Could be describing DS, and he majored in Philosophy and Psychology (although he is totally a STEM geek)!
Not sure that’s a win for anyone, students or teachers. Just a sad reality that they all have to suffer through.
Ohio State is charging in-state tuition for any distance learning classes.
Distance education is defined as those courses that are 100% distance (with no scheduled in-classroom or on-site activities). These courses are identified by the “DL” designation. All students enrolled exclusively in distance education programs/courses will be assessed the Ohio resident tuition rate.
If you have any in-person §, hybrid (H), or distance enhanced (DH) courses in addition to distance education classes, all regular fees and nonresident/international tuition will be assessed.
A distance education administration surcharge of $100 per student per term is charged for any student enrolled in only courses tagged as distance education courses. Non-resident and international students enrolled in exclusively distance education courses will have the non-resident surcharge assessed at $200 per term. Site-based fees (e.g. COTA Fee, Recreation Center Fee and the Ohio Union Fee) will also be waived for students enrolled in all distance education courses. The revenue generated from this fee will fund 24/7 distance education support.
It’s an incredibly sad story regarding the dedicated teacher who died of covid and had been teaching summer school.
First. There is no direct knowledge that she caught this at school vs. the market etc.
However, despite the bolded headline shown here and the dire conclusions that one can draw from the story presented in that manner, there is much more to the terrible situation.
The teacher, Mrs Byrd, who sadly passed away was a previously retired 61 year old.
She came back to teach summer class.
She had chronic lupus
which is a serious autoimmune issue, diabetes and asthma.
It sounds like the classic chrug Strauss symptoms my wife suffers from and it is deadly serious. Untreated this results in the same type of cytokine storm that ravages the lungs like covid.
It doesn’t matter in any case, this is really serious stuff.
Anyway, add in diabetes, which we all know has many other accompanying problems like heart and blood pressure. This sounds like the worst combination of factors one can imagine to be indoors with so many different people and communal areas.
And BMI was not released in tbd news reports either.
It seems that this was a tragic decision to go back and teach if that is in fact where she became infected.
It doesn’t seem she was pushed by economic need, which is something that worries me for people in general with risk factors.
She most likely loved the students and the work like most teachers.
It’s really not that complicated. Until there’s a vaccine, if we get one at all, older people with these types of issues, super seniors and high BMI younger people need to be especially careful and protected. isolated from people outside of their pod versus group indoor settings. Even socially distant and cautious within the household.
That’s my view anyway. FWIW.
Ms Byrd and the other two teachers apparently did everything they could to protect themselves: “All three teachers wore masks and gloves, used hand sanitizer and socially distanced, but still got sick, according to school officials at the small community in the eastern part of the state.” Very sad.
She probably was taking hydroxychloroquine, as many people with lupus do. If so, it didn’t have a prophylactic effect.
[quote=“rickle1, post:10660, topic:2088334”]
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“This could be one of those transformational moments where we learn a lot about a new and improved education delivery system.”
This is my first time trying to quote - I don’t think I’ve got it quite right even after editing, so I hope you’ll bear with me. I think you are onto something here. My husband is a college professor in an Asian country where classes are typically less interactive and students hesitate to participate actively. (I taught a class here for a couple of years and thought I would lose my mind listening to my own voice for 90 minutes each week!). In any event, his undergraduate class was remote this spring and, after debating how best to do it, he decided to try just teaching on Zoom in the same generally freewheeling format he uses face-to-face. It turned out to be a huge success, with the kids piling on with questions and comments. They seemed to find the remote format quite liberating. It’s interesting because this is not what the ministry of education was recommending. They suggested prepared lectures would work better, and that’s what most professors did, putting in lots and lots of work in preparation. I’m sure it depends on the students, the subject matter and the general educational culture, but there is something useful to be learned from all of this. We found the same to be true with S19’s remote classes. His professors all used different structures and the only one that didn’t really work was the one where he didn’t need to get up at 3 a.m. because there was an asychronous prepared lecture. The best of these classes brought out something that was different, and sometimes more creative, than face-to-face. Everyone will be glad to get back in the classroom, but I hope we don’t forget the lessons learned through this experience.
True dat.
