Schooling in the age of home-confinement.
I ordered two reading exercise books and two math exercise books last week from Amazon.
They won’t arrive until this Friday...a full week after our new nationwide homeschooling program began.
Now, here in Missoula we’re coming off of Spring Break, so this is the first real week we have to actually try and educate our kids ourselves.
I ordered both third grade books for this year, and some fourth grade books as well (I, like most American parents, figure that school is done for the year. Now we’re just waiting for the ‘people in charge’ to tell us that instead of shuffling their feet).
I’m lucky - I was a teacher for five years. Oh, and not a teacher in America...where you get healthcare and the summers off and classes with 20 to 30 kids.
When I started I was paid nothing, had 50 kids in a class, and had my workload double in summer.
So this is a lot easier.
Still, I don’t want to be a teacher. It’s why I quit doing that seven years ago.
I, like many newly-minted parent-teachers here in shut-down America, run the risk of being fired for drinking on the job.
Well...who’s gonna fire me, my spouse? That’ll double her workload.
The point is, people are stressed and we’re going to see cocktail hour start a lot earlier in countless households as millions of Americans realize what our teachers have known for years - teaching is damn hard and a thankless job.
I took one look at the remote learning resources the Missoula schools are sending out, and I knew I was in trouble.
Here’s a look at the Grades 3-5 page.
I knew that if I, a former teacher, was having issues with this and wondering if I could do it, then a lot of other parents would simply look at it and decide, ‘You know what? We’ll just wait until the schools open again.”
Might not be until next fall in many places, and that’s why we know learning is going to go off the cliff here real soon.
The schools are very concerned about this. Today I received three emails; yesterday I got one; and two came on Friday.
Anyways...what else?
Seems the Senate is coming down with this plague, and now the GOP can’t get enough votes to block the Dems from blocking stuff.
Still no indication that any of the four or five insider-trading-Senators are going to step down.
I heard an Amazon warehouse employee on the radio last night, mentioning that he’s working 10-hour days and getting double time on their overtime day.
Wouldn’t it be great it Montana had one of those distribution centers? Well, the liberals in the state would decry the ‘poor’ working conditions, probably scaring Amazon away from any serious consideration of the state.
Lots of small changes, too.
Grocery stores like Albertson’s are no longer putting out single donuts; you have to buy them in a box by the dozen. I suppose this is so people don’t spread germs in those door-handled donut displays.
Banks are no longer passing out free suckers to kids.
Traffic has decreased quite a bit.
We’re lucky the weather has been warm this past week. If it gets colder out and people and kids can’t go outside, things will get tougher.
My wife and I had a bit of a fight last night, and tonight my son and her got into it. I’m sure this is happening all over the country.
Hopefully we’ll all be able to go back to work in another week or so.
