I’d like to brainstorm on a list of ideas to improve Distance Learning vs. what happened at the High Schools last Spring. To my knowledge, parents haven’t been asked, but perhaps should have been. Examples might be:
- help in creating study groups for kids who tend to be in the same classes and sections
- more frequent and required teacher/student 1:1s,
- more frequent comments on student performance
- letting parents know in advance about major assignments and when they’re due…don’t just tell us it’s all in Schoology…
While out of the box ideas are fine, I think the focus should be on suggestions that would truly help your student or you as a parent, be impactful, and be reasonably implemented.
Who knows, maybe the schools will pick up on our best suggestions! We all pay the bills. It seems they ought to listen. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
I would definitely like to see more frequent 1:1 communication between teacher and parent as well as teacher and student. Last spring, I found that I knew less about what my child was doing in the next room on the computer than when he attended school in-person.
I would like a parent teacher night via zoom including each teacher preparing a document with the best way to contact them, and their expectations. Especially if my student doesn’t show up to class. How many remote sessions are to be missed before a call home? Will a call be made?
I would like regular communication from the teachers outside of Schoology especially at the start of the year.
I would like parents including on guidance counselor meetings of how to prepare to college and the timeline.
I would like new students to the school, including all 9th graders, welcomed to clubs and maybe in person!
If there is an outage (Schoology); then a system wide email to be sent to students and guardians, and not everyone in tears trying to figure out why things aren’t working.
For those kids who don’t have NPS software (because the computers and ipads aren’t ready), an easy to navigate website by school/grade/teacher of what needs to be downloaded. Oh, and colleges have IT departments, and while IT normally only has staff, I think availability to parents. I don’t know why the computer isn’t working, and I am not an IT professional. My kid can’t bring it anywhere if at home. I need resources to trouble shoot.
If a teacher is sick, an email to be sent to guardians.
Expectations if the power is out due to a storm.
Are there tests and exams in middle and high school??????
I heard that Newton North will not have ANY exams. Grading will occur solely through projects. This will be a disaster. Hopefully this is not the case at the other schools. We need exams. Kids study for exams. The reasoning behind not testing is concern about cheating. They should bring small groups of students back to school for periodic testing. If not, the second best would be to test them online and not worry about cheating.
@Jeffrey Pontiff,
The College Board has figured out how to conduct the SAT and PSAT exams online. Even if the administration can’t figure out how to administer exams, that just doesn’t explain or justify dumping numerical grading. A project might be slightly good (80) or really good (89) but everyone in that cohort gets a “B”?! To quote Tom Hanks in Big “I don’t get it.”
Jeffrey Pontiff,
No exams. Isn’t this on the liberal wish list? You will be subjectively graded based on your “social status” because exams are “racist”
Less distance and more learning.
Jefferey – I haven’t heard anything, but my take away from the SC meeting was that there would be no exams based on the fact that the NNHS principal said there would be no numeric grades. As far as the distance learning, as opposed to the spring, in the fall there needs to actually be distance teaching. For HS students, you cannot learn chemistry, physics, geometry calculus, etc. by doing projects. If the distance teaching regresses to what it was last spring, our HS students will be at a significant disadvantage compared to other districts and private schools. If the HS schedule contains 80 minute blocks for a subject, then yes, I would expect the teacher to be actively teaching for the 80 minutes. If kids are doing work on-line while the teachers are actively interacting with them and teaching, then that may work. Teaching for 10-15 minutes and then sending the kids off to do independent work will not cut it. People are saying you can’t expect kids to be on-line for hours….I disagree.
@ High school level: More project based learning. The computer programming end of year project was the best thing for my kid this spring, because it involved lots of independent thinking and problem solving.
In general: Academic expectations comparable to a normal school year. This spring the kids were given the expectation that they didn’t really have do to anything, and lo and behold, they didn’t want to do anything.
More thorough feedback/markup on writing assignment rough drafts.
Parent login for Schoology to help parents monitor student status.
+1 for all of NewtonMom’s suggestions.
From a working family:
Please provide one single place for all logins for all classes (not separate messages from each teacher or for each meeting).
Please give each student a schedule that is easily readable and accessible to the many different adults who may be supervising remote learning throughout the week (parents, grandparents, babysitters, community programs, etc…). This should be easily sharable and updated in real time.
Please provide an easy way to determine what a child should be doing at any given moment for ANY adult who may be supervising remote learning (without having to ask the child and interrupt what they are doing). Like a note on the computer screen explaining where they are in their schedule and what they should be accomplishing.
Elementary School: Please don’t send plans on Sunday night–send them the week before (unless zero effort is needed from parents to set things up).
