A thread: Dear virtual teachers, I am also a virtual teacher, teaching Gr12 from home while also supporting my child in his Gr2 distance learning class. I have some things to share, from the perspective of an overwhelmed parent. 1/14

We believe in public education and do not want to join the Minister of Education in undermining our public education system. But honestly, and I hear this from a lot of parents, we could easily homeschool our kid for 2 hrs each day and actually be able to do our own jobs. 2/14
So you need to make it as easy as possible for us to hang in there. Or we won’t. And parents will pull their kids from school and your system will be devastated. Here are some requests based on our current experience. 3/14
1. Connection is more important than curriculum right now. Please do whatever you can to provide our kids with connection to other kids. If they don’t get to interact with others, they’d might as well just do homeschooling. Connection is the #1 thing you have to offer us. 4/14
2. Please smile. Be kind. Let go a little bit. If kids ask for show and tell, leader of the day, theme days etc, please go along with it. They are desperate for these fun things. We aren’t seeing them in our class, even when kids ask. 5/14
3. Please post links to all the meetings and activities in one place. Brightspace is killing us. Don’t make Nana hunt for everything. Keep it simple and make it easily accessible for everyone and you won't spend all class helping parents find things. 6/14
4. Please post an agenda with times for each activity so parents can ensure their kids are where they need to be. If we need to sit right beside our kids all day, it becomes very clear that we could just do this on our own, and in less time. 7/14
5. Please realize that Zoom fatigue is real and all the meetings are hard on our kids. Mine is crying about stress for the first time in his life. 8/14
6. Synchronous doesn’t have to mean more of you talking at them while they stare at the screen. A kid who finished their work in 5 mins shouldn’t have to spend the next 25 mins watching their classmates do their work. 9/14
If the Ministry mandates 225 mins of synchronous learning, insisting that your students sit in meetings for 260 mins each day is just way too much. More is not better. In fact, more is absolutely worse. 10/14
7. Please give these kids a chance to get up and move. They need a break between activities and would get it at regular school. Our kid’s free time for food and recess is currently half of what he would get in regular school. 11/14
8. Please stop trying to make virtual school like your regular class and instead embrace the opportunity to build something entirely new. There is so much potential for great stuff in this realm. 12/14
9. Please get that if you can’t create a program that works better than what we could do at home, parents will pull their kids out. Adjust your standards a bit, focus on connection and make it engaging for kids and easier for parents. 13/14
10. I hear about lots of good things going on in virtual classrooms. It is totally possible to make it engaging and meaningful and doable. And I know it is hard, hard work. Thank you to those of you who are creating classes where kids thrive and not just survive. 14/14
Thank you to @OECTAProv and @ETFOeducators for listening to a beleaguered parent.

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You asked. So here are my thoughts on how osteopathic medical students should respond to the NBOME.

(thread)


Look, even before the Step 2 CS cancellation, my DMs and email were flooded with messages from osteopathic medical students who are fed up with the NBOME.

There is *real* anger toward this organization. Honestly, more than I even heard about from MD students and the NBME.

The question is, will that sentiment translate into action?

Amorphous anger on social media is easy to ignore. But if that anger gets channeled into organized efforts to facilitate change, then improvements are possible.

This much should be clear: begging the NBOME to reconsider their Level 2-PE exam is a waste of your time.

Best case scenario, you’ll get another “town hall” meeting, a handful of platitudes, and some thoughtful beard stroking before being told that they’re keeping the exam.

Instead of complaining to the NBOME, here are a few things that are more likely to bring about real change.
Time for some thoughts on schools given the revised SickKids document and the fact that ON decided to leave most schools closed. ON is not the only jurisdiction to do so, but important to note that many jurisdictions would not have done so -even with higher incidence rates.


As outlined in the tweet by @NishaOttawa yesterday, the situation is complex, and not a simple right or wrong https://t.co/DO0v3j9wzr. And no one needs to list all the potential risks and downsides of prolonged school closures.


On the other hand: while school closures do not directly protect our most vulnerable in long-term care at all, one cannot deny that any factor potentially increasing community transmission may have an indirect effect on the risk to these institutions, and on healthcare.

The question is: to what extend do schools contribute to transmission, and how to balance this against the risk of prolonged school closures. The leaked data from yesterday shows a mixed picture -schools are neither unicorns (ie COVID free) nor infernos.

Assuming this data is largely correct -while waiting for an official publication of the data, it shows first and foremost the known high case numbers at Thorncliff, while other schools had been doing very well -are safe- reiterating the impact of socioeconomics on the COVID risk.

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