We’ve been on spring break this past week — said sarcastically because it started at the end of February and that’s not even close to spring, but whatever. We haven’t gone anywhere or done much of anything except get off schedule, staying up too late and Josh working too many hours, but it’s been relaxing (for us, not Josh) at least.
We’d already gotten word that when we headed back to school on Sunday that all extra curricular activities had been cancelled through mid-March. No sports practices or games, no swimming, no use of the gym . . . basically go to school and go home to prevent the spread of the Corona virus, aka COVID19 or whatever it is that we are calling it today. However, those measures didn’t seem logical (sit in class all day with 20 other kids, but avoid track practice?) so we were guessing that more restrictions were on the way.
And yesterday it was declared that all schools have been closed for the next 4 weeks. Nurseries all the way up through universities — throughout UAE. The entire country. True to form, the government announced that spring break would suddenly start 2 weeks early, last for 2 weeks and then students would be “remote learning” for the next 2 weeks. (our school is on a different schedule for spring break this year).
For us that means school at home for the next 4 weeks. If you could have seen the celebrating that went on at our house when they found the announcement on Twitter . . . forget Christmas, this was the biggest holiday of the year.
We don’t know what “remote learning” will look like in practice or how successful it will be. The plan is for them to log in online to each class at the same time they’d be meeting at school and check in, meet virtually, submit assignments online, etc.
I know the expectations for High School because I was working on editing the remote learning plan the week before we went on break in anticipation of this happening at some point in the future, but elementary school? No idea what they will do and how they will continue learning. Am I worried? Nope. Not about the virus and not about a lack of contact hours/loss of continuity/failure to be able to get into Harvard as a result of this. But there are a lot of parents who are, unfortunately. There’s a division between those who feel this is a whole bunch of overreaction and is going to ruin their child’s academic future and those who are “Safety first! We should all stay home for the next month and not leave the house so we stop the spread of germs. This is a matter of life and death.”
Since teachers aren’t barred from campus (yet) and the school is scrambling to create a digital education plan on the fly, I get to go into work on Sunday and hear the plan for the upcoming month at an all-Staff meeting. I’m pretty sure that “my job” will be supervising my kids and their online learning from home, since there’s not really a way to be a distance librarian.
So far church is still meeting, though AWANA is cancelled, but it’s possible that at some point they may close facilities to try to keep people at home. I’m not quite understanding the panic over this, but I’m not complaining as I’m happy to have a month that is light on events and activities and encouragement to stay at home. That’s my jam.