, plus living on a small island that can close itself from the rest of the world. Most countries aren't in that situation.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#317The Los Angelos teachers added a few other requests [1]. The introduction starts with: [...] LAUSD educators clearly want to get back into schools with their students, but the underlying question at every step must be: Given broader societal conditions, how do we open physical schools in a way that ensures that the benefit outweigh the risks [...] And then proceeds to the following recommendations, among many others:…
I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters. Parents choose to send their kids there - if the existing public school was so good, why would they send them somewhere else? It's simply about choice, and sending your own kids to the best possible option. No one would ever deny their own children the best possible education available. It's so clearly about administrators and professionals over the n…
I don't understand the opposition to the opposition of charter schools. They are one of the purest examples of regulatory capture. It's not about choice, it's about private companies taking money and doing on par or worse jobs than their public government funded schools.
Being extremely pro regulatory capture is simply and truly immoral and evil.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#318I have pretty much given up on everybody at this point. I have already pulled my kid from school and will not send them back. I am in a single income family and I am now working from home. All actions and purchases at this point are to help us to become more independant from the system. Society and government at large has shown itself to be unreliable and undependable. I am also making longer term plans to move out o…
Not sure where you're from, but in many places, "society and government" has not failed people the same way it has in the US. Even within the US there are some places where local and state government have performed much better than places like Florida or NYC. That is to say, the problem is not, conceptually, "society and government", but instead, the American society and American government we have today. Don't give…
What we need is a plan and a leader that will pull us out of this gridlock and death spiral that we're in. We need a diagnosis of what exactly is going wrong, a concrete plan of action, and mass participation.
My diagnosis:
- Hyper-partisanship is causing politicians and the electorate to harden into uncompromising tribes. This hyper-partisanship also serves to increase the size and scale of the fringe wings of both parties, leading to events like the infamous white-supremacist Charlottesville rally.
The cause(s):
- 1. News as a business, particularly if that business is publicly traded, is not in the 'truth-telling' business. It is in the 'maximizing profits' business, as all (publicly traded) companies are.
- 1.1. Therefore, truth is ancillary to any for-profit news business. This will manifest itself in different ways depending on the monetization scheme of the business.
- 1.2. In the case of 24-hour news networks, like Fox and CNN, they are advertisement driven and therefore seek to maximize 'eyeballs'. Therefore, a constant stream of engaging content must be produced: for both Fox and CNN, the result is hyper-sensationalism. The creation of outrage, controversy, and even facts that don't exist. Further, because Fox is so partisan, it has effectively forced CNN to become partisan too.
- 1.3. The above is also true, and *especially* true, for ad-driven online news sources. Clickbait is a well-known phenomenon for, again, maximizing outrage and controversy for ad impressions. Visit an average article on CNN, Fox, or Breitbart and count how many ads you see. Now ask yourself: is it *really* in their best interest to be partial and nuanced?
- 2.1. The 'like' and 'share/retweet' mechanisms incentivize divisive, emotional, and simplistic posts/tweets.
- 2.2. And given that a small subset of users actually tweet or comment or post, those that do tend to be more radical, which lead people to believe that the majority opinion for ${POLITICAL_PARTY} is reflected in the comment section. This leads to a true 'Overton shift' for those in ${POLITICAL_PARTY} and opposite polarization for ${OTHER_POLITICAL_PARTY}.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#319Earlier quoted context omitted.
Good. The current state of the world is incredibly unnatural when you compare it to even 50 years ago. Everything is too connected. We are so much more efficient, but so much more fragile. The best thing you can do to save the world is save yourself and your family. Less fragility, more robustness at the personal / local level. I am mid twenties, and was homeschooled my entire childhood. My father owned a technology…
> but its a good kind of weird. This isn't guaranteed. A counterexample is Tara Westover[1] who grew up in an extremist version of what you are describing. She ultimately became successful but it was mostly despite her parents isolation from "the system", not because of them. [1] https://www.npr.org/2018/02/20/587244230/memoirist-retraces-...
In what education system are outcomes guaranteed?
The story you linked to is pretty interesting, but she clearly states she was allowed to learn (just not forced to), she obviously understood what a university was, and had the desire and ability to apply and be accepted to university at an age when her parents would have had the legal right to stop her if they so wished - they obviously supported her application. Her outcome was clearly a lot better than many students who go to public school.
Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk
#320For the teachers whose calling is teaching, I can see them moving to this part-time: https://outschool.com My wife and I were concerned about our daughter getting isolated. We don't want her on social media, but we do think it is important for her to connect with her affinity group, and explore her passions. I found out about outschool recently, and it looked like exactly what we needed to address this. The classes a…
So, keeping my child engaged for 5 days a week would cost about 150$ and 45$ go to the platform (judging from glancing over class duration/classes per week and cost).
Can somebody tell me what value outschool adds aside from being an agency?