A thread about schools and colleges reopening in the fall.

With my experiences teaching, parenting (yes, teachers can be parents too), and being sick & whatever else comes to mind.

So here in town, there are two universities: the University of Kansas and Haskell Indian Nations University. There is also a big K-12 school district (USD497).

This is a small university town, so whatever the universities decide (especially KU, which has much larger enrolment than Haskell), that's going to massively influence locals who are not involved with teaching/learning.

Right now I teach at KU as a graduate student, but I've also previously been adjunct faculty at a different department. (I stopped because I want to finish my PhD, and I was required to teach as an assistant in the appropriate department for that.)

My opinions are entirely my own and not representative of anyone else except me, though I'm sure a lot of people agree with me.

So let's take these one by one.

Haskell will NOT reopen in-person in the fall. https://twitter.com/HaskellU/status/1276182019974860800

KU and the school district are, to my knowledge, still deliberating.

I will describe some of my difficulties both with in-person AND ALSO with online learning.

(Basically it is going to be "this is all-round bad and the most vulnerable people get shoved aside")

So we all heard about the "international students will be sent home" thing.

If that happened a few years ago, I would have been at risk of deportation (which I have been last year due to other reasons, and let me tell you, it was terrible)

But the govt backtracked on that.

Even still, there are many difficulties.

Let's start with the assumption that KU will reopen.

There have already been COVID hotspots related specifically to the student bars in town, and the semester hasn't even started yet.

Bars (all bars) had to be closed down again.

Here is an article about a hotspot at the Hawk. https://www.kansan.com/news/lawrence-bars-will-close-friday-following-increase-in-covid-19-cases/article_844d9a64-bbe1-11ea-a473-8f48b108642c.html

Now, what happens if you get potentially exposed and get tested.

This just happened to me last week after I came down with a cold. (Cough, mild fever.)

I was pretty sure I already had COVID (though who knows how long the immunity lasts) but of course I went to get tested still.

(I don't know how I caught a cold-that-was-not-COVID, I was always wearing a mask, but they are not perfect.

A fellow patient did very aggressively cough on me at the orthopedist's :/ but we were both wearing masks. Alas.)

So we went to get tested.

I called the hotline, they sent me to my GP, who sent me to the drivethrough behind the area hospital.

We went there. There was a line of cars. (This does not bode well.)

The people doing the testing wore really massive protective equipment, I hope they are going to be OK too.

That was 6 days ago.

Testing used to be "same-day results".

As you can probably guess, it is no longer same-day results.

I was instructed to quarantine and self-isolate.

Because no one else in my family was having a cold, I dragged my stuff down to the basement.

I figured this will last a day or two.

The basement has: 5 metric PILES of books. It also has: a VERY LOUD dehumidifier. It doesn't have: reliable plumbing.

In any case it is like a typical Midwestern basement (+ books), but not everyone has a typical Midwestern basement.

I survived the basement :)

It did not last a day or two, it lasted 6 days.

If I was supposed to be teaching in-person at this time, who would have been teaching?

I am in fact teaching right now, but an online course. I was responding a bit slower bc I was splat.

(I was also teaching, also online, when I was probably having COVID-19 earlier. I was TERRIBLY sick and I do not recommend teaching while having it. I have actual gaps in my memory. My teaching evals came back nice, so the students probably still liked it. But no one shd do that)

If I was teaching in person, all my students would also have had to be tested & be quarantined, due to potential exposure.

Now if all those people get tested all at once, testing will be EVEN slower unless KU magically produces more testing capability than the town has.

In any case, this strikes me as entirely unworkable.

Everyone on campus will just be in and out of quarantine forever.

Some people will get sick.

(I do not recommend it.)

Now about parenting! Because I teach, but I also parent, yes the two can co-occur.

I am disabled. Our kid is also disabled! We are all disabled in here! (Different disabilities, though there is some overlap.)

Which is generally reasonably ok, we are all used to it :)

He was just finishing middle school. He is autistic and has a language disorder. He takes classes most of the time with typically developing kids, with 1:1 paraprofessional support, which the district is *legally mandated* to provide.

Now the way this worked out online was the following.

The paraeducators were sent on forced leave.

