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Remote Support for Remote Learning
As long as I am feeling incredibly annoyed anyway, I might as well get this idea out here.
My kids both have IEPs. Until last year, one was in an out-of-district placement (special ed consortium class); he came back in district last year, but was still in a substantially separate classroom, for those of you who have had occasion to view IEP forms and are familiar with the standard language. The other one was in a resource room program with an aide (we will call that mainstreamed for the peanut gallery, with the understanding that this is not a situation covered by a list of accommodations to be made by the classroom teacher).
Obviously, once things went to remote learning in the middle of March, IEP services ... sorta went on hold. Which I had no problem with. T.’s remote learning went spectacularly well. He enjoyed it and was almost entirely independent. I think I helped him with some math one time. And he asked me to help him find some supplies for an art project once. And I think he wanted me to play catch with him as a PE assignment at one point. I checked in with his teacher occasionally to make sure that things were not going horribly awry invisibly to me; she kept telling me how great he was doing. I was super happy about this, and very grateful. I was not hugely surprised; he is quite independent and he is in 8th grade. Was, anyway.
With A., however, things were very different. She was in fifth grade. She is NOT super independent. And she is struggling with a lot of emotional regulation right now; frustration is very difficult for her to manage. (That’s my girl!) That was true while school was still in person; there were a couple of really bad weeks where the team was emailing me trying to figure out how to help her, and they try very hard not to have to do that.
Oh, while I am here! I reallllllly hope that they laid off the math specialist. And I hope that she finds some sweet pod setup with people who love math puzzles, and that she decides to do that forever and never ever ever inflict her fucking math puzzles on a school system ever again. Lucky for her, I do not know her name. If I ever run across her in person, she is going to hear in detail what I think of her life choices as they impacted on my family. What I do know, is she nixed using Khan Academy. *eye roll*
Anyway. Once the special ed team figured out what they were going to do, they offered some zoom services. One of the things they offered was a one-day-per-week session where they helped A. with her school work. I was _super skeptical_. And yet, they were both helpful with the specific item they helped her with, and they helped A. a lot with her frustration level in general.
Because that was so helpful, I got to thinking about ways to make zoom schooling work better for kids whose parents are unable (because they are not there, because they do not know the material, because they do not know the language, whatever) to provide additional support on site. And what I concluded was that a LOT of what I did to help A. could have been done via a zoom session. Basically set up a few kids (a half dozen, plus or minus) with a helper in a zoom that stays open whenever the kids are doing schoolwork (6 kids per helper, I mean). Kids can type questions in the chat, or raise their hand or just speak up or whatever. The share screen is available to the helper can see what the kid is working on. If the kids are working on the same material, you could allow whatever level of socializing / helping each other among the kids that was deemed appropriate for the task / topic / group.
A. has been doing Camp Empow for a few weeks each summer. I do that in lieu of ESY (extended school year — that is summer school paid for by the district, for kids deemed to need it to avoid regressing) for A., because .. let’s just say that the ESY program was run by the people out of Conant and they are expletive deleted. Or at least they used to be. I would say, hey, maybe it is just me and my kids, except I’ve been here for long enough that I could name people who _want_ their kids in Conant, and still have to get advocates and threaten litigation to get Conant’s people to Do Their Fucking Jobs Already. I do not think it is just me. Anyway. This year, Camp Empow started out all virtual, and A. really hates wearing a mask (you would not even believe how many socks we went through trying to get socks she would tolerate. And the underwear. Jesus, the number of underwear we went through trying to find something that did not lead to meltdowns. You can say all you like about training kids to wear masks, but when you are still fighting to find socks and underwear that an 11 year old can tolerate, I hope you recognize that the mask thing is not going to be easy).
A little side comment here. Yes, we flew in June. Twice. And we went other places that required A. to wear a mask. I try to have three different mask options with me, because whatever she is wearing, after about an hour, she will get really upset with it. So you are gonna need choices.
Where was I? Oh, right. Camp Empow was basically 9-4 Zoom. Yikes. But a lot of that time was project time, and it was set up in exactly the kind of helper way I describe above. It is not perfect — A. still can get really frustrated and have meltdowns, but it works really well generally, and if it was not so very many hours in a row, I suspect the meltdowns would have been less frequent. They were also able to work through a lot of technical issues using zoom and the technical issues they struggled with were not necessarily ones that were solvable (one of them was solvable but they did not come up with it, but after a bit I figured out a temporary solution and later R. came up with a better solution and ultimately I bought a different monitor).
For younger children, and for kids who really do poorly with screens (not my kids!), in person support in some kind of pod context (whether that is in homes arranged by the parents or by a district, or in schools in a socially distanced way) is likely going to be necessary to meet FAPE requirements. As individuals and collectively, we should think long and hard before interfering with families who want to set this sort of solution up and fund it themselves, and we should learn from their experience and use it to inform whatever districts wind up needing to do.
But before we go jumping to that, I hope we do more along the lines of remote support for remote learning. It would enable us to benefit from the wisdom and experience of a lot of educators who have at least some technical chops, and who really do not want to do anything in person yet.
