We are a week into virtual school and it is going … okay, I guess.

Riley is completely self-sufficient and while he doesn’t TRY particularly hard to be a good student he gets by quite well on minimal effort (at least so far, he’s now in high school honors classes which I assume will eventually require him to break an academic sweat now and then). He basically disappears entirely for hours at a time, emerges to complain about Zoom, and he’s done for the day.

Dylan is having a harder go of it, which is par for the course with him and school in non-pandemic times, but the all-computer all-the-time vibe is not remotely ideal for the way he’s wired. Riley has always been a kid who can happily watch screens nonstop while Dylan has always been more active, we’ve never had to hammer him about screen time because he’s got a limited capacity for it. So now this kid who struggles with attention span issues/needs physical environment changes to stay engaged/loses focus and gets headaches from screens/learns best from high-energy teachers is slogging through online assignments and videos (all via a baffling new learning platform) while his butt is essentially superglued in front of an outdated school-issued iPad for hours at a time and it is of course all a Big Fat Bucket of Suck.

Well. Who among us is not feeling the Big Fat Bucket of Suck vibes, right? Nearly everything sucks right now and it’s sucked for months and there’s no end to the suck, THE SUCK IS ENDLESS, which is also my new Pornhub channel but surprise, it’s about vacuum lines.

In other sucky news one of my favorite trees in our backyard just fell right the hell over during a blustery afternoon this week:

No damage except to the tree itself, but it felt, like, classic 2020.

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PETE J HAIDINYAK
PETE J HAIDINYAK
4 years ago

Nice lawn.

Shawna
Shawna
4 years ago

Ruh roh, will the other half of the tree have to come down now that this half is no longer counterbalancing it?

g~
g~
4 years ago

I am a Canvas expert–one of my previous roles was creating content in Canvas for my district. I can testify that a poorly designed Canvas course is one of the purest forms of hell for students. My kiddo (15) has a teacher who CANNOT use Canvas adequately and it is KILLING me. If you can find one, a Chromebook helps. Ipads are woefully inadequate for job.

Kathy Potvin
4 years ago

Some teacher friends have said that you can often hook the school issued Ipad to your TV and then the student is not trapped in one position AND it is way way better for kids eyes to be further from the screen. The technical bits are beyond me but it is absolutely possible.

sooboo
sooboo
4 years ago

I don’t think I would have done well learning like this after about age 12. I probably would have spaced out and picked up a book.

As the wife of a teacher, I don’t think I will ever get used to hearing roll call while I’m lying in bed. I made my husband move his set up so that his students can’t see me stumble to the kitchen for coffee. The last thing I need is to be made into a meme.

Sorry about you tree! Mine were topped off terribly by the city crews last week and I just about cried.

KD
KD
4 years ago

I’m glad it didn’t fall on the power lines. Total suckage, though!

Beth
Beth
4 years ago

My son is a year younger than Dylan, and he is very similar – we’ve never had to get on him about screen time or gaming since he’d rather be outside doing something. And the hours in front of a screen are really tough. Our district is using Google classroom, which in some ways is good, but in other ways is difficult to navigate in terms of keeping track of assignments. I would love it if our district went back to some F2F learning.

JennB33
JennB33
4 years ago

My daughter – 15.5 – is having All The Angst about high school. They are back at school 2 days a week and talking about opening it to 5 and she is freaking the hell out about it. So i get to deal with breakdowns on that end. She doesn’t know how to handle ALL THIS WORK. And she has to find a job and doesn’t know how she’ll do it. It’s all I can do to say OH GIRRRRRRRLLLLL JUST YOU WAIT. But I bite my damn tongue and just listen.
My son – 12 – is fine with screens…. as long as they are his screens (GTA, Call of Duty, his YouTube channels, etc). He could be arsed about school. For a kid that built his own computer, he has zero curiosity about figuring out where his class is meeting (each teacher is using their own ways of sharing information)and checking his email. I am writing emails daily to his IEP teacher (he has learning issues also) and to the principle for guidance. Also teachers have 50-90 minutes per class, and they Always End Early. WHAT?
It also seems that, even though the kids are back in school 2 days a week, and remote 2 days a week, Wednesdays are kind of a nothing day. I call bullshit. I never approved THAT as a taxpayer.
Fed up with this shite.

Liz
Liz
4 years ago

I relate deeply to Riley. HS honors classes were indeed the first time I had to put forth, like, any effort at all in school aside from when I started algebra in 8th grade (ugh). Dylan’s predicament is more typical of 2020, I think, including my own personal predicament, and I’ve got my fingers crossed hard for all of you!