Education thread

[Vrede too]

Fucking cops

Fucking school, too.

[billy.pilgrim]

Fucking cops

Fucking school, too.

Standard procedure for untrained substitute teacher and cop resource officer.

But the real damage was from the crowd at the cop shop.

[billy.pilgrim]

“I think quite honestly this week went real well other than a couple of virtual photos," Gov. Brian Kemp said

Yeah brian, it must have been the photos.

[Vrede too]

(Page 3:)

UNC has a clusterfuck on its hands

We’re only a week into the semester and four COVID-19 clusters have already surfaced on and around campus....

One thing’s for sure — this roadmap leads straight to hell.

The editorial has gotten national attention, including WaPo.

All undergraduate courses to be delivered remotely starting Wednesday

Sorry, parents, they're coming back. It's depressing that so many schools have been so stupid.

[Vrede too]

LTE from parent of local college student and reply from Western Carolina University:

Students and parents on the hook if campuses close

Yikes. I'm sure this applies throughout the UNC System and probably to thousands of other US schools. So far, only UNC Chapel Hill has gone fully online.
https://www.wcu.edu/operations-procedur ... pdate.aspx

Give it a week or two for WCU.

This is interesting:

Use of Water Fountains

Everyone is encouraged to carry water bottles and use the water refill stations where available. Drinking from water fountains directly with your mouth is not advised from a public health standpoint.

I don't think I've used any water fountains in months, but I would have.

Another related LTE:

Why bring students back now?

[Vrede too]

WCU is still open for in-person instruction, but its CV-19 dashboard shows a significant number of new and cumulative cases. We’ll see.
https://www.wcu.edu/coronavirus/reporting.aspx

Teacher reinstated after parents complained about Black Lives Matter, LGBTQ posters

A Texas school district has reversed its decision to place a teacher on leave over Black Lives Matter, feminist and pro-LGBTQ posters displayed on the walls of her virtual classroom.

Taylor Lifka, an English teacher at the Roma High School in Roma, a border town of about 10,000 people, was placed on administrative leave Sunday after parents complained about the posters.



Pretty cool.

Speaking to NBC News, Lifka, 25, said the experience of having national attention turned toward her small classroom has been “overwhelming.”

“Our nation is in a really divisive state right now, and so when something like this comes out that a teacher is being placed on administrative leave because of parents' concerns over teaching tolerance in the classroom, that’s a bigger question,” she said....

This week, an online petition was started urging the school district to reverse its decision and reinstate Lifka.

"Please sign this petition to let the school district know that inclusivity and acceptance are not taboo ideas that deserve censorship; that high school students can and should be allowed to discuss the realities of the world instead of being sheltered inside a sanitized bubble; and that by reprimanding the teacher for trying to create a safe space for her students, the school is not being neutral, but is actively taking a stance that is antithetical to justice," the petition states....

I signed even though she's already been reinstated. "35,831 have signed."

[Vrede too]

More than 1,200 students test positive for COVID-19 at major university

Roll (infected) Tide.

The Return to Campus Has Created Clusters From Coast to Coast

... A New York Times survey of more than 1,500 American colleges and universities — including every four-year public institution, every private college that competes in NCAA sports and others that identified cases — has revealed at least 26,000 cases and 64 deaths since the pandemic began....

With no national tracking system, colleges are making their own rules for how to tally cases. While this is believed to be the most comprehensive survey available, it is also an undercount. Among the colleges contacted by The Times, many published case information online or responded to requests for case numbers, but at least 600 others ignored inquiries or refused to answer questions. More than 150 have reported zero cases....

Sigh. Our "centers of learning" have become centers of stupidity.

[Vrede too]

An LA teacher said she and her daughter had to flee their home after she received threats for wearing a Black Lives Matter t-shirt to class

A high school teacher in Woodland Hills, California, said she was forced to flee from her home after she faced harassment for wearing a pro-Black Lives Matter t-shirt to class and planned to incorporate discussions about social justice movements in her teaching.

The teacher's t-shirt, which she wore on the first day of virtual school, read "I can't breathe," the phrase that has become synonymous with the Black Lives Matter movement against racism and police brutality. The phrase on multiple occasions has been uttered by Black Americans just before they have been killed while in police custody....

A parent of a student at the school had posted a picture of the teacher, alongside her email address, on his social media accounts because he had been unhappy his daughter was learning about social justice causes in her English class, according to a report from CBS Los Angeles.

Then, on August 16, Elijah Schaffer, a podcast host and social media personality, tweeted the photo of the teacher wearing the "I can't breathe" shirt, which resulted in hundreds of threatening messages being sent to her inbox, the teacher said, according to CNN.

... "The start of the school year with distance learning has been stressful and traumatic enough, but now this teacher has the stress and trauma of being attacked and harassed with hate speech and threats," Cecily Myart-Cruz, president of the United Teachers Los Angeles union, told CNN. "This is absolutely unacceptable."

... On Wednesday, around 100 students and community members showed up outside of the school to protest in support of the English teacher, according to the LA Times. Also Wednesday, hundreds of teachers in the Los Angeles Unified School District wore Black Lives Matter shirts in solidarity with the teacher, the LA Times reported.

... The teacher and her teenage daughter left their home due to the nature of some of the threats she received, and after someone had shared her address online, CBS LA reported. She also filed three restraining orders, according to the report, including one against the parent who initially shared her image and against Schaffer, the social-media personality.

"I can't afford to go to a hotel and I can't go home," the teacher told the local CBS station. "My daughter's a ninth-grader starting at this school. She wears a mask. We can't stay in our home."