German researchers must be the only people in the world complaining about the lie caseload. A university hospital had to break off a promising study because of a lack of cases…
Have to say that in my experience, the grade school kids are extremely disciplined about the mask wearing thing, much more so than the adults. You tell them to wear the mask and not take it off until they are told they can, and they will do it.
It is distancing I find anyone under 10 is completely useless at. You have to remind them constantly.
Though the grade school yards I have observed look very disciplined to me too, all in masks and playing with some distance. Its middle and high school kids who, once off the premises, immediately take off the masks and glut together.
I think that having the under 13s, about whom there appears to emerge a consensus that spread is little and risk is low, in school full time and 13 and up either part time or online might be a consensus that works for students, working parents and teachers, with high risk teachers paired with high risk families for online delivery as needed.
The results of the all important college prep track finals in my H’s state are in (think IB or A levels, with one 4 hour paper counting for a third of the final grade which will determine your university opportunities) and, after everyone making a fuss before that finalists must not be penalised for the extra stress they are going through, it’s apparently one of the best years ever.
The DoE reasoned it must be that they decided, on reopening schools in April, to focus exclusively on the subjects students were entered for finals in. I say it’s because the kids couldn’t go out and meet up all spring, so they had nothing better to do rhan revision! Maybe they should quarantine finalists every spring from now on…
@ElonMomMD do you have a linkable source for this? My d goes to a different Ohio public and I would be very interested in sharing this on the Facebook parents page because there is a lot of rumbling that her school should do the same thing for out-of-state students who take distance classes. I tried Googling and couldn’t come up with anything. Thanks!
Art of Problem Solving, an online math education program used by Math Olympiad winners and other extremely advanced kids, conducts their classes in a way where anyone can ask a question at anytime…but through the keyboard, where only TAs can see. Then a TA answers the question privately to the kid. In the meantime, the professor teaches the class and often asks questions publicly and kids type in their answers publicly. There is no video, just texting answers and questions. This format takes away any intimidation - no one is afraid to ask a question for fear of seeming dumb. There is no gender or age bias possible because kids have usernames (and there is no video). It takes away the problem of classrooms where some kids shout out answers or dominate the discussion each meeting. AoPS is extremely successful and effective.
D21’s friends decided to do a writing workshop over Zoom this summer. The introvert among them, a kid who almost never says anything when they hang out in person, has blossomed and shares his thoughts and feelings on almost everything all the time now. It’s like he’s a different person.
We’ve homeschooled since the beginning, and online courses have been a part of my kids’ lives since they were in middle school. There are some excellent, extremely effective online providers out there. D21 learned Spanish up to an advanced college level using some great online and interactive courses, and she transitioned easily into 300-level Spanish face-to-face dual credit college classes last fall. She took other college courses besides Spanish, and remarked that some of her online classes were far more interactive and social than a couple of her college courses (not Spanish).
All this is to say that, as I stated a while back, online does not automatically equal lower quality or an inferior experience. In some cases, it can actually be much better. It depends on the class, it depends on the professor, and it depends on the format. And in some cases, like D21’s friend, introverts really blossom in an online atmosphere.
It would make great sense if colleges took a look at the online courses their accepted homeschoolers used in high school (PA Homeschoolers Online AP classes, AoPS, Stanford’s OHS, Davidson’s, and/or other high quality providers/schools) and used some of those providers’ techniques when constructing their own online courses for fall.
We used online education to supplement what DS was learning at his public school. He enjoyed the AoPS format that @JanieWalker described and also took Spanish lessons via Skype through a provider in Cusco, Peru.
This year when his school was closed and he did online, it was mixed. The STEM classes were good for the most part, except the labs. His English/History teacher used online as a means to do nothing. She cancelled many of the classes and did not bother to read or comment on essays. It really depends on the professor and their desire to make the class interesting.
With so many high school students lacking reliable grades from Spring semester and likely from this Fall as well, and no standardized test scores, it will be an interesting college admission season. I wonder how prepared these kids will be for college.
Yes, this. And the overall format.
I am hoping colleges make a couple of their online classes public this fall for prospective students. Instead of sitting in on a class, a prospective student could join one online…and this would be another data point when deciding to which colleges to apply/enroll. There is a good possibility life will not be back to normal in fall 2021, and it would be nice to know first-hand how colleges are managing/running their online courses. Just like the quality of in-person courses varies widely, so does the quality of online courses…and we’ll want to know which colleges are getting this right.
