Explaining Coronavirus to Kids – Los Angeles Education Examiner

Explaining Coronavirus to Kids – Los Angeles Education Examiner

Explaining Coronavirus to Kids

So you’re on day two (or more for the more cautious of us) of your efforts of being a homeschooler and the kids are asking one question that you’re having trouble answering:

Daddy (gender is male because it’s my kids asking me in this parable) what actually is the Coronavirus?

Like any “good parent in the 21st century” I knew exactly what to do. I spent a half hour on YouTube to find a video that works for my kids (ages 1st and 4th grade). Here it is:

Kids a little older, middle schoolers, might get more out of this video.

And for the scientists and high schoolers, this video gives a more adult breakdown.

Note: the following list of resources will be at the bottom of every post during COVID19:

Governmental response including: CONTINUE READING: Explaining Coronavirus to Kids – Los Angeles Education Examiner

CURMUDGUCATION: On Line Class Discussions

CURMUDGUCATION: On Line Class Discussions

On Line Class Discussions

Think of this as part of a series on ed tech tools that can actually be useful, now that some folks are being required to use them.

Some of my teacher friends are discovering the joys of on-line class discussions, and I myself was always a fan. The best ed tech doesn't supplant the classroom, but extends its reach, and the on line discussion format offers several appealing features.

Most importantly, it shifts the balance of power. Live class discussion favors the talkers; on-line discussion favors the writers. If you get a good system in place, you will see students who rarely say boo in class suddenly becoming powerhouses of discussion. There is also something about typing that prompts a level of honesty and openness that you don't always get in class. As roughly sixty gigazillion examples on the interwebz show us, people write things in front of everyone else that they would never say in front of everyone else. This force can be harnessed for good in your class.

As with all software, little things matter. I started on-line discussion groups with Moodle, which offers a threaded discussion feature (what many interwebz oldtimers will recognize from their CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: On Line Class Discussions

2020 Medley #8: Public Education, Disaster Capitalism, and COVID-19 | Live Long and Prosper

2020 Medley #8: Public Education, Disaster Capitalism, and COVID-19 | Live Long and Prosper

DISASTER

Naomi Klein, in her book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, described how natural and man-made disasters open the door to privatization. During the COVID-19 disaster, we must ensure that the same thing doesn’t happen to public education.

Schools have been starved over the last few decades. The lack of funding for public education, and other public institutions and public infrastructure, have opened up schools to vulnerability under the Shock Doctrine. Klein wrote…

When it comes to paying contractors, the sky is the limit; when it comes to financing the basic functions of the state, the coffers are empty.

and…

The American Society of Civil Engineers said in 2007 that the U.S. had fallen so far behind in maintaining its public infrastructure — roads, bridges, schools, dams — that it would take more than a trillion and half dollars over five years to bring it back up to standard. Instead, these types of expenditures are being cut back. At the same time, public infrastructure around the world is facing unprecedented stress, with hurricanes, cyclones, floods and forest fires all increasing in frequency and intensity. It’s easy to imagine a future in which growing numbers of cities have their frail and long-neglected infrastructures knocked out by disasters and then are left to rot, their core services never repaired or rehabilitated. The well-off, meanwhile, will withdraw into gated communities, their needs met by privatized providers.

COVID-19

As of this writing, schools are closed for more than half of America’s children. But, as we’ve discussed in these blogs over the last fourteen years, public schools, CONTINUE READING: 

Charter Schools Have No Legitimate Claim to Public Funds | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Have No Legitimate Claim to Public Funds | Dissident Voice

Charter Schools Have No Legitimate Claim to Public Funds

Despite the sustained exposure of endless problems in the segregated charter school sector, charter school promoters are permanently stuck in “blindly repeat disinformation” mode and cannot seem to understand what is happening to them. Their social being and social consciousness objectively prevent them from grasping why the public increasingly opposes charter schools.

The most recent and significant epicenter of the charter school saga is Pennsylvania, where all kinds of changes or expected changes are coming to that state’s charter schools. And charter school promoters are not happy. They do not like accountability or the thought of losing billions of dollars in public funds that actually belong to public schools, not charter schools. In this vein, one of charter schools’ favorite victim cards is that they do not get as much money as public schools, that they are in a weak financial position all the time, and supposedly operate at a disadvantage compared to public schools. In other words, charter schools are “performing miracles” with less and should be allowed to continue to siphon public funds from the public purse.

