My Authors
Read all threads
There were three really good and important stories in today's papers about the enormous challenges of remote learning. Here goes:
1) @tawnell on the huge troubles that the Jackson, Miss. schools (95 percent African-American) had in doing remote instruction in the spring: wsj.com/articles/remot…
"In late April the district allowed children who were passing before the shutdown to skip the last 2 months school and still receive an overall passing grade. Some students didn’t have internet access or parents available to help. Even some teachers couldn’t get online at home."
"[Superintendent] Dr. Greene noted that some parents have their own challenges helping their children learn. About 28% of Jackson school parents age 25 and up had no more education than a high-school diploma, and almost 12% had less school than that."
"Dr. Greene said his goal is to make sure all students have devices to learn on. But he worries that providing laptops to students could make them vulnerable to crime. 'That puts a target on them. I’m stunned at the number of devices...we’ve lost just through burglaries.'"
2) @laurameckler on one San Francisco public school teacher's heroic efforts to carry through with AP history during the pandemic shutdown: washingtonpost.com/education/2020…
"What about the kids with their cameras off, those faces he couldn’t see? What about the 29 students who didn’t show up at all?...In one class, a student’s college-age sister walks past wearing only underwear. The chat room lights up: 'Oh, my God, your sister is so hot.'"
"The first week, he received 150 student emails. One day, he holds 35 back-to-back, one-on-one Zoom meetings with students. He grades essays all day long and late into the night. He’s also under pressure from his union, which...says teachers shouldn’t be online >4 hours a day."
"The College Board has informed teachers that the exam question will be drawn from years 1200 to 1900, so he could just spend the remaining weeks drilling students on material they’ve already covered. But that would mean skipping World War II, Holocaust, Cold War, Vietnam War..."
3) @apoorva_nyc on the new report from the National Academies of Science, Engineering and Medicine finding that remote learning is especially harmful for kids in lower grades: nytimes.com/2020/07/15/hea…
"Reopening schools should be a priority because schools fulfill many roles beyond education, the authors said. 'It’s child care, it’s nutrition, it’s health services, it’s social and emotional support services. These functions are undervalued in the conversation taking place.'”
"While teens may be better able to learn online, they suffer emotional consequences of being separated from peers.'Adolescence is a period of time in life when you are to be exploring your own sense of self. It’s difficult to do that if you're at home w/ parents all the time.'”
"Nationwide, about 30 percent of Indigenous families and about 20 percent of Black and Latino families do not have access to the internet or have it only through a smartphone, compared with 7 percent of white families and 4 percent of Asian families." -30-
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to force a refresh.

Keep Current with Alec MacGillis

Profile picture

Stay in touch and get notified when new unrolls are available from this author!

Read all threads

This Thread may be Removed Anytime!

Twitter may remove this content at anytime, convert it as a PDF, save and print for later use!

Try unrolling a thread yourself!

how to unroll video

1) Follow Thread Reader App on Twitter so you can easily mention us!

2) Go to a Twitter thread (series of Tweets by the same owner) and mention us with a keyword "unroll" @threadreaderapp unroll

You can practice here first or read more on our help page!

Follow Us on Twitter!

Did Thread Reader help you today?

Support us! We are indie developers!


This site is made by just two indie developers on a laptop doing marketing, support and development! Read more about the story.

Become a Premium Member ($3.00/month or $30.00/year) and get exclusive features!

Become Premium

Too expensive? Make a small donation by buying us coffee ($5) or help with server cost ($10)

Donate via Paypal Become our Patreon

Thank you for your support!