We always hear about the negative aspects of virtual education, but I think a big positive effect is that they are required to be more independent about watching the schedule and managing time.
Another big positive effect is that I feel like we have more time together as a family. A couple minutes here and there add up throughout the day, and I'm grateful for the extra time with them at this age.
Our elementary school has grouped the remote kids together so that the teacher can manage the class consistently, without trying to be hybrid. Their schedule follows a regular school day from 8-3, approximately alternating 30 minutes synchronous/asynchronous. We pick up a bag of take-home classroom material every 2 weeks, including textbooks and readers, and the students generally work on paper and submit photos of their work through Google Classroom or present during a Google Meet.
As a mid 20s male with no thoughts of having children anytime soon — all I can think about is how many people seem to be grateful about being given the chance to expose their children to a respiratory system-based illness in which even short term effects aren’t understood.
The second (and more important in my opinion) is that the primary developmental events that take place at kindergarten age are social. How to interact and relate to others individually and as groups. For cognitive development, it is structured imaginative play that is critical, and near impossible to do virtually.
Many parents fear their children will miss out on this key developmental stage.
For the youngest kids, the worst thing you could have happen in this situation is for them to learn to hate school. The way this day went for my 5 yo, it seems like his enthusiasm for kindergarten via zoom is rapidly diminishing to frustration.
And AFAIK preschools has not been a major source of spreading of the Corona virus.
It's a google slides deck that the kids have to edit. They've been assigning the same work accidentally day after day. We've contacted the principal countless times, and although she's sympathetic, the quality has not improved as it's a curriculum from the district.
We just stopped logging in completely and are doing a home school curriculum.
If the school reaches out, I'll deal with it then, but so far there's no indication that they've ever reviewed an assignment to begin with.
They couldn't come up with any other way to give a multiple choice sheet? I was convinced it was some kind of local terrible decision but now I'm concerned.
Follow this up with day-after-day of technical nonsense problems, kids interrupting the class all day, lack of breaks/time-awareness, and non-stop testing and I'm ready to stop dialing in.
While the district mandated google classroom for all kids, teachers of younger ages have been given the option of using Seesaw. For young kids its miles better. Even as an adult I find Google classroom to be awful. It feels like enterprise shovelware with bad UX, inefficient workflows, etc.
A lot of it is both how much work the teacher puts in, and how much leeway the school/district give. At this age, it requires an adult nearby at all times. It may be to help him stay on task, occasional assistance (finding something, tech issues, etc.), and even just company of another person. We've had to juggle help from family, and my wife is not working just to keep things going.
We were lucky last year to have an amazing Kinder teacher who did a lot to try and hold things together for the classroom (including 1:1s, summer penpals, and a lot of things on her own time). This year is a WIP, but our school has been very receptive and flexible. I worry most about the kids with two parents who must be at work and cannot give the same level of support we've been able to. They are likely to fall behind :( Thankfully teachers are trying to help those kids the best they can. It is not easy.
Last spring while my son was finishing kindergarten it was extremely difficult. Seesaw helped a lot because they enabled community sharing so kids could see each others work and reply to it. We had to put a lot of effort in to keep him engaged, doing as much work as possible, etc. There were many meltdowns over seemingly simple things like "write 1 word".
Preschool is different and in a tougher position. The primary goal is socialization and kinder-prep. Both are largely out the window for online only. Kids of this age just can't sit for that long in front of a Zoom type session.
In person is limited but now available. The main challenge is preschools are struggling. The regulatory burdens force class sizes to be a fraction of normal. Naps are basically non starter (physical space requirements), food is tricky. That means the pre-schools are losing huge amounts of money every month or laying off staff. To top it off, the recent fires create such pollution you have to choose: (1) Close windows and violate covid regulations (2) Close for the day.
Our first grader is still adapting. Historically he got maybe 20m of screen time a day max. Now it’s about 4.5 hours. There’s a lot of movement breaks and some non screen activity (quiet draw or read), but it’s still a lot of screen time. He’s often pretty bored.
For preschool when they could not open for in person the most they could offer was about 30m a day. That was basically story time and sharing so kids could say hi. Many families opted out.
I guess I'm biased, but I hate how reliance on computers is being ingrained at such a young age. Especially if it's just being used for something like Google slides, which to me seems like a poor replacement medium for paper worksheets.
In our case most of the work is done on paper and they hold it up to the camera for the teacher to see or take a picture and submit it.
If the numbers look good, she will return to in class in a few weeks. Having her start out virtual gave us an opportunity to see what the teacher had planned for her.