DSM public schools are talking about doing 1 day a week in person. I think Ankeny is talking about 2 days a week. I've got a 2nd grader and a 4th grader who are very solid academically but they thrive in a school setting because they are just naturally competitive and want to be better than other people. Without that motivating them this year I could see a very unproductive school year for them.
Social Issue/Political Discussion Relating to Iowa Football
- Thread starter RobHowe
- Start date
DSM public schools are talking about doing 1 day a week in person. I think Ankeny is talking about 2 days a week. I've got a 2nd grader and a 4th grader who are very solid academically but they thrive in a school setting because they are just naturally competitive and want to be better than other people. Without that motivating them this year I could see a very unproductive school year for them.
kicker22
Well-Known Member
When the number of new cases daily are currently exponentially greater than they were when things we
I think the biggest problem I had with online classes being used in place of in person is that schools/faculty may simply not be prepared to go that route. My oldest in 4th grade (middle child will be in kindergarten in the fall and youngest is still a baby) goes to a private school and unlike a lot of schools in the area, the educating did not stop when the schools shut down but rather everything switched to learning from home and online educating. What I gathered from it was that the teachers cared, but simply were not prepared. We'd receive notifications almost daily that assignments weren't turned in, because a teacher failed to refresh things on their or simply because my wife nor my son had any idea there was even an assignment because there was no consistency (they would come via his school email account, google documents, or in some cases mailed to him). There was also a disconnect that despite having assignments due, some books/workbooks were not allowed be taken from the school only to find out at a later date that they were needed later, or in one case a book was required for daily assignments due a week after the book was turned in at the end of the school year. They eventually started sprinkling zoom meetings and conference calls with teacher and staff, which was great as he missed his teachers and classmates, but unfortunately despite the fact that assigments were due daily the teaching stopped which was really disappointing and frustrating for him.
Do I think online classes can work and be beneficial? Absolutely, but at the same time I think its something that the educators have to be prepared for and I'm not sure collectively that's something that can be achieved over the course of a summer.
I think the biggest problem I had with online classes being used in place of in person is that schools/faculty may simply not be prepared to go that route. My oldest in 4th grade (middle child will be in kindergarten in the fall and youngest is still a baby) goes to a private school and unlike a lot of schools in the area, the educating did not stop when the schools shut down but rather everything switched to learning from home and online educating. What I gathered from it was that the teachers cared, but simply were not prepared. We'd receive notifications almost daily that assignments weren't turned in, because a teacher failed to refresh things on their or simply because my wife nor my son had any idea there was even an assignment because there was no consistency (they would come via his school email account, google documents, or in some cases mailed to him). There was also a disconnect that despite having assignments due, some books/workbooks were not allowed be taken from the school only to find out at a later date that they were needed later, or in one case a book was required for daily assignments due a week after the book was turned in at the end of the school year. They eventually started sprinkling zoom meetings and conference calls with teacher and staff, which was great as he missed his teachers and classmates, but unfortunately despite the fact that assigments were due daily the teaching stopped which was really disappointing and frustrating for him.
Do I think online classes can work and be beneficial? Absolutely, but at the same time I think its something that the educators have to be prepared for and I'm not sure collectively that's something that can be achieved over the course of a summer.
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
We will see. For every student who feels bullied or feels threatened by asking potentially embarrassing questions in class there will be another who thrives on the competitive nature of trying to outdo their fellow student. And virtual learning would throw a huge wrench into school activities from student government on down.
It has been proven many times over that students who participate in athletics, extra curricular activities, and school sponsored social groups (forensics, Leo Club, etc.) perform better academically. Keeping a socially withdrawn student at home will make them just more socially withdrawn-and can cause issues well into adulthood.
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Agreed. It's full of academically inferior schools (other than UT) and has teams in football ravenous states like Texas and Oklahoma where governors will face recall elections and shit if they fail to provide college football.
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
Online schooling is definitely a possibility in the future as outdated school buildings become money pits for taxpayers. But no way can it be crammed down everyone's throat like it was this spring. It will take years of planning, a new way of training our teachers, and a way to prepare our kids for it. We may just have to pick a date and say, with this year's incoming kindergarten class, it's going virtual. You can't spring it on students who are used to doing it another way.
