NYC Educator: No Grade Should Fall in Spring

NYC Educator: No Grade Should Fall in Spring

No Grade Should Fall in Spring

I just read a piece from a student journalist at Francis Lewis High School. In it, he describes the difficulty of navigating online instruction when there's stiff competition for the use of the home laptop. And alas, the home laptop may not be precisely state of the art, so there's that too.

Worse, you may have to share it with half a dozen other family members. This is the case in a lot of homes. In fact I know teachers who have multiple college students at home, all sharing an inadequate number of computers, and sucking up bandwidth from one another.

I have a pair of sisters who share a phone to attend my class. Now if this student journalist from our school has that issue, how many more students citywide have similar ones? Despite the ubiquitous phones in our classrooms, we don't really notice students who haven't got them. That's an issue.

Right now, there's talk of dropping APPR for the school year. That's a very good idea. There's no way a supervisor can rate anyone based on Danelson while students hide behind avatars. You can't observe student engagement if you can't observe students. Furthermore, you can't act to improve student engagement if you can't see it, or if you can't even guess as to why that is. If we advocate not to be judged unfairly, how can we not ask the same consideration for our students?

Who knows why they're behind those avatars? Sure, they could be asleep. Sure, they could be out of the room, or playing video games somewhere. However, they could also be in an overcrowded apartment, or living under conditions they don't see fit to share with you or their classmates. They could have someone sick, hospitalized or even dying from the virus. There are so many possibilities, we can barely begin to speculate.

Why don't students show to your online classes? We really don't know that either. Word got out early that attendance ought not to factor into grades, and maybe they know that. CONTINUE READING: NYC Educator: No Grade Should Fall in Spring