MIT ruled out hybrid classes early on in their deliberation process based on community input that it would essentially double the faculty workload while leaving remote students in a disadvantaged position.
That gave them a few summer months to focus on improving their online instruction.
Right. Where are these and why, if they seem like they would make such a big difference, are they not a priority?
I’m getting antsy over here. Our grade schools have gone back to half day in class, half day remote. We live right next to a school and I can hear those kids lining up for school and going out for gym and they are SO HAPPY to be back. I walked our dog out there yesterday and talked to one of the kindergarten teachers I’ve now known for 15 years. She said she’s thrilled to be back, things are going well. It’s early and I don’t know what the protocol will be if anyone tests positive but it’s crystal clear that kids (even older ones!) need to be in school. I feel like I haven’t seen kids so happy in seven months. This really is a mental health issue.
Meanwhile, our high school is still remote except for kids with special ed. D21 and her friends are getting amazing online classes. She and I both think they are being delivered well and are rigorous. But, she and her friends don’t feel well. They are sad and not themselves. For the first time yesterday, poms was allowed to practice. 50 kids outside in masks. It rained so they were allowed to go in the field house. She came home with a smile and said it was the first time she felt like it was really her senior year. She was in a great mood all night.
Scoff if you will, but I feel myself feeling more and more like these kids (and college kids too) need to get back to class in a safe way. I understand that we are lucky to be in a school district that can serve its students well remotely for academics but school is more than that.
If those rapid daily tests could get out there, they’d be back in school and way more people could also be back to work. Why is this not being shouted from the mountain tops? With so many people saying a vaccine won’t even bring total relief, we need other ways to get back at it.
It looks like positivity rate and trends in different areas are bigger factors than individual institution’s efforts in keeping transmission under control.
For example, UMass Amherst vs Amherst College and University of Houston vs Rice University have quite similar results even though Amherst C and Rice U seems to be doing much more than their bigger neighbors can ever afford to do.
https://www.umass.edu/coronavirus/dashboard
https://www.amherst.edu/news/covid-19/dashboard
Bowdoin same. But seeing Bates and Colby and Williams and Middlebury back with in person classes is not making this parent so happy about that decision. I do agree that hybrid is the worst option so I don’t know the best ways for a college to offer in person class but also the option of remote for students and faculty who cannot come to class.
@stiffler117 Oh my! Your story validates my decision to not say much about what I think of my own institution’s plans publicly (as a non-tenured, at will employee of a University). I wish you luck in resolving this, and as an unprotected employee, I thank you for using your protected position to speak out and say what I’m sure so many of your fellow employees are probably feeling.
Hybrid is working very well for my D… the only complaint is that the in person opportunities are less than expected. Because of number of students restrictions in the class, her hybrid classes are not always 1 day a week (full in person would be twice a week) - some classes she goes 2 online, then 1 in person. That’s disappointing.
My D20’s classes are all online, and they are going pretty well. My D24’s have been all online since school started (and going fine), but beginning on Monday, the district will move to the hybrid model, so at any given time, half of the class will be in person and half remote. I’m worried about this, as I just don’t see how a teacher is going to be able to effectively teach both groups simultaneously.
@homerdog FWIW, Williams classes started yesterday and are all remote until Monday. Classes must be hybrid or remote, although there can be sections that are F2F only, so many profs opted for remote. On the Middlebury FB parents group, there have been many complaints that the percentage of remote classes is much higher than originally promised by the administration. Midd also started classes on Thursday.
So what is her online day like?
Overpromise. Underdeliver.
Seems to be a common motto these days.
I have a friend whose son has three of his four Williams classes in person so I thought maybe in person was happening more often than not. I apologize if that’s not good info.
I’m watching schools like Davidson and Richmond too. I see photos on social media of kids in class at those LACs.
Like I mentioned, I think the trick is how to offer classes remote for those who need them but in person for those who want them. And what percent really need remote class?
@homerdog Interesting about your friend’s son’s classes. I would be interested to hear if they’re actually hybrid and hear how they are once F2F instruction starts. When we looked at the courses that my first year wanted to take, they were all remote only. Unlike Bowdoin and Midd, Williams doesn’t offer first year seminars so they can’t have that tailored experience, which is a bummer.
