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School Talk

I don’t think we can guarantee that some people won’t be dicks about it. But I think this is going to be this century’s Great Depression and there will be some forgiveness.
 
So the geniuses who run my school district put out an email/phone call yesterday with the following paragraph:

Please know that third quarter grades and report cards are being suspended due to the school closure. We are awaiting guidance from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction on grading and grade calculation. Students will continue to receive assessment of their online work. Teachers may make note of incomplete or missing work, but at this time there is no grading. We want students to stay engaged, not stressed or worried about online instruction grades.

First two sentences make sense as some students sill don't have internet access so it would be wrong to finalize quarter grades this weekend. After that though it is a complete cluster fuck, obviously written by people who haven't been in a classroom in a long time. I understand the arguments for equitable grading, but the moment you stop grading is the moment students stop turning in anything. This is not a utopia.

I've had about a dozen students message me last night and this morning to ask me why they are still doing work if nothing is being graded. Which is a totally reasonable question. From what I've been told this was a "miscommunication" and they will correct it with a phone call and email later today retracting that part of the message. But still who in the actual fuck thought this was a good idea?
 
Talked yesterday with a young lady about to finish her associates degree. Her primary complaints are two-fold. First is a teacher who won't reply to emails and hasn't yet graded a speech she turned in to provide feedback before the next assignment is due. The second thing is the 4 year school she is transferring to is closed so she can't get a tour or speak to an advisor. Very frustrating for her.
 
Looks like this will be policy for Penn State schools:

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Yeah, this is an extraordinary situation, and I think most teachers would do well to err on the side of leniency rather than pedantry. On the other hand, this crisis does require a little greater initiative from students than in more normal circumstances, and maybe that's a silver lining behind this cloud.
 
So the geniuses who run my school district put out an email/phone call yesterday with the following paragraph:

Please know that third quarter grades and report cards are being suspended due to the school closure. We are awaiting guidance from the North Carolina Department of Public Instruction on grading and grade calculation. Students will continue to receive assessment of their online work. Teachers may make note of incomplete or missing work, but at this time there is no grading. We want students to stay engaged, not stressed or worried about online instruction grades.

First two sentences make sense as some students sill don't have internet access so it would be wrong to finalize quarter grades this weekend. After that though it is a complete cluster fuck, obviously written by people who haven't been in a classroom in a long time. I understand the arguments for equitable grading, but the moment you stop grading is the moment students stop turning in anything. This is not a utopia.

I've had about a dozen students message me last night and this morning to ask me why they are still doing work if nothing is being graded. Which is a totally reasonable question. From what I've been told this was a "miscommunication" and they will correct it with a phone call and email later today retracting that part of the message. But still who in the actual fuck thought this was a good idea?

Any chance NC just goes to a straight pass/fail model for 2nd semester classes (high school specifically)?
 
NC just announced that we are exempting all seniors from 4th Quarter grades. So my senior American 2 class is finished as of this morning.
 
Might this be the catalyst that starts the dismantling of our bloated and broken higher education system?

Haha j/k nothing's going to change.
 
Might this be the catalyst that starts the dismantling of our bloated and broken higher education system?

Haha j/k nothing's going to change.

If anything I would bet colleges reduce professors increase courseloads with online classes and add admin positions to coordinate them.

I hope this starts to bring to an end the free labor of unpaid internships though.
 
If anything I would bet colleges reduce professors increase courseloads with online classes and add admin positions to coordinate them.

I hope this starts to bring to an end the free labor of unpaid internships though.

A prof can deliver an on line lecture to 100 or several hundred and everybody gets the same experience. Its listening to a lecture and a few may get to ask a question.

Somebody is going to have to evaluate papers, tests etc. and assign grades. At u*NC -CH, that is secretarial work. Other universities use professors for it.
 
A prof can deliver an on line lecture to 100 or several hundred and everybody gets the same experience. Its listening to a lecture and a few may get to ask a question.

Somebody is going to have to evaluate papers, tests etc. and assign grades. At u*NC -CH, that is secretarial work. Other universities use professors for it.

I’m not saying I agree with it, but I just think this is one of the many examples the lessons learned for this crisis will shit on workers.
 
Can't speak to post-secondary education but "lectures" are dying out in middle and high schools. Our children have the attention spans of flies, so most modern educators discourage it.
 
I’m not saying I agree with it, but I just think this is one of the many examples the lessons learned for this crisis will shit on workers.

I'm sure that administrators will try to shit on workers, but the on-the-ground experience of educators seems to suggest that remote teaching is a disaster without a lot of remote pedagogy training and students who were interested in remote learning in the first place.

Summer enrollments at my institution have plummeted in large part because students aren't interested in paying for credits that are basically youtube videos with chat rooms attached. It's almost impossible to facilitate a larger discussion-based class when the platforms can't even fit all of the screens on an instructors full screen.

Brasky, what platform are y'all using? Zoom is a mess from my experience, though definitely the best interface like this that I've used before.
 
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