We moved to a good school district. The area was growing. Built for families like ours, all of the public schools in the area received “A” or “8/10” ratings. There were two very expensive and very fancy private schools in the area. It was an idyllic place to raise children.In retrospect, we had a few frustrations with the public schools. Some of the curriculum seemed ridiculous, the math in particular. The apps used to communicate with the teachers were barely functional. It was somewhat difficult to track what the kids were learning, but the teachers had no complaints, so we didn’t make any either.
In March 2020, the world changed. The entire school experience became a series of apps on a screen. Classes met daily in the morning on Zoom. All of the curriculum was hastily added to Schoology during the initial two-week lockdown. I still want to call it School – ology. We became intimate partners with the printer and scanner. They were necessary to scan and upload completed assignments.
The initial two-week closure was extended to the end of April. With only one more month of school after that, the district remained shuttered for the rest of that year. School would remain a computer screen.
There was a tremendous amount of uncertainty. We didn’t know how the grades would work. We didn’t know when the school would reopen. We didn’t quite understand how to find and complete the assignments. The assignments were exceptionally basic and shoddily organized. We were skeptical that we were uploading them correctly. We were not teachers. We did not expect to be teachers. We had full-time jobs.
My experience with Zoom School was so utterly terrible that I was convinced the children had to be back in school. We lived in Florida, and we were lucky the schools reopened in August the next year. Our Governor had to fight our district to open. Striking back, the district delayed the opening as long as legally possible.
MORE AT Did Lockdowns Finish Off Public Schooling? ⋆ Brownstone Institute
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