I do not want them to suffer snotty kids in person (I am sorry. Kids catch everything because they are IN SCHOOL a lot) but they were not allowed to provide services online either

We only had support from our kid's special education teacher (who was wonderful and tried extremely hard)

His speech therapy, provided through the school, was entirely cancelled.

Now this is especially interesting because...

...I teach speech therapy students.

Most of my colleagues ARE speech therapists.

(I'm not. I'm the odd one out)

Most of them WERE still providing services, and in fact required to provide services, online.

Somehow our kid was not getting services...

So I am doing the following things regularly.

* 50% time a student in my PhD program
* 50% time work teaching
* ???% time we also have a small business.

Now on top of that, +100% time being a makeshift paraeducator for my kid so that he could still participate in education.

I enjoy teaching my kid. We are both autistic so I can explain things to him probably better than a non-autistic person can (there is data about this)

I also like to teach.

Most parents are not and are extremely unqualified to do so.

Also a lot of teachers extremely do not want to teach their own kid, and I really understand that.

We know this: Mati is happy to learn things from me, but from my spouse, also a teacher, he only wants a combination of food and hugs. He kind of divided the parents up like that

So I have always been the person to study with him for his extracurriculars (which he started on his own request. Violin + Hebrew/Jewish studies)

So this had been previously practiced & worked for us.

Except I was extremely exhausted bc that is like 200%+ full-time employment.

I figured, OK maybe his disability supports cannot be provided online. I get that. He could not do group Zoom AT ALL.

Except then he had Extended School Year.

And he got 1:1 Zoom calls via that. Only 2x20 minutes each week.

But he could DO THESE WITHOUT ANY PROBLEMS.

So that made me really upset.

Why couldn't he just get his education online. Like typically developing kids.

The district just assumed that the parents would do it.

I did it, but it really hurt my health.

The school district couldn't employ the same people who were doing the same thing offline to do it online.

The school district also couldn't just pay me, the only person who could study with him in person without breaking social distancing.

Of course, we could have just done what many people, mostly with ethnically unambiguous, non-disabled, non-migrant kids have done and just say "I don't care, they will not fail them even if they don't do anything"

I did not think this was a safe option for us.

This was just after I got through a lengthy legal affair of the government trying to deport me and break apart our family, because our marriage was deemed insufficiently valid for immigration purposes.

(I could not talk about it while the case was ongoing. I AM A CITIZEN NOW)

We are so married that it is literally on Wikipedia. But we had to fight to "demonstrate" it.

Also, he did get a constant stream of schoolwork. And proddings from teachers to submit it.

I think he did about 80% of his schoolwork in the end. Which, considering his difficulties, was probably MORE than in a usual school year.

He also learned to sight-read music, and has almost finished reading through the entire Torah with me (the adult version!) He is in the Book of Numbers. He really wants Deuteronomy because he says he prefers laws to stories.

So *he* did really well.

*I* still haven't caught up

So at first I was like, OK, I really hope schools will reopen in the fall because I am keeling over from overwork here. But then I realized it was entirely unworkable.

They can socially distance and some of them will STILL get sick.

Not to mention, if college students can't keep it from spreading, how will K-12 students do that?

But him getting either support online, or just a semester off from being graded until a vaccine is produced, or something - that could both be PERFECTLY WORKABLE options.

There is just no will.

He has been discarded, by extension me too, and his entire family.

Of course, not all kids can get support online. Sometimes it really is not feasible.

With him it was feasible, just no one in an administrative position believed that enough to even try.

How many kids are like that?

How many teachers are willing to get creative?

His Special Ed teacher was willing to get creative, but that was ONE PERSON.

One of his regular classes also got an adapted version (most of the other ones didn't)

My conclusions:

1. Everything is a mess.
2. Not discarding disabled kids' needs FIRST THING in the pandemic would have solved so much. (Ripple effects are a thing)
3. Online teaching is very workable even in edge cases.
4. Universal Basic Income would have also solved so much.

"Assume competence" is a good thing. If you just assume someone can't do something without even TRYING, that can be so immensely harmful.

It happened to me a lot when I was a kid, now it is happening to my own kid, can we not, please.

I think this is it for now. Thank you for listening!