I think we will habe year round sçhooling someday as well. Same deal, you have to pick an incoming kindergarten class and start it with that class. That would be an easy adjustment for today's kids who are climbing the walls to go back to school by the first of August. Give them four two week breaks per year. More and more families are taking vacations during the school year as it is.
Last edited:
okeefe4prez
Well-Known Member
Making kids play football for free in places like Minneapolis and Madison in February is just flat out cruel. Even March is bad. Even if the temperature is the same, there's just something different about the late November crispness than the spring deep freeze that makes spring ball in the upper Midwest sound like a bad idea. It would be great in the South and places like Texas and Arizona, though.
Northside Hawk
Well-Known Member
If you can play baseball in the upper Midwest in March you can play football. The players would be fine, it's the fans that would suffer.
I do agree, however, that it would work well for the southern states who would avoid the heat of those September games. Football was not meant to be played in Florida or Louisiana in early September.
Like with everything, we've got our own anecdotal experiences. Some kids will probably thrive doing learning from home. Some will struggle. The paradigm will change. I hope we can find some sort of happy medium and meet kids where they are, but I've been advocating for this for years.
kicker22
Well-Known Member
I totally agree with you. It's definitely going to take adjustments from both the students and educators, but like anything else it's going to take time. My son's a straight A student, which means absolutely nothing since he just finished 4th grade, but I'd be lying if I didn't say getting him through the end of the school year online wasn't a struggle. It's just hard watching a kid who is a perfectionist in tears for missing or not getting an assignment/test credit for an assignment that he knew he turned in. But honestly he'll be fine and I think in the long run its good for him because he learned the importance of following up on things and addressing things like this with his teachers. The one's that I worry about are the incoming Sophomores, Juniors, and Seniors who are not in a position where time is on their side if things don't go as smoothly as they had before. In situations like this I think the younger students will/can adapt better.
Fryowa
Administrator
You can disagree if you want, it makes zero difference to me. I know what I saw everyday with my son engaging in distance learning and it was very negative.
Regarding his family situation, he has a very supportive two parent family. His mom and I are both involved in his life daily, we make decisions together, and he flourishes in school and socially. Children who don’t do well with unmarried parents are overwhelmingly products of single-custody, antagonistic relationships and studies have confirmed that over and over and over. You saying that children don’t do well in our situation—without qualification—is a hold over from the 50s where the blanket statement was that a child couldn’t succeed outside the WASP version of the nuclear family. What you should say...is that statistically, children do better in traditional settings because statistically kids in those situations tend to have parents who hate each other, use kids as pawns, have boyfriends/girlfriends constantly cycling in and out causing instability, and they don’t spend as much time together.
My son’s mom and I have none of that. She is married to a guy who’s very stable and he and I get along well, and we live a block away from each other. There’s never been a girlfriend in the picture or in my home in the 12 years we’ve been separated, and there’s definitely never been a casual one either. Nothing wrong with a significant other, but I have zero interest in a relationship with anyone physical or otherwise. My son’s mom and I are actually close friends, and their family, my son and I do things together at times as a group. They’re not drinkers or substance users, I’m not either. I can’t think of a single day (I’m sure there may be a few) that I haven’t talked to his mom in the last 14 years (he’ll turn 14 in a couple months). We communicate several times a day, and we are both very much on the same page. We’re both at conferences, sporting events, dr appts, quite literally everything. Neither of us has ever missed any of those things, and we always go as a pair, i.e. we don’t sit apart or dissociate ourselves. I understand that it’s hard for you to picture a situation that’s positive for a kid in this arrangement, but let me leave you with this...
You’ve mentioned many times the need for a nuclear family for functional, successful kids to become functional, successful adults. You’ve also mentioned many times that you have certain ones of your own kids who are dysfunctional poop shows. Let’s not sugar coat it, my son was in the same boat as a youngster but we’ve successfully worked through it to this point. I’m sorry if that offends you, but it is what it is. We can use a different euphemistic term if it will make you feel better, but it doesn’t change the content of the situation.