But putting aside their poor record, do charter schools, which rest on the ideologies of individualism, consumerism, and the “free market,” have a valid claim to public funds and public property?

It cannot be stated enough that charter schools are not public schools in any sense of the word. As such, they have no legitimate claim to public funds or public property. Public funds and public property belong only to the public, not someone else. Charter schools do not possess the features of public schools which have been around since the mid-1800s. And the existence of charter CONTINUE READING: Charter Schools Have No Legitimate Claim to Public Funds | Dissident Voice

Coronavirus Fight Lays Bare Education’s Digital Divide - The New York Times

Coronavirus Fight Lays Bare Education’s Digital Divide - The New York Times

Coronavirus Fight Lays Bare Education’s Digital Divide
In China, many rural students lack the connections or hardware to learn remotely. More nations will confront the same reality as the outbreak spreads.

BEIJING — Like hundreds of millions of other children worldwide, Liu Chenxinhao and Liu Chenxinyuan were getting used to doing class work online. After their elementary school closed because of the coronavirus outbreak, the brothers received their homework through a smartphone app.

Then their schooling screeched to a halt. Their father, a builder, had to go back to work in a neighboring province of China. He took his phone with him.

Now the only device on which the boys can watch their school’s video lessons is 300 miles away. Their grandmother’s $30 handset only makes calls.

“Of course it will have an effect” on their education, said their father, Liu Ji, 34. “But I can’t do anything about it.”

For all of China’s economic advancements in recent decades, the rudiments of connected life — capable smartphones, reliable internet — remain out of reach for large segments of the population. As the virus has turned online conveniences into daily necessities, these people, most of whom live in China’s rural hinterland, have been cut off from their regular lives, especially when it comes to education.

The epidemic’s disparate impact on rich and poor, city and country, is a reality that more of the rest of the world is fast beginning to confront. More than 770 million learners worldwide are now being affected by school and university closures, according to the United Nations.

In China, many parents cannot afford to buy multiple devices for themselves and their children, even though many of the world’s cheapest smartphones — and most of the fanciest ones, too — are made in China. The nation is blanketed in 4G service, yet the signal is spotty in parts of the countryside. Home broadband can be expensive outside big cities.

Between 56 million and 80 million people in China reported lacking either an internet connection or a web-enabled device in 2018, according to government statistics. Another 480 million people said they did not go online for other reasons — for instance, because CONTINUE READING: Coronavirus Fight Lays Bare Education’s Digital Divide - The New York Times

Disaster Capitalism, Online Instruction, and What Covid-19 Is Teaching Us About Public Schools and Teachers

Disaster Capitalism, Online Instruction, and What Covid-19 Is Teaching Us About Public Schools and Teachers

Disaster Capitalism, Online Instruction, and What Covid-19 Is Teaching Us About Public Schools and Teachers

The last few weeks have been surreal as we learn about the Corona Virus and how to protect ourselves and our neighbors. One of the largest disruptions has been school closings in order to contain the virus. No one knows when schools will reopen.

While Covid-19 is of utmost concern, parents and educators, who’ve worried about the replacement of brick-and-mortar schools and teachers with anytime, anyplace, online instruction, wonder what this pandemic will mean to public education long term. Will this disaster be used to end public schools, replacing instruction with online competency-based learning?

We’re reminded of disaster capitalism, a concept highlighted by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, how Katrina was used in New Orleans to convert traditional public schools to charter schools. Within nineteen months, with most of the city’s poor residents still in exile, New Orleans’ public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools. (p. 5-6). Who thought that could happen?

The transitioning of technology into public schools, not simply as a supplemental tool for teachers to use at their discretion, but as a transformative means to remove teachers from the equation, has been highlighted with groups like Digital Promise and CONTINUE READING: Disaster Capitalism, Online Instruction, and What Covid-19 Is Teaching Us About Public Schools and Teachers

UK College of Education Rises to Highest Ranking Ever! | Cloaking Inequity

UK College of Education Rises to Highest Ranking Ever! | Cloaking Inequity

UK COLLEGE OF EDUCATION RISES TO HIGHEST RANKING EVER!

As we face this time of uncertainty, I wanted to take a moment to reach out and share a bit of news we can celebrate. Today, U.S. News and World Report released rankings showing that the University of Kentucky College of Education climbed 14 spots this year to break the top 30 among public institutions and are ranked 43rd overall among all education graduate programs in the nation.

