I spoke to a teacher today and they are going in for training next week. Sounds like they will be told to focus on how to deliver content in the time slots available to them - two in person slots and two remote slots for any given student. Likely, things like group work and discussion will go away for many classes as them try to streamline what really needs to be taught. He thought history and English classes will work it out. Gave me an example that group A might hear a lecture on their first day in school that week and then, on their remote day following, he would set up small groups to discuss and has a way to have those recorded so he knows the kids did it and he can then comment on their discussion later that night when he’s at home so they can see how he would have contributed to their discussion. He definitely thought math and science would be harder and thinks CB will have to change their expectations for AP classes but who knows. He thought those teachers would again have to focus on delivering content lecturing on in person days and providing recorded lectures for the days kids are remote.
Assessments will almost always be at home since the teachers only have two 35 minute periods a week with each student and need that time to teach. That’s all being reviewed. Tests will be different than usual. The deans of each subject have made committees to work on best practices with that. Math will do something different than science than foreign language when it comes to testing. I don’t think they’ll be able to do labs.
The thing that bothers me the most is that each student will just be at the mercy of their own particular teacher. I’m trying to not get worked up about the plan as a whole and just telling D21 that we will just see how her teachers do. I’m a bit worried about assessments because the ones they went to online for science in the spring were awful and kids did really poorly on them. They were just multiple choice and not even connected to their textbooks or lectures. Weird. They tanked some kids’ grades but didn’t end up counting since students were allowed to keep their grades frozen from mid-March if they chose that. Now, we are starting from scratch.
Edited to add:
Since class is done by 12:50 each day, teachers are available from 1:00-3:00 for kids to make appointments and go in and ask questions for get extra help but only on their in-person days. Any ECs that happen after school won’t happen until 3:30 like usual so not sure how that works for kids in ECs with class ending at 12:50. They are expected to go home and come back unless they have a meeting with a teacher.