Good to know. I’m going to go hunt down some Colby and Bates parents and see if those classes have been in person!
@GKUnion I hope your son is fully in PPE and rolls those windows down. I think of patient zero in NYC who transported a family member to the hospital and became infected himself as a young person. But I would expect my kids to have panic attacks similar. Ugh. Did anyone send their kid with a pulse oximeter back to school?
And btw the comparisons of Amherst College vs UMass Amherst will be changing soon as UMASS Amherst labs are ramping up to do their own testing at their lab on campus. This will hopefully be a cost effective alternative to Broad Institute for the taxpayers of MA.
stiffler, and Mods, don’t you have to be a parent to engage on this forum? What is the purpose of coming on a parent forum with grievances against your employer institution? I might want to be aware that any commentary on here is public (now that you have identified yourself) as well to your employer institution.
My Davidson first year now has 2 classes meeting partially in person (at least once a week). He’s noticed some professors have transitioned to more in person instruction now after 3 full weeks of classes.
Students and families received this update from the college this week:
Davidson Students,
Thank you for taking seriously and working hard to protect the health and well-being of the Davidson community. Your attention to our safety protocols – masks, distance, symptom tracker, hand washing – is helping keep our positive test numbers low, as you likely have seen this past week.
We recently increased the population on campus by several hundred students, and, now, everyone who is going to be here for the semester has settled in. We need time to make sure each of us is limiting our potential exposure and that we as a community can control the spread. We all can do this, but we need to do several things all at once:
We need to wear masks.
We need to stay 6 feet apart. Each of us should have close contact with only our roommate(s) and one other person. This dramatically limits the spread of the virus.
We all need to get tested regularly (right now once per week) and use the symptom tracker every day.
We need to wash hands and use hand sanitizer frequently.
These things only work if we do ALL of them. THANK YOU for your help and leadership.
If we are able to keep our positive test results very low and stable for the next week, the COVID team will reevaluate our current restrictions, including on visitors in residence halls. We will need to feel confident that the numbers are trending in the right direction, that the community is complying with policies and procedures and that there is a low level of risk for on-campus and off-campus students.
The trend is generally encouraging, and gives us all cautious hope for the rest of the semester. We want to stress that we have a long way to go. This is a marathon. We all must go about each day as if we and everyone around us is an asymptomatic carrier. This is the best way we can protect each other.
We are confident we can achieve this together.
Not sure about that. The University of Houston dashboard shows an infection rate that is exponentially greater than Rice’s. My hypothesis is that Rice’s residential system (which is one of the best in the country) is the decisive element, not that it’s located in Texas.
@waverlywizzard, You must have missed the first ~600 pages of this thread. There are a lot of posts by people who aren’t parents. Why limit comments to parents only? There are many, many frequent users of CC whose children are no longer in school. If posters are required to be parents of a current student, this site would likely lose the majority of its members. It would certainly lose the bulk of it’s knowledge base. This thread is about covid at colleges in the 2020-21 academic year. Who better to post than those working at the institutions?
I think Stiffler raises an interesting point. Students trust the faculty to advise and guide them. How much can/should they trust them if faculty aren’t permitted to speak?
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Well, here in San Diego we have our first K-12 school, a private high school, that reopened and, nine days later, had to close due to two students with COVID. It’s not entirely clear from the news article what exactly their reopening plan was, but it sounds as if they brought back all 750 students all at once for five days a week, which is most definitely NOT how other private high schools in the area are doing it. My daughter’s HS, which has fewer students, has students coming back to campus only every other day, and is slowly phasing into that hybrid model over several weeks. The news article about this other HS also mentioned plexiglass desk dividers, which is a huge red flag for me, because it probably means the school is not placing desks 6 feet apart and is not sufficiently focused on classroom ventilation.
Meanwhile, San Diego State has gone from a couple dozen student cases to over 500 since the semester started in late August. Classes are mostly virtual, but the university brought back about 8000 students for in person classes like science labs. For context, San Diego County had 284 new cases yesterday, of which 69 were SDSU students. So you can see that even a partial reopening of one university can have a substantial impact on community cases.