NANCY BAILEY: The Loss That Matters This Mother’s Day

The Loss That Matters This Mother’s Day

The Loss That Matters This Mother’s Day

The loss important to understand this year, the most critical loss, is not learning loss. It involves the loss many children are facing after losing a mom or dad to Covid-19. Or it could be a grandma or grandpa, a beloved aunt or uncle, or sister or brother, even a friend.

On this Mother’s Day, how many children are grieving the loss of their mother? On Father’s Day, how many will be missing their dad?

We’re told that between 37,000 and 43,000 children in the United States have lost at least one parent to COVID-19. According to the University of Southern California, this is a 20% increase in parental loss over a typical year.

A loss will affect how students look at school, how they take tests, and how they recapture a sense of normalcy as school buildings reopen and they gather once again in person if they are not already in the school building. School and life for them will never be the same.

Parental loss due to Covid-19 has been found more in the black community. Children are called Covid Orphans.

Children may be troubled simply due to the fear and anguish caused by the strangeness CONTINUE READING: The Loss That Matters This Mother’s Day

A NYC Teacher Blogger Fell, 1 Year Ago Today | JD2718

A NYC Teacher Blogger Fell, 1 Year Ago Today | JD2718

A NYC Teacher Blogger Fell, 1 Year Ago Today

Eric “Chaz” Chasanoff was one of the best-known New York City teacher bloggers. He was an exceptional advocate for teachers, and a opponent of arbitrary and unfair policies.

Eric wrote regularly for well over a decade. He started in 2006. And he didn’t stop, until COVID stopped him.

During the pandemic he was writing every two or three days. On April 26 he wrote about reducing administrative costs, and not school budgets. And then… Silence. On May 2 I wrote to him. He was already sick, and did not respond. I didn’t know. I wrote to other bloggers, to his UFT borough office. And then we learned.

Eric was a weatherman – on TV – before he was a teacher. He became an earth science teacher. Earth Science Eric. Read here as James Eterno, his UFT Chapter Leader at Jamaica HS, talks about Eric.

Eric wrote about teacher issues. He wrote about teacher financial issues – pension, TDA. He wrote about problem schools, and problem administrators. He wrote about good work the UFT did, and he wrote CONTINUE READING: A NYC Teacher Blogger Fell, 1 Year Ago Today | JD2718

A year ago – a mathematical giant fell to COVID-19 | JD2718

A year ago – a mathematical giant fell to COVID-19 | JD2718

A year ago – a mathematical giant fell to COVID-19

John Horton Conway died of COVID-19 on April 11, 2020.

This is two and a half weeks late. I have been looking for something profound to say. I will not find it.

I met Conway in the fall of 2013. I was on sabbatical, trying to take interesting math classes at Queens College. I was happy I found a class in Combinatorics. Logic made sense for me (it turned out to be both challenging and rewarding.) And I needed one more. Someone, probably Kirsten, let me know: “There’s still seats in Number Theory – you have to take Conway” – and I did.

Conway had retired, but I think Kent Boklan brought him out of retirement to teach at Queens College. They were part of the same mathematical genealogy, going back to Davenport and Littlewood. That was good fortune for me, for all of us. Conway’s stroke interfered with his mobility, not his mind, and he clearly enjoyed engaging with students.

Conway was the most famous living mathematician. Maybe. Probably. The Number Theory was fun. But the stories were wonderful. He knew. personally, the guys (almost all men) that we read about. He told CONTINUE READING: A year ago – a mathematical giant fell to COVID-19 | JD2718

CURMUDGUCATION: Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

CURMUDGUCATION: Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

The chicken littling about Learning Loss is just never going to stop. Today I came across yet another article (that I won't link to) warning that the Learning Losses from the pandemic pause will haunt students for the rest of their lives.

The worst of the Learning Loss panickers are revealing too much about what they don't understand, but what they especially don't understand is what goes on in an actual classroom, because the whole concept of "falling behind" is a layperson's oversimplification of what actual education looks like.

I think I was a pretty run-of-the-mill example of the teaching profession in my thirty-nine years, so let me explain what my year generally looked like. 

At the beginning of the year, I'd launch the dual processes of Trying To Teach Stuff and Figuring Out What This Batch of Students Knows and Can Do. At no point in my career were the Big Standardized Test results a useful part of this process because A) the results were nothing but a score and we weren't even allowed to see the questions, so had no way of knowing what exactly students got right or got wrong and B) the results don't come until the school year was already well under way. 

In my career, I mostly taught grades 9 through 12, all tracks, so September always brought students with a very wide range of tools. One of things you get better at with experience is assessing what the students bring to the table, both academically and otherwise. And then you go from there.

This initial assessment does not tell you anything CONTINUE READING: CURMUDGUCATION: Falling Behind In An Actual Classroom

Let the Children Play – My Prescription for Covid “Learning Loss” | gadflyonthewallblog

Let the Children Play – My Prescription for Covid “Learning Loss” | gadflyonthewallblog

Let the Children Play – My Prescription for Covid “Learning Loss”

Things are different in school these days.

The classes are smaller.

The kids are more subdued.

The teachers are exhausted.

But that’s life as we try to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic and somehow get back to normal.

I come into the room every day and sit behind a glass barrier.

My kids either stumble in from the hall wearing masks (often below their noses) or they log in to Zoom and participate on-line.

It’s far from ideal, but we get things done.

Right now we’re reading the play version of “The Diary of Anne Frank.”

The kids were reticent at first.

With the unreliable schedules of in-person vs remote learning, it took us months to CONTINUE READING: Let the Children Play – My Prescription for Covid “Learning Loss” | gadflyonthewallblog

A year ago today, another loss | JD2718

A year ago today, another loss | JD2718

A year ago today, another loss

A UFT Executive Board Meeting is wrapping. I’m not sure when. Not in the last two years. I’d disagreed with Mulgrew. Or Weingarten. Or Michael Mendel (I miss Michael). Or maybe a DR meeting, and I had spoken sharply.

Whatever. The meeting is over, and a slight figure, smiling, comes over, to explain that I spoke well, but that there really was no disagreement. Well-intentioned. So well-intentioned that it was tempting to overlook that he was wrong about the disagreement. Winston Slivera.

Winston was warm and friendly. He thought people should get along. I never saw him cross or angry or even annoyed. I often saw him at citywide meetings and Bronx meetings. Always smiling. I think the last I spoke to him he was saying it was a shame that I was no longer on the Executive Board (this from a member of Unity Caucus).

Winston had been a science teacher at Truman High School in the Bronx, a chapter leader, and in retirement a staffer in the Bronx office. Here’s more about him.

A year ago today Winston died of COVID-19.

A year ago today, another loss | JD2718