Well hello again dear 3 readers! Another mindbarf so soon?! Wow! I mean.. what the hell else am I going to do?
Here we are on week 4 of our first little Global Pandemic in over a hundred years. I've heard there's a Chinese curse that says "May you live in interesting times." I'm sure a quick internet search could verify that, but I'll just stick with my totally amazing memory... This is definitely an interesting time.
I have several perspectives here, 1) As a parent 2) As a teacher 3) As a person and 4) As a political being.
As a parent, I love my children. They're 11 and 7. I always wanted children and The Wife and I made sure we could afford them before we started having them so they have all of their needs and wants covered physically, emotionally, mentally, and even with the amount of damn toys they have. Everyone get it? I love my kids!
NOW... With that said. I haven't figured out how to tell them yet without destroying them emotionally, but I don't give two shits about their favorite YouTuber. I DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS YOUTUBE VIDEO. AAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHH. Do they ever EVER stop talking?!?! I yearn for parts of the 80's when parents could say "get the hell out of the house, GO" and we would be gone for hours. Pre-Pandemic we had baseball, dance, playdates, kids down the street, tons of stuff to do. Now there is the toys they never play with, outside stuff (and all the complaining that comes with that) and screens. Screens were definitely part of our lives pre-pandemic, but not 4-8 hours of it. I know it's easy to think "Just kick them off Dad" but then they talk NON-STOP about nothing. And that's the BEST case scenario. They also whine and complain and argue and try to get sassy (I shut that down HARD right now because it only gets so much worse). Any time I tell them to do any damn thing that's not on a screen it's like I'm telling them to clean the city sewer with their toothbrush. I can't interact with them anymore. I've done all I could... I know that someday I'll wish they would talk to me, and if I don't foster the relationship now they won't then, but OMG.
They're supposed to be doing school stuff, but online learning is not all that great. I hear people say "it works great for us!" I think it actually doesn't. I think that you're able to guilt-free put your kids on the screen. Whereas when they're just goofing around on YouTube, it comes with parent guilt attached. The older kids teacher just assigned work book stuff which I think was GREAT. Even though The Wife and I have to do the actual teaching... The younger child INSISTS she knows how to do everything all the time. Super independent, but almost immediately asks for help. And by help I mean she wants me to give her the answers, and then after 2 weeks her teacher emails us and says she hasn't turned in ANYTHING. SO clearly she does NOT know what she's doing and now one of the parents has to do work with her. Thankfully we have tons of time so I can tell both of them that I'm not giving them answers, they need to do the thinking, and we can deal with the half hour tantrum that precedes them actually thinking. Anyway, this is a good segue into...
As an educator! Ok. I teach band and orchestra. Making live music with people in the same room. It is a human face to face activity. I have avoided online learning with music because it just doesn't work. It doesn't have the same affect. Recordings are NEVER the same as a live performance. Online platforms have only ever been a tool. Somewhere to put my syllabus and to tell students and parents to go get it their rather than me printing another. So I had to "get my shit together" pretty quick. What platform is used down here in Miami. Oh all of them? Crap, which one do most teachers use? Ok that's what I'm doing. Except it doesn't work for video or audio recordings. Damn. Ok, we'll use Zoom, oh wait that's sketchy as hell and doesn't meet legal privacy requirements? Damn again. Ok. Let's just switch platforms three weeks in and I have to learn a brand new operating system. GAH. All this just to have kids turn in some audio/video recordings of scales and sections of music that we're not going to play again. I have colleagues that are spending 10-12 hours a day doing extra shit for their virtual teaching. They're not getting any more kids involved than I am... A video lecture for 5 kids out of their class of 34? Good grief... I mean, I applaud your dedication, but I learned a loooong time ago that education needs to include the educatees! I'm still coordinating assignments and stuff, but what really am I going to accomplish with music here? I know I'm sounding like a Debbie Downer, I want to make it clear that I chose to teach and that I take my career very seriously, and I'm still working with kids on musical things, but that's also why I'm so critical of this online learning thing. We are successful as educators by our relationships with students, not the platform. Working online doesn't help the relationship and everything else is just a tool for delivering extra instruction. It CAN NOT replace face to face instruction. I've already heard the people who tell me they did just fine with online school, but you know what, I've talked with you, and frankly, no, you did NOT do fine with online learning. You checked a box and got a "good enough." You dumb my friend. I would never say that to someone face to face, but I'm angry and bored here and this blog is turning into the only place I can process my negative energy, so there it is. I'm not impressed with your education from online classes. Online learning is a supplement to real life learning. Not a replacement. I have tried it for real now and I KNOW for a fact that what I do can not be done online.
Oh one more thing... we all KNOW the whole school year is going to be cancelled, for crying out loud, just cancel it already!! (As of 9 April).
Ok my perspective as a person. Can I be less negative here? I don't know, but I'll try! Miami is an all or nothing kind of place. The way we prepare for a hurricane is a great example! We have WEEKS of weather tracking and news and nobody does a damn thing. Then we get to the day the hurricane might hit and BAM stores and gas stations EVERYWHERE are slammed and generators that in January were $99 are now $549. So what I observed here for the Pandemic was quite a bit of skepticism and reluctance to actually do anything, at first. The CDC and WHO announced that we have an official global pandemic and we moved to virtual school on March 13th and the next 2 weeks in Miami Beach were an extended spring break. The party wasn't over guys, WOOOOOOO!!!! As the country took notice and became very critical, the city mayors started closing things down and the police had to start ticketing people. I didn't see that so much on TV, but what I DID see was that we were all still trying to entertain ourselves by going to parks and being active. I know I was guilty of that too, then we had to shut down ALL the parks, do mandatory house arrest except for essential workers and for food. We all know this, Miami didn't take it seriously until people started getting sick. And then BAM everyone was in masks, the streets were empty, we had to wait in lines to get into grocery stores, the parks were patrolled by police (I cut a corner through a park when I was on a walk and got a talking to!), and people were maintaining their 6 foot distance. It was like watching the stores the day a hurricane was supposed to hit. Nothing nothing, apathy, I don't believe it, meh, whatever... OH SHIT WE'RE ALL GOING TO DIE.
My personal experience (as opposed to my observations of other people), to be continued...
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