Day #4300 (Thu., Oct. 14, 2021) – Viola/Violin Lessons For Bobby?
The photo to the right shows the cereal organizing containers that my wife bought… Hopefully this will help the kids in “closing the lids” so that the cereal stays fresh.
Bobby had a playdate with Brin today. They are planning to get together to watch Scooby Doo tomorrow…
When I was putting Bobby to bed this evening we talked about the viola/violin lessons. He has expressed an interest in learning how to play it. I told him how I had a toy accordion when I was a kid and my father said that he would buy me a real one if I was really dedicated in learning it… I decided that I wasn’t, and wanted to see what Bobby’s commitment to the viola/violin was…
Bobby’s reply? He told me that “It was made for me”. After mentioning the differences to him, he chose the violin over the viola as it is more popular and he likes popular things.
My wife sent the following email to the school board today:
I would like to bring up some issues regarding ALA and they are not about technology. My 1st grade ALA student was submitting an assignment on SeeSaw on Monday when the dreadful ‘Uploading 0%’ message showed up. With no luck uploading, we got in touch with other parents and found out that it was an issue not limited to us. Trying accessing Clever on a school issued iPad also failed. I contacted our wonderful technology facilitator Melissa Stopa and found out that this is a pretty wide-spread issue (she didn’t know of it until I asked). Parents on a ALA Facebook group started bringing up problems they were having, sharing their ideas what worked and what didn’t. For example, we figured out that if another device (a personal laptop or an iPad) was used, then Clever/iReady/SeeSaw could be successfully accessed and used. All systems briefly came back yesterday morning and then went off until today. This morning I noticed that my son’s SeeSaw had no assignments, however when we logged in on another (personal) device, there were 3. Right now everything seems to be working, not sure for how long though. Working with technology daily, I realize that it does and will fail occasionally. However, I am very concerned that there was no single email from the district informing the parents and the teachers about what was happening. The kids are supposed to do independent work in the mornings and for four days they had no resources to do that and there was no communication about that from the district. I am sure some parents still don’t know what’s wrong and are either ignoring the issues or blaming their own devices. When we have issues like that at work, we usually get an email explaining what happened, why that happened and what is being done to prevent that from happening in the future. Is it reasonable to expect something like that from the district? Maybe not in detail, but at least some overview of the issue would be highly appreciated.
I feel that there should be some oversight of the learning/teaching process, even if it’s ALA. Do ALA teachers receive support, observation and career development opportunities? Maybe it would help if someone could sit in during a class and give some constructive/positive feedback? Online teaching might be new for some teachers. Interacting with children, asking them to write/read something and just reading the slides on the screen (created by someone else!) are two very different learning environments. I once observed how the teacher showed signs of physical/mental exhaustion and was getting very frustrated with children (there was a legitimate reason to be frustrated, but I felt really sorry for the teacher losing her patience and calm). I am very concerned that the reality of more breakdowns will continue if the teacher workload expectations are not carefully moderated and managed.