Rudderless
Thoughts from Nick Carroway —
I talked about this before (“Between a Rock and a Hard place”) but it bears repeating and expanding. We are absolutely rudderless in terms of how we are dealing with this virus. The administration is ignoring it. The incoming administration wants to help, but is powerless. Various states are treating it differently even if the virus is overtaking everyone.
To put this in exact terms, our campus has around 1400 students. Roughly half of them are learning online. Yet, some of them aren’t learning. At least they aren’t producing work to prove they are learning. So, the state has given us the ability to command them to come back. For our campus, that will be up to 200 additional students. In a vacuum it makes perfect sense.
Leaving out the educational aspects of this, this is an interesting microcosm of the current situation. Some people want to move on and some people recognize that we need to be more vigilant than ever before. Which side is going to win? Hospitalizations are at an all-time high. The infection rate and death rate is at an all-time high. In the midst of that we want to bring more students to school? We want to relax restrictions? What in the world are we thinking?
It’s moments like this when we are screaming for leadership. We are begging for leadership. We thirst for it like a week-long bender in the desert. What we get is passing the buck and shirking of responsibility. Focus on the crime, corruption, and grift if you wish, but this is the lasting legacy of the current administration. When we needed leadership we got none. When we needed direction we got fingers pointed in five different directions. When we needed someone to stand up and take charge no one got out of their seat. This is his lasting legacy.
Too bad playing golf doesn’t do anything to help with Coronavirus…..
1The sad thing is that 40% of the country wants that lack of leadership to continue.
2It’s clear that there’s no leadership at the federal level. The biggest mouthpiece controls upwards of 70 million adults that do the opposite of what’s right. So it’s left to the rest of us to do what’s right and protest against those that don’t.
3Here’s an example of what we need to do- protest and shout it our:
https://www.rawstory.com/2020/12/Oregon-teacher-unloads-on-anti-lockdown-protestors-my-students-families-are-dying/
We have to be louder than them and make them isolated in their world of denial and maybe (hopefully) they’ll end up like Giuliani, but no hospital can help them.
Sounds like the Trumpf is heading to Mara-la-la-Land, maybe for the rest of his presidency, or whatever you call what he’s been doing. That might allow more room for rational news.
Looks like raw story took down the story I suggested above. Trust me, this teacher was modeling what the rest of us should do, make our voices heard to do the right thing to save lives.
4Maybe we should rename coronavirus the repugnantican virus. No one knows how it started but we know why it grew into the deadly monster it is.
Try this.
5https://www.rawstory.com/2020/12/oregon-teacher-unloads-on-anti-lockdown-protesters-my-students-families-are-dying/
The GOP senate needs to be remember for its silence, for its inaction as Trump tried to smash democratic institutions, for the 260,000 (at this time) who died in this pandemic due to their willful denial of science and negligence.
They are responsiblefor enabling the effing orange madman and his rabid followers.
Never forget GOP’s silence and complicity.
6It’s the intertubes.
7Nobody understands ’em
We just got done reading MLK’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail in one of the English classes I support. The part that always gets me is how he calls for self-purification before direct action. In his case, he meant training and preparing for what would happen when they went into direct action.
i think in this case it really depends on the messenger more than the message. The key is in understanding what we are dealing with. Somewhere between 25 and 40 percent of the public will be idiots no matter what you do or say. The key is getting that crowd that can be persuaded to see how reasonable you are and how crazy the other side is.
I’m not sure how helpful shouting obscenities at a crowd really is. If the takeaway is how crazy you sound then you’ve lost and that seems to be the takeaway from that particular article. I get what she’s feeling and get why she did what she did. I’m just not sure how helpful it was.
What I want is someone in a position of authority to allow common sense to prevail and simply move us back to virtual learning until this thing blows over. Positive tests are up. Hospitalizations are up. Deaths are up. Why are we now bringing more kids into the school? It just doesn’t make any sense.
8We COULD have gotten leadership at the Congressional level. But the majority members of the Senate were on board with Trump. Or maybe some weren’t on board but were afraid of him. Spineless cowards, that bunch. The others, heinous asskissers. And before Trump, obstructionists. Racists all, because why else did they hate Obama so much? There is so much to hate in the last 12 years and so many at which my hate is directed. I just want a government that gives a damn about its citizens. This one cares only for money and power.
9That video expresses my own level of emotion with regard to sending people back in the building with the way this thing is going, in the wrong direction. Even losing a year of instruction is better than being dead and getting other people dead. I hope I don’t have to quit at the end of the semester, but I will if they try to make me go back in the building.
10My last comment on this subject- I’m not advocating for profanity and rants to communicate to deniers (though that’s the language they understand). Teachers, healthcare workers, victims and family members of victims make strong and relevant messengers and wish they would dominate news coverage instead of Trumpf and repugnantican “leadership”.
