ROUND 3 IS NOW UNDERWAY
“I sometimes think we must be all mad and that we shall wake to sanity in strait-waistcoats.”― Dracula
“If we judge ourselves only by our aspirations and everyone else only their conduct we shall soon reach a very false conclusion.”
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Two months ago, when the decision to offer a virtual option was made, MNPS signed a 5 million dollar contract with the Florida Virtual School. The thinking was that in these unprecedented times, having a common curriculum would create uniformity across the district. Switching to a canned curriculum was supposed to take the pressure off of teachers and as District Superintendent Dr. Battle told the MNPS School back in June, “It allows teachers to focus on supporting students rather than creating lessons.”
In July the district made the decision to go all virtual. A decision that has been borne out as the right one based on increased cases of COVID across the state. In making the decision, Battle further emphasized the need to engage the Florida Virtual School curriculum, “”We will be utilizing a standard curriculum to be used across the district in all schools, and this is very necessary because we need to provide a continuity of learning plan for consistency for our students.”
Unfortunately, that consistency hasn’t materialized.
MNPS may have acquired a standardized curriculum but they didn’t create a standardized implementation. As a result, virtual schooling looks different at every school in the district. Teachers are scrambling to learn multiple systems while also trying to adapt the curriculum to fit their individual classes. Many elementary teachers did not even get a look at the curriculum until a week before school began, middle school and high school got a look only days before them.A brief training was given to teachers on technology and the assumption was made that every CONTINUE READING: ROUND 3 IS NOW UNDERWAY – Dad Gone Wild