That would literally be all of D21’s teachers from last year. All have kids ranging from age 2 to age 12. Half of her teachers are also married to other teachers!
Last time I checked U of Mich said it would consider PSAT, PLAN (pre ACT), etc. as alternatives to SAT/ACT. You’d think more schools would try this (and maybe they have) but this is the only one I’ve seen so far.
We’re now all online for first 9 weeks of school, and perhaps hybrid after that. They’re still working out the metrics for moving to hybrid. My S is convinced it’ll end up being whole first semester online. We’ll see.
They decided to move to a block schedule which I think is good. Four courses a semester is much easier to manage virtually for teachers and students.
They’re going to re-open course registration the first week of Aug. and classes start Aug 17th!
The district is working on child care solutions for teachers – I don’t think you can effectively teach online (it’ll be a combination of synchronous and asynchronous) and watch your own kids if they’re young.
If remote, I’m hoping teacher’s contracts will require them to teach at least some portion of each day’s class synchronous. Of course I know some will struggle to secure child care, yet they also have to be able to do their job…teaching in real time.
Both my kids have had teacher conferences where the teacher’s young kids have interrupted (online courses). It is all about expectations and adaptation. It really isn’t that big of a deal. One learns how to focus and screen out the excess noise, and a brief moment or two of “oh, is this your kid?” is kind of a nice break. If we’re talking about a young kid constantly interrupting for half an hour or so…then that’s different. The teachers my kids have had figured out methods of keeping their young kids busy (for the most part) during class sessions.
Our county had childcare for essential workers setup and teachers fall into this category. Many essential workers have figured out childcare while schools were closed, so I don’t see why teachers would be different.
D21 is concerned about getting letters of recommendation. The math and English teachers she wanted to use she had as a sophomore, but not as a junior. She will have those teachers once again as a senior, but she’ll be in online classes only. She doesn’t feel like she’ll have the same connection, interactions, and ability to re-develop relationships with these teachers that she would in person. That’s true. “Everything is messed up! This is so unfair!”
No argument here in regards to the fact that many teachers have young kids, and that this is a complicated situation…but just as another anecdotal example to counter what your D experienced last year, for my D last year, only 1 of her 8 teachers had kids (and in that case, they were, indeed, young kids). I just don’t know what a good solution is with all competing factors.
It seems as if our district does have expectations for some portion to be synchronous - I believe how much and which parts will vary by class, but I’m very-cautiously optimistic. I think? ?
A well, we got in 2 successful visits today! Hot as anything, and I feel like I’m ready to drop after the drive, but we’ve added a reach and a safety with great merit - Bucknell and Susquehanna.
Super surprised by both - much smaller than D wanted, but Bucknell’s campus is so pretty! And Lewisburg is a great little town! Susquehanna also had a nice campus; both feel bigger than we expected for the number of students.
Nice to get visits, even if Bucknell was just seeing outside. D was excited as she loves college tours! A little bit of normal (except the mask part!).
@NJWrestlingmom curious about your thoughts on Susquehanna. It’s a safety option for us too, but I everyone I know seems to really like it. What concerns me is it’s in the middle of nowhere. Was there any conversation about internships and career outcomes, etc.?
@eb23282 We really liked it. We REALLY live in the middle of nowhere, so Susquehanna didn’t feel in the middle of nowhere to us - Target, Walmart, mood theater, tons of fast food etc all within 5 miles. Definitely not a “college town” vibe, but easily accessible. THere is a cute little (very) town within walking distance but not a ton there.
I believe it was 96% are employed or in grad school within 6 months. Sounds like they have a very strong alumni network and they hold a couple events each year for current students to interact with them. Sounds that leads to a lot of internships. They do have a career fair, but mentioned they will bus kids to Penn State for theirs as well. They also require some type of study abroad and guarantee business majors an international internship if they want one.
S17’s ex girlfriend loves it there. A good friend of ours is also an alumni and still very active with his frat there and clearly loves his school - it’s really why it was on our visit list. Max merit increased to $38k/yr, no extra app required.
@eb23282 Susquehanna is only an hour from Harrisburg, the state capital. I would expect there would be plenty of internship opportunities in the Harrisburg metropolitan area, as this area’s economy has been very stable and continues to grow.
@eb23282 My S19 loved Susquehanna. They offered him merit that brought the cost down to between our actual state schools and the state-relateds (we are PA residents). It came down to Penn State main campus or Susquehanna. When he chose PSU, I had a really hard time breaking up with Susquehanna. 
It’s a wonderful school.
One of his best friends is there now in the creative writing program. And another friend from the class in between S19’s and S21’s will be starting there this fall. They attend/ed a small, Catholic high school which says something about Susquehanna that several kids have gone there.
S21 is not interested due to location. Not into the rural PA LAC thing because he grew up in a small, PA town. I’m sad. But it’s his life I guess. LOL!