[Vrede too]

This teacher turned remote learning into a road trip: 'What if I teach history from the places where it happened?'

A history teacher in Texas is giving new meaning to distance learning, racking up roughly 3,000 miles and crisscrossing the country as she conducts lessons from significant sites like Gettysburg and the Lincoln Memorial.

With her school’s in-person classes on pause until after Labor Day, Cathy Cluck, an AP U.S. History and AP European History teacher at Westlake High School in Austin, Texas, got the green light from her principal to embark on a project she calls her “Great American History Road Trip.” Since Aug. 21, the 27-year teaching veteran has been visiting notable landmarks, greeting her students over video chat from a new location each day....

[Vrede too]

Judge strikes down DeVos plan to boost pandemic relief for private schools

U.S. District Judge Dabney Friedrich, an appointee of President Donald Trump, ruled that DeVos ran afoul of the CARES Act when she required public schools to send a greater share of pandemic assistance to private school students than is typically required under federal law.

The judge sided with the NAACP, which had brought the legal challenge against DeVos’ policy, criticizing it as a ploy to divert emergency aid away from needy public schools toward more affluent private-school students.

Several other judges had already preliminarily blocked DeVos’ rule in certain states, but Judge Friedrich’s ruling — which is final — goes further in striking down the entire rule as illegal. The ruling will apply nationwide.

Friedrich ruled that DeVos lacked the authority to add her own conditions on the $13 billion that Congress set aside for K-12 schools in the CARES Act. The restrictions applied to another $3 billion pot of money in the law controlled by governors, to the extent they chose to spend it on K-12 schools....

[O Really]

I haven't paid enough attention to DeVos' shenanigans to know, because (a) there's nothing I can do about it; (b) there's only so many things I can keep going in my worrier at the same time; and (c) most of what she does will be ruled unlawful or likely changed back after January. But what's her deal with trying to do so much with the private schools? I can see wanting to send your kid to a (good) private school, and I can see a kid wanting to go to a (cool) private school, but I don't see why anyone in charge of the entire system would systematically favor the privates - unless they were getting kickbacks from the owners or doing favors for the wealthy patrons. Oh. Nevermind.

[GoCubsGo]

I haven't paid enough attention to DeVos' shenanigans to know, because (a) there's nothing I can do about it; (b) there's only so many things I can keep going in my worrier at the same time; and (c) most of what she does will be ruled unlawful or likely changed back after January. But what's her deal with trying to do so much with the private schools? I can see wanting to send your kid to a (good) private school, and I can see a kid wanting to go to a (cool) private school, but I don't see why anyone in charge of the entire system would systematically favor the privates - unless they were getting kickbacks from the owners or doing favors for the wealthy patrons. Oh. Nevermind.

It is weird because she supposedly has enough money for generational lifetimes.

How many yachts can you ski behind?

[O Really]

I haven't paid enough attention to DeVos' shenanigans to know, because (a) there's nothing I can do about it; (b) there's only so many things I can keep going in my worrier at the same time; and (c) most of what she does will be ruled unlawful or likely changed back after January. But what's her deal with trying to do so much with the private schools? I can see wanting to send your kid to a (good) private school, and I can see a kid wanting to go to a (cool) private school, but I don't see why anyone in charge of the entire system would systematically favor the privates - unless they were getting kickbacks from the owners or doing favors for the wealthy patrons. Oh. Nevermind.

It is weird because she supposedly has enough money for generational lifetimes.

How many yachts can you ski behind?

"Need" is rarely a reason for obscenely wealthy people chasing more money.

[billy.pilgrim]

It wasn't that long ago that taxpayers didn't fund private schools. We also had good schools. We still do but they are at the brink after losing so much of their funding to the fundi schools.

[GoCubsGo]

It wasn't that long ago that taxpayers didn't fund private schools. We also had good schools. We still do but they are at the brink after losing so much of their funding to the fundi schools.

Not to mention the looming teacher shortage by the end of the school year.

[Vrede too]

Plus, there's racism, classism, entitled elitism, and ideological libertarianism and anti-socialism leading to the intentional dismantling of public education. Greed counts for a lot, but they are also fascist true believers.

[O Really]

Plus, there's racism, classism, entitled elitism, and ideological libertarianism and anti-socialism leading to the intentional dismantling of public education. Greed counts for a lot, but they are also fascist true believers.

OK, so I can see somebody comfortable with the current and past medical insurance system be uncomfortable with changing to a "Medicare for All" or similar plan. I can see somebody who went to a private school and whose parents, grandparents, and kids went to private schools getting an attitude of superiority over the public school kids. And I can see somebody who had a bad experience in public school wanting to see big changes in the system. But public education has been a fundamental keystone of US society for as long as there has been a US society. In every state. In every county. Nobody is alive today that didn't grow up with public education being a high(ish) priority in every community. How does anybody even get the idea that providing a good public education is inherently not a good thing? And why does anybody else listen to them?

[Vrede too]

... Nobody is alive today that didn't grow up with public education being a high(ish) priority in every community. How does anybody even get the idea that providing a good public education is inherently not a good thing? And why does anybody else listen to them?

With very few word changes your post describes and questions the entire last four years.



A SIMPLE explanation of the Simple Hybrid Model.

[Vrede too]

'Log off! Log off!' teacher orders students when sexual assault livestreamed during first grader's remote learning class

Ugh. Additional charge for each kid that saw it. Throw away the key.

[Vrede too]

Racist whites being , as usual:

Residents of Wisconsin town near Kenosha in uproar over teacher's racism lesson