Coronavirus America 5 Weeks Later

Five weeks since the coronavirus shut down Los Angeles and wow things have changed.

There are lines to enter grocery stores.

U.S., Mexico, and Canada's borders are closed.

Most states have instituted stay-at-home orders and in many like California, you have to wear a mask to conduct business in public.

Millions are unemployed, the market is still way down with talks of a depression, and layoffs - or the word of the day "furloughs" - seem to be speeding up.

Nurses in Detroit are striking, people in Michigan are protesting against stay-at-home orders, and Amazon is firing workers who complain about worker safety.

And public schools are essentially closed.

Crazy times indeed.

Who could have envisioned an America like this two months ago?

Life in America will change forever going forward, even if the changes seem small.

For example, tens of millions of Americans are now working from home. It has to change the value of having to work in an office for many of those jobs. If a worker has worked from home effectively for two, three, or four months, and an employee asks his boss to work from home one day a week when we all go back, how can she say no.  As a result, office space needs will decrease. Commuting will decrease. People will have more free time. Childcare needs will lessen. Traffic will decrease. Less gas will be purchased. Gas prices will go down. Oil company stock prices will go down. There will be less drilling. Ok, maybe I am getting carried away here, but you can see the ramifications of how just this one change will create shockwaves for the economy and society.

Distance education, food delivery, remote hospital visits, all things that seemed like fringe activities in the past are part of everyone's reality now and will be so going forward.

Tuesday, my Toastmasters club held its first online meeting. Toastmasters at its core is an organization that improves a person's ability to create and deliver effective speeches. It was very interesting to see how different a person has to prepare to provide an effective speech during a Zoom session. Does the speaker stand or sit? If you sit, how do you engage audience members with hand gestures, body movement? You can't walk around the stage. I think it is even harder to keep an audience engaged because they are not in the same room with you. There are more distractions for them in their home. It is also harder to read your audience to see if you need to pick up the pace or are speaking too fast. How do you engage in eye contact when you are only staring straight into your camera. I look forward to the challenge when I give my speech in two weeks.

2020 a time of change.

Take care and be safe.

Posts Monday, Thursday, Saturday

Coronavirus Education Holiday

Surprising changes to my son's education since the coronavirus hit:

Three-week spring break with no days added to end of the school year

District grading policy: 2nd semester grades will be the same or higher than the 3rd quarter grades

No live classes

Now this last item is just for my son, at least after the first week of his distance learning program. He had to complete worksheets, online quizzes, a test, and watch one video. There were no live or prerecorded lessons from his teachers yet.

Needless to say, my son is very happy.

I have mixed feelings.

I like the fact that due to the light workload he is completing his work on his own in a short amount of time. I like that he feels confident that he can finally keep up with his work. Rather than spending all day at school and hours working on homework every night, he is only spending an hour or two a day on schoolwork. I like that we are not arguing over when he will complete his work.

But, I do not like that a neighboring school district has had a distance program up and running a week before our district.

I do not like that I have heard from families with children in private schools, whether very expensive to relatively inexpensive, that their children have been in full day online classes since the beginning of the crises. I feel that their children are learning so much more than my son.

My biggest fear is that when my son starts school next year, he will be ill-prepared for the rigors of 11th grade after 2 months of light schoolwork and 3 months of summer break. Of course, an almost 5-month educational holiday of relaxation, confidence building, and no homework arguments may turn out to be the best experience for both my son and our family.

This is a new world we have entered, a new educational experiment. I just wish my son wasn't the sample group receiving the less than rigorous education.

Take care and be safe.

Posts: Monday, Thursday, Saturday

CA Budget Crisis

A very interesting article on one of the ways in which the California State budget has been a time bomb waiting to explode and how the tax breaks for the few, severly hurt the many.

http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ross19-2009feb19,0,3825360.story

No More Science Fair

I was shocked to read in my son's school's newsletter that his elementary school has decided to do away with their science fair – except fourth grade.

Instead, his highly-ranked school has planned a Mad Science demonstration, a Super Scientist Night with scientist from the local community showing off their projects, and three teacher-guided in-class science projects to meet grade-level standards.

While these are really, really great activities to get children excited about science, it seems to me the next logical step would be to cap off the year with a science fair where children get to make and present their own project based on what they learned.

Perhaps I’m being selfish having enjoyed science fairs as a child and helping my son with his project last year, but isn't participating in a science fair a right of passage? See Jimmy Neutron or Meet the Robinsons or any other plethora of children's movies or books based on a school's science fair. Our local library has an entire shelf devoted to science fair projects.

I feel there is something to be said for a child planning out his own experiment, conducting research, creating a display, learning something new and presenting it to class. Not to mention pride in showing it off to his friends and family. Last year's science fair was packed with families taking pictures of their kids standing next to their projects.

My son had asked me twice this year when his school would have its science fair. When I told him I learned that there wouldn’t be one, he had a noticeable frown.

A teacher mentioned they didn't believe in at-home projects in general because they put a burden on time-starved families, and in many cases, the parents do most of the work anyway.

I understand that rationale, but even if some parents did do most of the work, the child still has some input on the project, learns something new, and has to present it to their class thereby improving numerous skills.

And if the concern is too much of a time-burden on the parents, perhaps schools could make participation in the science fair optional like the PTA’s Reflections Campaign or the talent show, instead of canceling the fair outright.

To take science fairs out of a child's experience really sucks. I hope this isn’t a national trend.