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[personal profile] walkitout
Most kids, most of the time, are pretty awesomely compliant. Some ages have characteristic non-compliance (“terrible twos”, also, middle schoolers). All ages have a few kids that really struggle with school compliance demands. These kids wind up with extra parent-teacher conferences, 504s, IEPs, in special classrooms, in special schools and, alas, sometimes in correctional facilities. They collect diagnoses (ADD, hyperactivity, ADHD, ODD etc.). They collect medication. They are (among) the targets of truancy enforcement systems.

Because we have such poor data right now, it is basically impossible to know how this group of kids is doing with distance learning. We do not know as a group. We do not know as subgroups. Anecdotally, a lot of this group of kids is basically not showing up to do the distance learning work at all, and we do not have any kind of meaningful truancy enforcement system for distance learning.

I think we can safely say that teachers have a lot of sharp memories of this group of kids from the Before Times. And those kids are feared even more now, because any possibility of a safe return to school requires additional compliance (or at least, that is what we are all currently thinking, who knows what tomorrow might bring!). There are lots of stories from before the shutdowns of kids coughing on each other and on teachers intentionally, and there are stories in Sweden of it happening currently. While some of this is surely urban legend, these stories are appearing in enough detail in enough news outlets that it is reasonable to believe that it is happening (I mean, come on, people did that Tide Pod thing). More importantly, fear of it happening will prevent teachers from returning. At least some teachers, in at least some schools.

In case it was not obvious, but THE SAME KIDS that teachers believe need to be in school in order to not regress / make any progress are THE SAME KIDS that teachers most fear being in school.

It is plausible to further conclude that these may well be THE SAME KIDS that have the least effective supervision at home and whose parents most want them back in school.

Teachers demand that they go back. Teachers demand that they not be at risk from them when they do.

I will (tentatively) call this The Behavioral Kid Conundrum

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