Real time communication with parents if kids are not doing what they are supposed to would be amazing (like a text if a middle school student is not at a class or an elementary student has left the computer).
Please try to ensure that a significant amount of the hard hands on work that kids may not prefer to do is tackled on the in person days and not left to the parents to supervise.
Why no numeric grades? Did anyone hear the explanation/justification/rationale for that? Speaking as someone who has taught both college and law students, I just do not understand what is the impediment to numerical grading? I’m sure there was some discussion that I missed so if anyone can bring me up to speed that would be appreciated. :)
Lisap- As per the NNHS principal at the August 25th SC meeting Q&A with parents, he said: “there will be traditional assessments and new assessment you could use virtually” and ‘because it is harder to identify the numeric level as we were able to do prior to covid…our grading process will be A/B/Pass/No Grade and no grade…no plus or minues.” and “because where we are going is we are assessing skills not just content. The content you may have been used back in the past is not what is being prioritized…it’s skills.” Not sure what exactly he meant by all of that. My interpretation was that if you can’t identify a numeric level, that must mean that you aren’t giving kids a numeric grade. Maybe I’m wrong. He also didn’t clarify what “assessments” were, but if you can’t assign numeric levels, then my take away is there will not be traditional exams. I’m just not sure what the A/B/Pass/No-grade is based on if it is not numeric. Is it totally subjective?
I’ve got a bad feeling
A healthy start time for high school and middle school. Start classes at 9am.
Michael, thank you for the post! In all the chaos of the last few days, I still don’t know if there have been any specifics proposed for remote learning, and how it would be different from this spring. Perhaps, like everything else, the answers are still unknown. It’s good to have this conversation.
In the spring, one thing that struck me is that my high schooler was never contacted directly by a guidance counselor. Guidance may have made one or two posts on Schoology to the entire cohort, that’s it. I think in these conditions, reaching out (both ways) is essential.
I’m a hs teacher and I come to Village14 to read what the “other half” expect from teachers, as I know that not everyone here has always been pro-teacher. I think it’s important to hear why though and to try to open a dialogue.
To throw it out there as a teacher, we haven’t heard anything about the grading system or anything yet- I’ve literally not received one email or communication from NPS about the first day of school or any emails about negotiations and SC beyond what was sent to parents (we get sent the same emails as the parents but just after). We’re just as in the dark as you about expectations.
I can tell you I also would like to see more consistency across the board. Last year was certainly crisis learning with NPS changing expectations constantly and teachers having to change what we were doing and expecting constantly. I think they were worried about mental health and wellbeing and as a result lowered academic expectations.
As far as I know, all hs teachers are using schoology and will be posting in the same place consistently. Like I said, I don’t know about testing or grading, but I do know that some teachers would have concerns about test security and cheating in an online platform. I don’t know what the solution is there.
I’m glad to hear parents here want similar things to what I am hoping for as well. I spent a lot of time giving individual feedback last year and contacting parents throughout the week of kids who hadn’t attended class or missed a deadline or hadn’t done any work leading up to a deadline (ie: midweek), but I do have to tell you honestly- that took up a lot of time- and the model now has no time built in for that. I’m hoping there’s some prep/planning time thrown in for teachers so that we CAN do a good job but that would mean less face time with kids in some capacity and I don’t know how parents feel about that. (I’d be curious at your response and feelings on that issue).
I don’t know…I just appreciate some of the honest and reasonable feedback here.
@Amanda,
First off- thank you for your willingness to engage in this platform. I think it is incredibly helpful for parents to hear your direct input.
Second, as someone who has gone through the college admissions process 3 times, do you have any thoughts about the grading system as it has been reported? I don’t want to belabor the point to someone with direct experience – so any thoughts you feel comfortable to share would be wonderful. But if you don’t feel that you can, I certainly understand.
@Patrick Foster – thank you for posting what was discussed. Much appreciated!!
And as an aside – my heart truly aches for the kids and for the staff. My youngest is a senior in college and dealing with all remote classes. As a science major, she has 3 heavy classes that in a non Covid world included in person labs. She’s finishing her first week online and the only thing I know is “this is hard”. We have entered uncharted waters. Best to all.
@lisap I can’t even begin to imagine being a college student working remotely…
About the grading system that may be in place: you know more than me at this point. We, the teachers, haven’t been told anything about grades yet. Like I said, we receive most of the emails parents do, but not all, and that’s it.