Catching up.
Middle School classes:
I skimmed the last several pages so maybe this got answered, but my understanding is that for classes like Spanish 1, Algebra 1, etc that many kids take in middle school, the colleges look more to see that you made it to language level 4 or to Calc. Obviously if you are taking Algebra 2, you have already had Algebra 1, same with FL.
ACT clustersituation:
A college a couple of hours away is doing a bit of PR damage control because apparently ACT didn’t communicate to several students that they canceled the July ACT at that location. I think it was widespread enough that it made the paper, and the college quickly threw ACT under the bus. They let the reporter know that they gave plenty of notice to ACT, and that unlike ACT they had no list of the affected students. The only entity who could have properly notified them was ACT.
Another friend drove his 2 boys 2 hours to a different still open test site, admission tickets in hand. But they weren’t on the list from ACT, so they weren’t allowed to test even though they had admission tickets to test at that location.
Have I mentioned that I hate ACT?
School reopening:
Originally we were scheduled for in person classes with no mask requirement. Some parents (like my wife) were up in arms over that, and the school board changed the policy Thursday. Now masks will be required for all people in the building including students, not just the teachers. I’m happy, but as would be expected my wife’s Facebook feed is erupting with people who think their constitutional rights are being violated and their kids will have brain damage. I was with my cousin who regularly wears a mask for 10 hours at a time when I got the news. He is perplexed by the people who think that is a problem. For him it is just a regular Tuesday.
Our state hasn’t been hit very hard except for a couple of bad pockets that somehow cleared up pretty quickly. But in the last 2 weeks it is starting to hit much closer to home. I’m guessing we will see attitudes change quite a bit in the next couple weeks. I don’t think that 2 weeks ago many people in my community knew anyone personally who was affected. That is no longer the case.
@AlmostThere2018 not applying to tippy top except maybe Rice…one of the tippy of the tippy tops
@burghdad – I know, right, lol?
He’s intrigued by smaller engineering programs (though not wedded to the idea), and my H has a soft spot for it b/c he could have played tennis there back in the day. I like it b/c they have great financial aid. So if my S keeps it on the list, it’ll be his one big reach.
Our HS sends kids to lots of T20 schools, but we’ve only had one acceptance to Rice in the past 5 years and my S has no hooks – so not expecting an admit!
What I can’t figure out is why doesn’t the ACT/SAT just go online? GRE testing is online and can be done remotely anywhere!
We were able to squeeze a college visit in last week to one of the several schools that have the program D21 is interested in. It’s a small rural LAC and they said that although they know testing is very difficult to get, if possible they do prefer it because it helps complete the applicant’s profile. For us, it is paramount because many of her schools base merit $$ on GPA/ACT scores (we won’t qualify for need based). Also, her GPA is at the bottom range for the merit $$ at an unweighted 3.5 because she missed so much school due to medical issues. She is a good test taker though so the ACT will hopefully help camouflage her GPA. Luckily, we were able to test last Saturday after driving to another state. Her previous two test dates were also canceled.
I feel like this admissions cycle is just whack. I thought my DS17 had it bad with the whole change in the PSAT test, revamped SAT, and changes in the FAFSA for his admissions cycle but this year might be horrifically worse!
@JanieWalker – I hear you re: no biggie with occasional interruptions from kiddos, but the way they’ve described what teachers will be doing is 3 hours of synchronous instruction to the whole class(es) a day, plus 2 more hours of blocked periods of time to work on small group instruction synchronously with kids who need more.
Every situation different, but I’d think 5 hours of working directly with students/kids online a day will require a lot of focus – not to mention planning time, grading time, etc. I’d pity a teacher trying to balance that with watching/teaching their own kids, unless they’re in at least 5th grade. May not need full-time care, but at least half time or these teachers aren’t going to make it! So I applaud our district for treating them like essential workers and helping with child care.
In the decision made official last night, the school board said all teachers will teach on line from their classrooms and no children will be allowed into any school building. That caught all the teachers off guard- they had been expecting to teach from home. 81% of our district families responding to the survey wanted the hybrid 2 days in person, 3 on-line. Now teachers with kids and all the working parents will be scrambling to find/ afford child care. They had said that if school was hybrid, plans were in place to allow teacher’s kids to attend full time in person to assist with child care. It got political really fast last week when the teacher union stepped in saying no return until it is 100% safe (like that will ever be possible). They really shot themselves in the foot.
My husband is on a call with school right now - the new plan is still 2 days a week in school.
Group A - Monday/Thursday in person, 50 min periods - 1/2 the classes Monday the other 1/2 Thursday. Group B does the same on Tuesday/Friday. Wednesday all kids are home while teachers do live instruction from the school. In person days end at 12:30 because there will be no lunch. I’m thinking D should probably add a class to her schedule since she was going late arrival and there really isn’t a need now!