Friday: phone call with K., walk with M. and A., Mrs. Piggle Wiggle’s House

I had a delightful phone conversation with K. I am thinking a lot about how one might do schooling if one were not just doing it the way we always have. That is interesting, and apparently not something that anyone can actually get anyone else to think about in that frame, which is probably while school is so small c conservative. I may do some blogging about this later. Then again, probably not. I would just go on forever.

I canceled with M., because A. was having a rough morning, but we ran into M., and all walked together after all. A. was having trouble figuring out what to work on, so I suggested that she make Mrs. Piggle Wiggle’s upside down living room in Sweet Home 3D. THAT was really cool. She figured out how to do the chandelier upside down and it really does look like a campfire. It is awesome. There are no steps (stairs, but not short steps) in Sweet Home 3D, even the pay edition, so she built some out of boxes. They look great.

Also, very funny to have upside down pictures on the walls!

Absenteeism and distance learning link fu

Expect edits, especially over the weekend. I am actively looking for coverage of what school districts saw in terms of attendance and engagement _at the end_ of the academic year (so, not interested in what was going on in April, and only very marginally interested in May, mostly the last week or so). By that point, the “easy” (ha ha ha) parts of the transition had been done: the decision to close schools was made in March, the uncertainty of what to do next happened in April, and by May, schools were doing some kind of kinda sorta not mandatory and not graded schooling remotely in May. They had figured out how to get food to the kids, hot spots, devices, but were still ironing out individual technical problems, teachers were still figuring out how to do their side of things and districts were trying to triage curriculum decisions. By the end of May, some kind of routine was achieved. Absenteeism and lack of engagement at that point should have been low — I want to know who was still not engaging, why, and what efforts were made to connect.

https://www.wkbn.com/news/national-world/educators-look-at-online-absenteeism-as-virus-forces-continued-distance-learning/

Hartford, 20% not engaged, maybe a third making some effort but not a lot. As I expected: “Among students considered most at risk because of issues including past absenteeism, disciplinary problems and poor academic performance, less than half are participating at all.”

“At the 4,800-student Jamestown Public Schools in the southwest corner of New York, superintendent Bret Apthorpe said about 75% are engaged and most of the others participate at least somewhat. Around 1%, he said, have “fallen off the map.””

“ It’s important for people to know that people are shouldering up. People are working really hard to make it work. People are hopeful, people are resilient. And because of that, we are able to keep students engaged,” she said. “I have not been told by a parent, ‘Oh, we’re not doing this.’ They may be having a difficult time doing it, but parents want their students to succeed, and they want to work with us.” Batchelor is an elementary school principal. Earlier in the article, she noted that they were trying to make sure the parents knew school was happening, and trying to figure out what was needed. Some visits were made in conjunction with people who could connect families with other services.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/06/22/metro/one-third-providence-students-were-chronically-absent-during-distance-learning/

Ignore everything but this:

“During distance learning, attendance did increase – slightly.”

Providence schools have been taken _away_ from local control, because they do so poorly. And that was pre-pandemic.The mind boggles here, really.

Ok, this bit is tantalizing as well: “We have engaged a whole new group of students who really like [distance learning,]” said Harrison Peters, the district’s new superintendent. “But we’ve also disenfranchised a group of students that just don’t like it.””

https://www.postbulletin.com/news/education/6557195-Student-attendance-slumps-during-distance-learning

Detailed attendance data with bar charts and dates selected for comparison; nothing useful in terms of understanding who and why. Rochester, Minnesota