Without the 2020 NCAA tournament to mark Kentucky’s wins, we are doubling our celebration of this latest ranking. To help us spread the news, please visit our social media pages (@UKCollegeofED) to like and share our posts about the ranking.

This is our highest-ranking ever and shows that our peers are increasingly noticing the scholarly endeavors of the college. As the top-ranked college of education in Kentucky, we are able to offer students top-tier programs, which employers notice as well. This is a credit to university leadership and the hard work of our team— faculty, staff, students and alumni.

We continue to innovate and adapt to students’ needs and changes in the education landscape with programs that offer a breadth of opportunities for research and professional growth. Earlier this year, U.S. News ranked two of the college’s online graduate programs among the top twenty in the nation. A third program is currently ranked in the top 10.

Amid our celebration, we are dealing with many uncertainties. Our leadership team has been working around-the-clock on a number of contingency plans to ensure our students’ timely path to graduation as our community responds to the coronavirus (COVID-19). While these are difficult and unprecedented times, we feel well-situated, as educators, to pivot as needed and make the best of it.

The UK College of Education offers more than 70 graduate degree and certificate programs in a wide range of career fields. To see more about graduate programs at the UK College of Education, visit education.uky.edu/academics/graduate-programs.

We’ve also made a bevy of exciting faculty hires that will will announce soon.

Join us at UK!

Please Facebook Like, Tweet, etc below and/or reblog to share this discussion with others.

Check out and follow my YouTube channel here.

Twitter: @ProfessorJVH

Click here for Vitae.

UK College of Education Rises to Highest Ranking Ever! | Cloaking Inequity

Before This Virus (On NYC Schools and COVID-19) | The Jose Vilson

Before This Virus (On NYC Schools and COVID-19) | The Jose Vilson

BEFORE THIS VIRUS (ON NYC SCHOOLS AND COVID-19)

It had to come to this.

In November of 2016, people kept saying that we’ll make it through this administration, as we had in the past. A critical analysis of history reveals that, to the contrary, some won’t. Indeed, some haven’t. Even with a Democratic mayor in a Democratic city and a Democratic governor as our head of state, a subset of people knew that the corrupt incompetence of the racist, sexist pseudo-billionaire from this city would reap what America has sown since its inception. America’s institutional diseases have prevailed even after mass labor transferred – ostensibly – from Black bodies to complex machines.

This country had a civil war over one of those diseases and – rather than quarantine it – decided to let the disease take new forms and spread from ocean to ocean.

As a Black Latinx teacher, I inherited the legacy of teachers who witnessed educational inequities firsthand and fought tooth and nail to overturn unjust policies and practices upon our children. For decades, the American public has known that teachers are underpaid for the preparation they do and the practice they take on. But there’s also an unwritten contract that teachers implicitly undertake when we assign ourselves to the teaching profession, whether it’s in public schools, charter schools, private schools, schools in alternative settings like prisons and shelters, and even homeschooling. Some of us are explicitly aware of this social contract in moments where the contract we signed and CONTINUE READING: Before This Virus (On NYC Schools and COVID-19) | The Jose Vilson

JOHN FENSTERWALD: California schools, child care centers to get $100 million to disinfect for coronavirus | EdSource

California schools, child care centers to get $100 million to disinfect for coronavirus | EdSource

California schools, child care centers to get $100 million to disinfect for coronavirus
Legislators also guarantee "full funding" during school closures.

The Legislature hurriedly approved emergency financial relief to help school districts cope with the costs of the coronavirus on Monday before adjourning for a month to comply with state and federal orders limiting gatherings to stem the spread of the contagion.

Legislators approved an initial $100 million for K-12 districts and child care centers to cover school cleaning expenses and adopted waivers that will ensure funding for school districts and state-funded child care during school closures. In a second bill, they approved spending up to $1 billion on emergency medical costs, including leasing two hospitals, to expand the capacity to respond to the pandemic.

Also on Monday, the chairman of the Assembly Education Committee, Patrick O’Donnell, D-Long Beach, said he would shepherd legislation that would give districts flexibility to meet the state’s minimum instructional time requirements. That has been one of the unresolved issues for districts that have closed schools.