Don’t you think that it discredits you’re point a little bit that you’ve got your own children who grew up with a mom and dad under the same roof, but they have flopped so far? And doesn’t it reinforce my point that your tendency to base everything on statistics with no qualifying context (a dangerous mistake in critical thinking, btw) is at best a weak display of ability to google academic studies, and at worst an assumption that however your own kids were raised was the “right” way, when in reality you failed them in several ways? I could say with definite relevance that you having a skrewball home environment (you’ve alluded to some bonkers events in your household in the past) is more damaging than the stability and inclusiveness that we make a point to provide as two separated parents.
I may very well fail my son at some point (I’m not so pompous as to say I won’t), and I don’t mean to say that your intent wasn’t good with your own kids. That is, you tried your best but failed certain ones—that’s admirable even if it didn’t work. That failure may well have been out of your control. But until that day comes, I think it’s best to take the approach that not all children respond the same way that statistical averages say they will, and that not all situations are the same as those that cause problems in a bigger subset. You putting a ceiling on any kids (not just mine) and saying that even if they had great success from a non traditional family they would have had greater success from a nuclear one, is just a sophomorish conclusion. Your own lukewarm child rearing results actually speak against your conclusions. How did yours fail if they had the familial deck stacked in their favor? Isn’t parenting the most important and influential common denominator here? Are we to think that your children’s problems are all caused by external forces, especially as you provide what you tout as infallible parenting advice? I don’t know about you, but I wouldn’t take mechanical advice from a guy who couldn’t keep his own car running.
People in glass houses should be careful with direction and velocity when they throw those rocks. Maybe someday we can sit down and I can give you some pointers on how to prevent the dysfunction you’ve created with your own kids if mine by chance turns out to be stable and successful. Maybe he’ll be the serial killer or just plain leech on society you predict, I don’t know. Or would that not be a sufficient sample size?
Last edited:
HawkGold
Well-Known Member
Just saying we can adjust. I do have a lot of experience in this arena and it can work well. A good teacher in the classroom can be online. From the academic standpoint it can be better.
About sports most countries don't have sports thru the school. Outside of Iowa and North Dakota, small schools aren't holding on so sports impacts few. There are good clubs such as ffa.
We all have to adjust and junior likely won't have life impairment only due to this. Abusive families school can be a get aware.
Kids use social media. ItjIt isn't a dire situation.
As far as excelling, U IL has the top rated mech eng program. My son was one of the very few to grad w honors. The Chinese don't have a system anything like ours.
The situation is going to take creativity.
I'm sick my youngest will miss marching band which is really good at our school. It's her last year. Bigger things to worry about. The isolation has bonded her relationship with mom and older sisters. She has become a lot more social in many ways and has developed a blog with a following.
HawkGold
Well-Known Member
You could make an argument out of a cup of water. You took a lot of liberty. You do it well though even if you deliberately changed what I said. That makes you you I guess.
Fryowa
Administrator
You made a blanket statement that my kid would have done better in a different home. That’s quite literally what you said.
You’ve also made much mention of the dysfunction your own kids have had that I in my situation (sub par, per you)—haven’t seen. I pointed out the irony and hilarity in you providing parenting advice.
Sure, I did it in a whole bunch of words, but I’m not seeing where I changed what you said...
As far as me making an argument out of a cup of water...
1) Prefacing anything with “this isn’t meant to be a cheap shot” is pretty redundant, no? Your fake subtlety needs work. A lot of work.
2) You and I both know you were fishing for a response, let’s not be a child and act like you didn’t get what you were after. I obliged.
Last edited:
HawkGold
Well-Known Member
No you were complaining about a less than ideal education world for your kid with an edge of superiority. My response was that we all make the best of what we have to work with and his less than ideal world educationally began with not having both parents in the home which can be backed up statistically. Starting school so kids have school likely isn't a great idea.
You are the champion baiter btw.
StanziUSA
Well-Known Member
he’s a master-debater
I can't believe I'm wading into this, but you are applying a population statistic to an individual person, which is not a good idea.
Ree4
Well-Known Member
Wait wasnt there a guy that claimed whats true for the macro is true for the micro? Think he might have been banned though