Sorry - thought I had included a link to the source.
https://online.osu.edu/tuition-and-fees
It also depends on the student. Some students, especial top students, would adapt to the online format very well (some may even prefer it). They will learn whether the class is online or offline. Some other students may need to make greater effort to learn the materials online. Online learning does require more self-discipline. It isn’t necessarily a bad thing as online teaching encourages self-learning and independent thoughts, which will benefit the student in his/her education and career later on.
@roycroftmom i have a friend in admissions at a USNWR top ten university. She told me yesterday that they have no choice but to focus on the transcripts only up through first semester of junior year for this year’s seniors. At one point they had hoped that this fall would be a semester that they could consider but not anymore. Same with ECs. She said it stinks for the students because not everyone blossoms early in their ECs or does well in school starting freshman year but they feel like those first five semesters of high school are the only ones they can understand correctly in the context of each high school. I suppose students who were homeschooled with mostly online courses would have their transcript considered more fully. The conversation didn’t come around to test scores. She also said that recs and essays will be more important than ever.
I’ve been thinking that D21 needs to make sure she does well this first semester senior year since I would think RD apps will require kids to send those grades to them and I’m sure they still will. But, barring any disaster in those grades, I don’t know how much they’ll really matter. Of course she will do her best but she likely shouldn’t be super stressed out as long as Her GPA stays around the same.
For younger kids, it’s going to be really hard. They do need to make sure they don’t fall behind in their learning.
@homerdog – interesting insights from your admissions contact. My S is applying EA a number of places this Fall. At first I thought there would be a lot of deferring EA applicants to look at first semester senior year grades. But now, given everything, I have my doubts. My S’s HS is online for at least the first six weeks of the school year. It could move to hybrid after that, but we’ll see. . .
I think more colleges may take the ‘bird in the hand’ approach and go ahead and accept EA admits in the Fall based on the data they have, esp. colleges that are losing a lot of international students. As you said, not sure how they’d assess Fall senior grades fairly. (Of course, ‘fair’ is always a tricky word in the world of college admissions. . . )
@roycroftmom wrote:
I think you’ll see a return to the all-but-required college interview. Many selective LACs made them optional and have even gone so far as to play them down in the decision-making process. But, when you don’t have a lot of tools at your disposal you have to take a second-look at what is left in the toolbox. Schools are committing an enormous number of resources to digital platforms. Why not to the interview process? No one has to travel; Parents don’t have to occupy themselves while DS and DD go through the process. And, something that hasn’t been talked about a lot: you can expect a nosedive in applications next year as families reevaluate whether the residential college experience is worth all it’s hyped up to be in the age of Covid.
I am so over this all. Cuomo has made it near impossible for anyone not in the northeast to attend school there. My son desperately needs to go back whether classes are online or not. he needs to live with peers. Being ASD his social skills have really gone downhill. he cannot move back in by himself either. My desire to spend 12 hours in NYS is being attacked on the parent group. I will try to get us all tested before we leave, but with results now taking 10 days… The school is having move in still as a few days before classes start. So does he have to quarantine while everyone else goes to class? or do we have to pay 1K for a hotel two weeks ahead of time and order food for him every day? How does he get his stuff for his apartment. 4/6 classes are still listed in person. he NEEDS this. He cannot live here. He is so bored, and was unable to get a job.
My one semester left Senior will be living in a hotel near campus. Every class she takes she needs to get her degree. One class no longer has a professor assigned. if it gets cancelled she has real issues. I just hope they would reassign her to one of the online ones. So far of the 4 classes 1 is already online, and two others , including an arts class are still in person. The one without a professor is listed as “in person” but who knows.
I am grateful that both my kids schools are making an effort to have them take at least some classes in person. Just upset that in one case I cant control what state I currently live in, and a governor who cried fowl when his citizens were asked to quarantine going elsewhere has decided to be hypocrite. I understand why NY doesnt want outsiders, and I am willing to test test test , and just waiting for a plan.
I have a bad headache from all of this. I have something to say that would likely put me in timeout, so I wont say it, but my conspiracy theory brain is working overtime. Also if I did not need to work, and no longer had kids in college and on their own, I would be looking to move outside of the no longer “united” states of america.