On Friday, Gov. Gavin Newsom issued an executive order that assured school districts would be funded during closures and waived the minimum state requirement for 175 instructional days each year. The order also set conditions, including providing school meals outside of a cafeteria setting for low-income children, that districts would have to satisfy to get the money.

O’Donnell’s bill, which has not been published, would apply to those schools that want to make up the academic days — even though a shorter year would be legal. The bill would not provide additional funding, however. It would allow districts to extend the school day and count the extra instructional minutes toward the annual minimum instructional CONTINUE READING: California schools, child care centers to get $100 million to disinfect for coronavirus | EdSource

Tell Betsy DeVos to Shut Down the Tests - Network For Public Education

Tell Betsy DeVos to Shut Down the Tests - Network For Public Education

Tell Betsy DeVos to Shut Down the Tests

The Network for Public Education hopes this email finds you and your family safe and well. In the coming weeks, we will provide resources on our website to support families and teachers through this critical time.

Right now, our efforts focus on keeping students safe and reducing their stress. Therefore, we are deeply disappointed by Secretary DeVos’s recent statement that she “may consider” testing waivers to areas hard hit by COVID 19. More than half of all states and nearly all large cities have shut down their schools, in some cases, for an indefinite period of time.

Tell Betsy DeVos to shut down the tests by sending your email here.

The last thing our students and teachers need is to worry about the stress of high-stakes tests.

We are therefore asking you to join us in calling on Betsy DeVos to grant a blanket waiver to allow states to be exempt from all testing requirements.

Our message is simple. Kids’ health and safety come first. Shut down the tests.

Send your email here.

Then call 1-800-872-5327 and tell the Department to grant a blanket testing waiver to the states.

Tell Betsy DeVos to Shut Down the Tests - Network For Public Education

Petition to Support Students & Communities During Mass School Closures–Diary of a Teacher During the Coronavirus Crisis, Entry #2 – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Petition to Support Students & Communities During Mass School Closures–Diary of a Teacher During the Coronavirus Crisis, Entry #2 – I AM AN EDUCATOR

Petition to Support Students & Communities During Mass School Closures–Diary of a Teacher During the Coronavirus Crisis, Entry #2

During this period of mass school closures around the country and around the world due to COVID-19, Seattle teacher Jesse Hagopian is going to share his experience with educating his kids at home and helping social movements to promote public health. Below is Jesse’s “Diary Entry #2” that contains a petition to help students and communities during this crisis. You can follow these posts at http://www.IAmAnEducator.com

This morning 1.1 million New York City School students woke up to their first COVID-19 day off of school.  Millions more in some 33 states around the country have now had the schoolhouse doors closed to them and nearly 300 million students around the world are out of school to try to stop the spread of this deadly disease.  In fact, public life itself is being shut down with the announcements cities such as from my hometown of Seattle to LA to New York City that restaurants and bars would be closed.  The Center for Disease Control recommended on Sunday that there should no longer be any gatherings of 50 people or more for at least eight weeks.  The infection rate and death toll are mounting around the world.

This was all a lot for me to take in as I checked my twitter feed and read the paper this morning.  I decided it wouldn’t be healthy for me to panic my two kids with all of this information at once.  I did let them know that restaurants would be closed starting today and we would need to cook all our own food.  As we sent the boy’s mom out the door to work and wished her well, we decided that the first homeschool CONTINUE READING: Petition to Support Students & Communities During Mass School Closures–Diary of a Teacher During the Coronavirus Crisis, Entry #2 – I AM AN EDUCATOR

NYC Public School Parents: Join us for "Talk out of School" on March 18, when we will talk state education funding, school closures and the pitfalls of ed tech

NYC Public School Parents: Join us for "Talk out of School" on March 18, when we will talk state education funding, school closures and the pitfalls of ed tech

Join us for "Talk out of School" on March 18, when we will talk state education funding, school closures and the pitfalls of ed tech

 

Please join us on Wednesday, March 18 on WBAI-FM 99.5 or wbai.org where we will "Talk out of School"  with Jasmine Gripper, Executive Director of the Alliance of Quality Education about what's happening with the state education budget and how parents can help ensure NYC get its fair share of funding.  

Then we will speak with NYC Council Education Chair Mark Treyger about what's happened with the school closures in NYC, and what's likely to happen next as the Department of Education moves towards "remote" or online learning.  