I know that there are other schools that have non-lettered grading but have a “learn by mastery” system. College admissions can and do evaluate that system comparatively to a standard letter grade system. I do not know a lot about it and would hope that NPS does A LOT of research and provides extremely clear and concise protocols if they were ever to move to it. Of course they need to listen to what the community wants first and foremost…
Last spring was crisis mode and will be overlooked by colleges because across the country high schools were largely pass/fail. I do not know what NPS is going to tell us to do. I know that they are very concerned about equity, mental health and emotional development. I think there are a lot of kids struggling with being home. I think their (NPS) heart is in the right place in wanting to give kids every advantage to do well, but I also think they are forgetting that kids need and want consistency and that unclear expectations lead to stressed out kids. I think we are seeing a gap in our children’s ability to self-monitor and manage their time and that it is going to take a lot of work for parents and teachers to keep kids on track.
For everyone that’s contributed to this thread, thank you! I’ll wait another day or so and then send a summary with link to the Administration, HS Leadership and Mayor. To Amanda’s point above, most of these seem quite reasonable and worthy of consideration. Also, to Amanda, I don’t think I know you, but your comments were tremendously helpful to me. I appreciate your joining this!
I’m going to add another of my own. I’m a big fan of the EdX learning videos put out by Harvard and MIT. I’d love to see the Newton Schools have an account that would be free to our students. Then completion of these courses could be used for extra credit in any subject at the teacher’s discretion. I think that anything we can do to connect with our kids to help the gain subject mastery under these remote circumstances is worth it. Michael
@Amanda – thank you for your thoughtful posts. Teachers like you are why we have stuck to NPS and while we are considering private school, we are doing so with extremely contradictory emotions and feelings.
I would like to add to the general discussion that it is really important that every online class utilize the Breakout Room functionality of Zoom to allow kids to interact in small groups while they work asynchronously during class time. My kid felt very isolated without the ability to do the back and forth with their classmates. Moreover, I hope that there will be sufficient time devoted to actual teacher-led instruction in each class block as well. Thanks
I haven’t read through all the comments yet, but for me, what’s important for high school is:
1. Actually teaching / presenting material on Zoom. Not just “checking in”, but actually teaching.
2. Find a better system than sending out emails with gazillion links
3. Zoom links that are easy to find
4. Rigorous exams and grading for all subjects. No pass/fail, no A/B, actual grades and accountability requirements for students.
5. A robust plan for college counseling and teacher recommendations for college. My daughter is applying early, and her application has to be in to her college of choice by early October.
6. A plan for in person interactions, not some vague statements.
@Mom of a Newton High Schooler, from a teacher, your description of the use of break out rooms is spot on. I teach middle school, but the idea is to provide 10ish minutes of direct instruction, then use breakout rooms for small group/partner work while the teacher circulates and checks in with groups to help them understand the content more deeply.
On that end @Patrick Foster, I may have misunderstood your post about teaching for the full 80 minute class period, but current pedagogy says that students learn by doing. A 10-15 minute mini-lesson is all that should be done for “teacher talk” at the beginning of class, and then kids should be working with teacher support. Again, may have misunderstood your post, but lecturing has been shown to not be effective. Granted, kids should not be working independently without teacher support, but instead should be working with groups on the zoom call while the teacher supports.
Thank you all so much for your thoughtful comments about what will work for your families. I agree that having everything in one place is crucial for kids (and parents!) to stay organized. Also, especially in this online environment, constant feedback is key!
@Britni – I totally understand that teaching has been changing over the years, but I do think that our current situation requires some modification to what was previously done.
In my comment I was saying that if the class time is 80 minutes, then the teacher should be engaged with the students for 80 minutes on-line. I don’t care whether they are lecturing or having the students do work while actively engaging with them during that time. What I fear is that there will be 10-15 minutes of teaching and then kids will be allowed to “check out” (go offline) to work independently. I don’t think that will work for all students. My fear may be based on the experience last spring, but with no information on what the fall will look like I am worried.
@Patrick Foster – makes total sense. Please know that in the spring we were told to focus on social emotional well-being and that we could NOT deliver new content via zoom. Things will be totally different this fall. I agree that teachers should be engaged with kids for the whole 80 minutes (minus a quick brain break!) just as if we were in the classroom. We are being paid for that time – we need to be working for it!!
@Britni – thanks for engaging with us here. Don’t get me wrong by my comment, I totally understand the predicament teachers were put in last spring. I gave the administration a pass because of the situation. The thing that did worry me was that the level of expectations for new learning seemed to regress as the remote learning last spring went on. That’s just my take from our experience, so it may not be representative of everyone’s experience. As the parent of a junior at South, I am worried that the administration will once again back off of the expected new content as the remote experience goes on during the year. I know teacher’s can’t control that, but at this point that’s my fear.
As for the quick brain break…..totally understand and agree. Having to live with my kid 24/7, I usually need more than a quick brain break!