Thanks to COVID, here's what K-12 school now looks like in my county (OT)

The county I live in here in Florida began public school today, classes are now in session.

This is of course very off-topic, but for those of us with school-age grandkids, it may be informative to see the approach that at least one school district (here in Alachua County, Florida) is taking this fall, in the age of COVID.

It's just one example of what school planners are doing, but it likely is representative of the approaches many other districts are taking across the country.

What strikes me about the local plan is the extraordinary degree that the COVID threat is totally dominating every aspect of school life now for the students.

In sum, parents choose from one of three options for educating their kids this year:

Traditional (the kids return to actual classrooms, but with draconian safety protocols--see video below)
Alachua Digital Academy (essentially homeschooling, but in coordination with a public school teacher)
Alachua eSchool (essentially homeschooling, but utilizing private tutors, or parents teaching their kids)

Here's the short video on how the district will be conducting the Traditional option instruction:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eqg5yusyow8&feature=youtu.be

A reason I'm posting about this is because it might make for an interesting, although again admittedly off-topic, discussion on the effect the approach described in the above video might be having on the kids' psyches for the future.

Will schooling the kids in this manner contribute to a generation possessed by fear and suspicion? A generation fastidious about cleanliness and caution?

Probably not, as kids are in general pretty resilient, and may only remember their 2020 school year as that "strange" year, especially if by next year things have more or less returned to normal.

But it seems a safe bet that this experience will indeed mold their outlooks in at least some significant ways. Maybe for the good, if it instills within them now a sense of responsibility on how to behave effectively should a future pandemic arise when they are adults, and they must make similar decisions for their own kids.

And, if I may imagine a bit further, perhaps it will also instill within them a sense that it is very important to take the threat of diseases very seriously, and to work toward prevention of them, including cancers.

So we do indeed live in interesting times, and ones especially so for our grandkids.

My sense is that any of the three approaches will provide the kids with an adequate education this year, provided the safety protocols for in-school learning work out well enough. I would like see encouragement towards parents keeping their kids at home if possible. This would make it easier to effectively manage the kids who can't be at home this year.

Regardless if the kids stay home or go to the school building, the Pandemic may be an education in itself. As 81GG discussed, kids are resilience and there are plenty of positives that can come from this experience - not the least of which is confidence for adapting to change.

My grandson is on his 3rd week of in school class for the 1st grade.
So far so good and we know there will be hiccups but we are glad he is in class.

First off, I am a retired high school teacher who is VERY glad that I am retired and not being part of what is going on in the K-12 schools. In our district they started classes last week and it was a cluster. Like many they have 3 options: in school, online, or hybrid. The Hybrid has kids come in for classes that can’t be done online like band, vocational, etc. The problem was that the district’s communication to parents was poor. They originally told online and hybrid kids to start school yesterday, a week after the others. They changed their minds and wanted hybrids to start last week but that announcement didn’t get out to everyone. My neighbor’s kid didn’t find out until last Thursday night and when he showed up for band on Friday they told him he’d already used up 4 of his 10 allowed absences.

The problem is that school administrators (a group that I admittedly have mixed respect for) have found themselves WAY over their heads in all of this and are unable to make decisions.

That out of the way, I am a student at our local state university. I have 4 classes this semester, all in the art department, 2 one credit classes (one lecture, one studio), 1 three credit class (lecture), and a 4 credit studio art class. The university had a plan clearly in place by the first of the month. Masks are required in ALL buildings. All students received a “Safety Kit” which contained a large spray bottle of disinfectant for cleaning your area before and after class. All classes have seating charts to help with any needed contact tracing. All teachers are supposed to have a backup plan to move the classes online if needed. We have a very robust online system that most teachers use anyway for posting assignments, posting video, PowerPoints, and a place for us to turn in our work. There’s lots of other stuff in place for students who live in the dorms but for me, about the only changes are that I wear a mask all day and we had to spread the wheels out around the ceramics studio to allow for social distancing. I see 100% compliance with masks and I’d say about 50% of students are even wearing masks outside. When lecturing my professors wear face shields which seem to work fine.