Distance learning for the kids has had a very rocky start. It took 4 weeks from when school was first closed to start distance learning. To be fair, we did have 19 snow days built in the calendar and there was 1 week of spring break. April 14th was the big day! However, things didn't go as smoothly as everyone wanted. Kids from other schools were crashing the virtual classroom and saying vulgar things or giving themselves profane names as their ID. Additionally, students were having a hard time logging on. It was a mess! Quickly the announcement was made distance learning will take the rest of the week off. FCPS would use this time to improve the security of the system and logging on issues. A fresh start would be begin again the following Monday. Fast forward to Monday, and new issues abound. The system could not handle all the traffic. There are 189,000 students in this county. Teachers themselves couldn't log on. Oh my! Again, another announcement is made that distance learning would not be able to continue. Teachers will keep posting assignments on blackboard or google or thru email for the students to complete.
At this point any kind of patience and understanding has been tested to its limits. Teachers are doing their absolute best to adapt to all the new directions on how to instruct and communicate with their classes. Numerous emails from FCPS keep getting sent and completely overwhelm us with information and how distance learning is going to work.
Even with distance learning working the way it should, Samantha has 1 hour, 4 days a week. Ian has 5 hours on Tuesdays, 4 hours on Thursdays and a full hour for lunch in that time span. And Ian is in high school! While I understand why it has evolved to this, it is crazy to think these students are going to be ready to go for their next grade in the Fall. There is no way any real kind of learning is taking place. Maybe at best, reviews of the concepts learned is the most we can hope for. I feel for the families who don't have the resources we have; who don't have internet, or enough computers/tablets for each child in the same family to be on at the same time, or parents that need to work and can not afford to help their child; or those families who don't speak English as a first language and can't keep up with all the changes.
It was discovered that part of the issues the system had was not doing 7 different computer updates over the last 20 months to the technology FCPS was using. Wow, that's pretty bad. And that is the moment when I no longer had patience for the higher ups to get it figured out. They had plenty of time -- 6 weeks at this point -- to get their ducks in a row and make the system work. FCPS let everyone down.
We've eventually settled on a way that distance learning can work. Teachers now use Blackboard Collaborate as the way to connect. But to get to this point, much time was lost and the number of emails sent to parents was so overwhelming.
I am not sure where we go from here. I heard a rumor that during snowmaggedon (in 2009), FCPS said it would work on making distance learning a possibility so that students didn't have to miss school. It's been 11 years and yet here we are, still trying to make distance learning work.
Lately, there has been chatter on what will happen come Fall 2020. Will school be back in session or will distance learning have to continue? Time will tell on if we can resume our normal lives. All of this is unprecedented. Being part of a global pandemic is a history making. Right now, it feels like there is no end in sight. Patience and understanding is key to surviving.
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