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.

One Last Analogy: day camp

When I was wee, if day camp was a thing, I never heard anything about it. I read about sleepaway summer camp in _Just Plain Maggie_ and other books, and I wanted to go so bad! Some time late in elementary school, we actually went as a whole class to some sleepaway thing. I remember making a shelter out in the woods. That was fun. A lot of bugs, tho, and kinda cold and damp because PNW. Summer school was something you could get through the school or maybe the rec center, but it cost money so no go there, either — well, until my sister had to do a makeup class of some sort, and then I said, hey, if she gets to go, then I do too! And I got to do a science summer class and we dropped eggs off the high school stadium roof (mine broke, I am not good at that sort of thing) and did model rockets and it was awesome.

Of course now, summer day camp is a Thing. I figured my kids might never get to do it, but A. does, and T. does sleepaway, so golden! Well, except everything is canceled this year.

But here is the thing. We all just Accept that school is a thing that goes on a break for parts of three months and working parents just have to Figure It Out. We just Accept that work hours and school hours do NOT line up, and we charge parents for xday before or after school or both, and we arrange to have after school activities like karate pick kids up to provide after school care if the family thinks that is better than xday.

WE DO NOT CARP AT PARENTS FOR PUTTING THEIR KIDS IN SUMMER DAY CAMP.

We do not expect that parents will simultaneously supervise their kids AND work at their jobs full time all summer. Duh.

We ALSO do not expect parents who sign up for xday or karate or whatever to figure out how to make this work for people who cannot afford the charge for xday or karate or whatever. We do not go, did you bring enough for everyone at them. We do not say, well, I would quit my job and financially struggle rather than sign my kid up for xday. Oh, wait, yeah, some people do that but we have mostly made them shut it.

And yet, when parents take a look at fall reopening being either 2 days a week max, or 100% remote, and decide to basically put together the moral equivalent of xday or summer day camp or whatever, suddenly it is all, privilege, and I would quit my job and financially struggle rather than hire a tutor, and Betsy DeVos will use this to end public education, and there will not be enough experienced teachers left to do the public schools because the pods will hire them all. (Conveniently, many, many educators have already been laid off and thus are presumably looking for jobs, possibly as pod tutors if the price and conditions can be negotiated in a way satisfactory to all participants. Always a hump to get over.)

OK, so, repeat after me: if it is okay to have private summer day camp and private sleepaway camp in the Before Times, what _precisely_ is different between that and hiring a tutor during the Now Times.

Because it looks exactly the same to me. It looks like schools were kinda slow and resistant to doing what needed to be done (year round school, reconfiguring education completely to reduce transmission risk meaningfully), and people who could solved the problem for their own families to bridge to whenever the school got it all figured out, if ever.

(Also, I am aware that summer camp need-based “scholarships” exist. Presumably, something similar could be set up for podded tutoring.)

It is definitely a Monday.

I realized belatedly that the grocery order did not deliver the english muffins (that is fine — I tell them do not substitute and sometimes they are out. They are for my son and he will not eat the substitutes, so I do not get them). I found this out when T. asked where they were. I was like, d’oh. Also, no salt & vinegar chips (probably the same reason, altho I may have forgot to even order them).

Anyway, I said, you can go get them. You can take your bike and a basket or your backpack and you have a credit card. You can even buy other things if you like, as long as you can get it all home.

Probably that was the wrong wording.

So he had his milk and yogurt, and got his backpack and his helmet and went out on his bike. Later, he came home, very bloody. Bloody knees, bloody arms, scratched and bloody nose and upper lip. But he had the groceries. Upon debriefing, I learned that it was a single accident _on the way to the store_ — he says no animals, people, bikes or cars other than his own involved. This is an improvement over the last accident (probably over a year ago). He did not call for a rescue, because he was able to _walk the bike_ to the store. He went in — they let him in, with blood dripping from his knees — cleaned up in the bathroom (bloody hands), then followed the one way aisle instructions, wearing his mask the whole time, paid for the card and walked the bike and groceries home. He had his phone. He chose not to call for a rescue. I got this all out of him as I was cleaning him up.

He is super bummed that he is not allowed to go swimming today (open sores — we had that discussion) or to Boundless Adventures (head hit ground, so no, you do not get to go climbing). We _think_ he did not hurt his head — we think he just grazed his face, but we were not there so we do not really know. Damage to the bike was just the chain came off.

We talked about going into the store bloody, and how blood can spread disease. He now understands a bit more about head injuries, disease transmission, and the importance of not stressing out essential works at grocery stores by making them make difficult decisions about whether to let the bloody person in or not.

R. fixed the bike. I cleaned up the blood and got some bactine on it. R. tried to get bandages to stick (this is hard — T. is now very hairy so bandages do not want to stay put unless you shave the spot which honestly, sounds miserable and I am unconvinced it is a good idea anyway). We have discussed how open sores can let germs in and that is undesirable.

He is hanging out and resting right now. I told him I would take him out to McDonald’s or patio dining since he cannot go with the sitter today.

I do not feel like there are any lessons to be learned about this. Well, okay, yeah, call for a rescue a bit earlier in the process! Given his parents attitude towards calling for a rescue, however, he probably still won’t. Accidents happen on bikes, and he knows what he was doing when he had the accident so hopefully he will try to avoid whatever it was that led to the face plant.

R. is going to take him to get a new bike helmet. Oh, so he also learned that bike helmets have to be replaced after they have hit something hard like the ground.

ETA: Also, yesterday’s Sun Basket delivery was never delivered; the shipper popped an exception saying that the package was damaged and would not be delivered. Joy.

ETAYA: I had a delightful 45 minute conversation with a design build person.