Finally, as other districts across the country including NYC start to expand the use of online learning, we will ask Audrey Watters, prominent critic of ed tech, what we should all try to avoid with this highly problematic mode of instruction.

NYC Public School Parents: Join us for "Talk out of School" on March 18, when we will talk state education funding, school closures and the pitfalls of ed tech

Badass Teachers Association Blog: What are You Going to Do when Disaster Capitalism Knocks on the Public-School Door?

Badass Teachers Association Blog: What are You Going to Do when Disaster Capitalism Knocks on the Public-School Door?

What are You Going to Do when Disaster Capitalism Knocks on the Public-School Door?

“Schools will be closed until at least April 20, after the upcoming spring break, but could stay closed for significantly longer, Mr. de Blasio said.”

When I read those words in the New York Times article announcing that New York City schools would finally close, I had a sick feeling in the pit of my stomach. For the past few days, I have been a vocal advocate for closing NYC schools. Knowing the impact that closing schools would have on marginalized children and their families who only have public education as their sole safety net, I still believed that we must close the schools to stop the spread of COVID-19. But then it hit me that for some disaster is the only way to fundamentally alter public education. Disaster capitalism is what Naomi Klein warned us about in her book The Shock Doctrine. And we’ve seen this play out in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina and in Puerto Rico after Hurricane Maria (they also tried in Houston but not sure how far they got). As that sick feeling in the pit of my stomach grew, one question formed in my mind: how many schools would not reopen as traditional public schools when this is all over?

Many children will do well online. Some will not. Many teachers will enjoy teaching online. Some will not. Many districts will like the benefits of online schooling. Some will not. I can’t predict the future, and neither can you. But what we can do is learn from history and history teaches us that public education is ripe for those who want to implement significant changes during the time of a disaster. So even if you think this can’t happen, I assure you some intend to make it happen whether you like it or not.

Some people immediately responded that everything would return to normal because parents need their children to go back to school, so this online schooling can’t last forever. But online schooling doesn’t have to happen at home. Online schooling can take place in a school building CONTINUE READING: Badass Teachers Association Blog: What are You Going to Do when Disaster Capitalism Knocks on the Public-School Door?

And Yet, There Are Collateral Benefits – Los Angeles Education Examiner

And Yet, There Are Collateral Benefits – Los Angeles Education Examiner

And Yet, There Are Collateral Benefits

It’s not what you’d wish on your worst enemy, but all the same, there are bright spots amidst the coronavirus (CV) landscape.

On a brief (auto) trip to the bakery this weekend I passed through numerous residential neighborhoods, every one of which sported people outside, recreating.  On bikes, with basketballs in hand, walking dogs, planting trees, shouting socially-distanced pleasantries – it was absolutely plain as could be that people everywhere were plonked back to the future in slower, simpler pleasures like gallomph-jogging side-by-side, challenging each other in bicycling-pairs to summit a hill, corralling the kids to participate in household chores and pet-care.

Who knew that contentious traffic calming measures of late would suddenly be rendered moot, casualties of the CV pandemic that has parked us all in our neighborhoods, not somewhere else. Maybe all we’ve really been needing was relief from the tyranny of scheduled events and organized activities.

Quoth one nearby teenager: “I am perfectly fine and content with being quarantined [which we’re not, to be precise] for a hot minute. I think it’s much more fun than being panicked about work in a social setting.”

Just like that:  out of our cars, away from some overheated pressures – or at least perhaps a new configuration for them.

It’s true that while life may slow in some respects, responsibilities and worry and pressure do remain if in different form. There has been a Herculean effort – public and private – to collect information, establish centers of support, pull together.

Here is a list of some resources:

Governmental response including health information, public health measures

• • Federal Center for Disease Control (CDC), comprehensive authoritative health information including a testing tracker and even open source public health images!
  • International World Health Organization (WHO) coronavirus outbreak website
  • State of CA Department of Public Health CV information
  • Governor’s Executive Order Ensuring State Funding for Schools Even in Event of Physical Closure; call for the closure of all bars and wineries, self-isolation of seniors and high-risk individuals
  • Los Angeles County background and symptoms information including daily count updates and FAQ in 14 languages [Note the City of Los Angeles’ health agencies are part of the County government not municipal]
  • LA County residents can also call 2-1-1

Data banks CONTINUE READING: And Yet, There Are Collateral Benefits – Los Angeles Education Examiner