My kids both have IEPs. Until last year, one was in an out-of-district placement (special ed consortium class); he came back in district last year, but was still in a substantially separate classroom, for those of you who have had occasion to view IEP forms and are familiar with the standard language. The other one was in a resource room program with an aide (we will call that mainstreamed for the peanut gallery, with the understanding that this is not a situation covered by a list of accommodations to be made by the classroom teacher).
Obviously, once things went to remote learning in the middle of March, IEP services ... sorta went on hold. Which I had no problem with. T.’s remote learning went spectacularly well. He enjoyed it and was almost entirely independent. I think I helped him with some math one time. And he asked me to help him find some supplies for an art project once. And I think he wanted me to play catch with him as a PE assignment at one point. I checked in with his teacher occasionally to make sure that things were not going horribly awry invisibly to me; she kept telling me how great he was doing. I was super happy about this, and very grateful. I was not hugely surprised; he is quite independent and he is in 8th grade. Was, anyway.
With A., however, things were very different. She was in fifth grade. She is NOT super independent. And she is struggling with a lot of emotional regulation right now; frustration is very difficult for her to manage. (That’s my girl!) That was true while school was still in person; there were a couple of really bad weeks where the team was emailing me trying to figure out how to help her, and they try very hard not to have to do that.
Oh, while I am here! I reallllllly hope that they laid off the math specialist. And I hope that she finds some sweet pod setup with people who love math puzzles, and that she decides to do that forever and never ever ever inflict her fucking math puzzles on a school system ever again. Lucky for her, I do not know her name. If I ever run across her in person, she is going to hear in detail what I think of her life choices as they impacted on my family. What I do know, is she nixed using Khan Academy. *eye roll*
Anyway. Once the special ed team figured out what they were going to do, they offered some zoom services. One of the things they offered was a one-day-per-week session where they helped A. with her school work. I was _super skeptical_. And yet, they were both helpful with the specific item they helped her with, and they helped A. a lot with her frustration level in general.
Because that was so helpful, I got to thinking about ways to make zoom schooling work better for kids whose parents are unable (because they are not there, because they do not know the material, because they do not know the language, whatever) to provide additional support on site. And what I concluded was that a LOT of what I did to help A. could have been done via a zoom session. Basically set up a few kids (a half dozen, plus or minus) with a helper in a zoom that stays open whenever the kids are doing schoolwork (6 kids per helper, I mean). Kids can type questions in the chat, or raise their hand or just speak up or whatever. The share screen is available to the helper can see what the kid is working on. If the kids are working on the same material, you could allow whatever level of socializing / helping each other among the kids that was deemed appropriate for the task / topic / group.
A. has been doing Camp Empow for a few weeks each summer. I do that in lieu of ESY (extended school year — that is summer school paid for by the district, for kids deemed to need it to avoid regressing) for A., because .. let’s just say that the ESY program was run by the people out of Conant and they are expletive deleted. Or at least they used to be. I would say, hey, maybe it is just me and my kids, except I’ve been here for long enough that I could name people who _want_ their kids in Conant, and still have to get advocates and threaten litigation to get Conant’s people to Do Their Fucking Jobs Already. I do not think it is just me. Anyway. This year, Camp Empow started out all virtual, and A. really hates wearing a mask (you would not even believe how many socks we went through trying to get socks she would tolerate. And the underwear. Jesus, the number of underwear we went through trying to find something that did not lead to meltdowns. You can say all you like about training kids to wear masks, but when you are still fighting to find socks and underwear that an 11 year old can tolerate, I hope you recognize that the mask thing is not going to be easy).
A little side comment here. Yes, we flew in June. Twice. And we went other places that required A. to wear a mask. I try to have three different mask options with me, because whatever she is wearing, after about an hour, she will get really upset with it. So you are gonna need choices.
Where was I? Oh, right. Camp Empow was basically 9-4 Zoom. Yikes. But a lot of that time was project time, and it was set up in exactly the kind of helper way I describe above. It is not perfect — A. still can get really frustrated and have meltdowns, but it works really well generally, and if it was not so very many hours in a row, I suspect the meltdowns would have been less frequent. They were also able to work through a lot of technical issues using zoom and the technical issues they struggled with were not necessarily ones that were solvable (one of them was solvable but they did not come up with it, but after a bit I figured out a temporary solution and later R. came up with a better solution and ultimately I bought a different monitor).
For younger children, and for kids who really do poorly with screens (not my kids!), in person support in some kind of pod context (whether that is in homes arranged by the parents or by a district, or in schools in a socially distanced way) is likely going to be necessary to meet FAPE requirements. As individuals and collectively, we should think long and hard before interfering with families who want to set this sort of solution up and fund it themselves, and we should learn from their experience and use it to inform whatever districts wind up needing to do.
But before we go jumping to that, I hope we do more along the lines of remote support for remote learning. It would enable us to benefit from the wisdom and experience of a lot of educators who have at least some technical chops, and who really do not want to do anything in person yet.