11Perhaps out of the 70 million Trumpf supporters, there are some that watch news other than fox or newsmax and have a conscience. As far as personal protest, when a maskless denier invades ones space, call them out clearly and firmly. I do. That’s my protest. To not call them out is as good as enabling them, and not in my dna.
Two articles next to each other on the front page of the newspaper here in red Central California: 1) Hospital at 96% capacity 2) Schools to reopen for lower grades. Maskless idiots everywhere I look. The state went into lockdown last night but people around here won’t pay any attention. We’re in isolation as much as possible. What else can you do?
12Your school district is simply behind the curve. /s
In one of the reddest little towns in Texass, the local La Vernia ISD is on this:
“Remote learning at La Vernia ISD no longer an option after Thanksgiving holiday
District reports 90% of students already back on campus”
Keep an eye on the news, there will likely be a serious COVID-45 outbreak here after the holidays.
https://www.ksat.com/news/local/2020/11/13/remote-learning-at-la-vernia-isd-no-longer-an-option-after-thanksgiving-holiday/
“LA VERNIA, Texas – After Thanksgiving, remote learning will no longer be offered at the La Vernia Independent School District following its school board’s decision on Monday.
13Hensley Cone, Ph.D., the district’s superintendent, said their decision was preceded by about a month of discussion, weighing whether to bring back the remaining 300 students, from pre-school to high school, who were still learning online.
Officials sent the parents of those students a letter explaining what to expect.
Cone said the district had already gone from 75% to 90% of its 3,200 students who had to return to school.
During that time, Cone said, there was “very little transmission” of the novel coronavirus on campus.
“We’ve had a couple of positive cases this week, all contracted outside of the school district,” Cone said. “We might have three positive cases that might have happened this last week, but we probably quarantine 40 or 50 people.”
Cone said those people would be quarantined as a precaution.
“We’re taking care of our people to the nth degree,” Cone said. He said the district even has its own team doing contact tracing, and a director of safety is overseeing the process.
Not only does the district perform deep cleaning nightly, but Cone also said similar precautions are taken throughout the day.
Cone said faculty, staff and students must do their part every day before coming to school. He said the district trusts that all of them will watch for symptoms, quarantine if necessary, and get tested.
“So far, people have been very, very open in communicating that,” Cone said.
I don’t trust one bit of what’s reported in the post directly above.
14I get why they are doing what they are doing. Doing in person and virtual instruction is hard work. Some virtual kids don’t do the work. Some in person kids stop coming and our attendance procedures don’t quite capture the fallout. I also get that most parents work and can’t watch their kids. I get all of that. It just seems like now is not the time to force people to come back.
Our infection rate is higher, hospitalizations are higher, and total deaths per day are higher than when we were completely virtual. I don’t see how we justify moving to in person instruction just yet.
Vic, I agree with speaking up. I just think we need to be smart about it. We have to be the adults in the room because no one else will be if we aren’t.
15Well, my smart and speaking up has been informing management that I will not be back in the building come January. I will still be right where I am now. If they choose to try to force me and cause me to resign, then that is their choice. We will see. I hope they will actually take a look and see that my students are doing just fine virtually, knock on wood.
16There’s been a great deal of discussion, centering around the undeniable generalizations:
* kids don’t do as well in “virtual” education. Part of that is lack of experience by the kids, other parts are bad technology, difficulties of teachers adapting, lack of community support for learning: if there is no football/speech/band/ or other co-curricular activity that is fun & limited to those who are getting the right grade on tests, there’s a decline in motivation.
* parents don’t do as well in “virtual” education. Those who can work from home are distracted. Those who can’t work from home have to scramble to figure out what to do with the kids.
* kids continue to do things to expose themselves. Afternoons in the park, soccer drills, or any number of other things.
* kids don’t get as obviously sick and don’t seem to have as many complications and don’t die nearly so often as other age cohorts.
* school buildings are awful places to try to maintain some sort of infection control.
* when schools bring kids back, the community infection rate goes back up. There are lots of possible reasons, and I’ve not seen convincing explanations of why.
* Teachers make great scapegoats. Blame them for kids not learning, blame them for not having infection controls, blame them for community economic woes.
17John-17
There are undoubtedly challenges to meeting in person, virtual, or in a hybrid setting. No one would deny that. I think you outlined most of them well. I suppose what is so disheartening from a teacher perspective is that we don’t have serious people working on this. Trump was never serious and certainly has checked out now. I wouldn’t trust Devos to organize a bake sale much less contribute anything meaningful here. Each state is obviously different, but in Texas you have a lieutenant governor that wants to kill grandma and governor that doesn’t really want to govern at all.
What it all adds up to is that our elected officials are all waiting around for someone else to solve the problem. Problems don’t go away on their own. You can’t wish them away playing golf, praying, or contesting an election. They require serious people to solve them.
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