We all got up and played Covid bingo again this morning and some found their children had covid and some had been notified their year levels, schools or daycare centres had covid. Some adults discovered they had covid. For families this is really tricky and hard. For schools it has become complicated. Our teacher's union had called for the last week of school term to be pupil free time to help ease the burden on teachers. Mr. Malinauskas, our Premier, has ruled this out.
School principals , kindy managers and daycare centres would currently have a lot to say about our coronavirus situation. We have well over 30, 000 cases and for a state of 1.7 million that is too many thousand. We have to think this out and approach it in a very level headed way. Yes, schools are there as baby sitting services for those who work, but so are many grandparents. If a child has covid the parents have to take time off. The grandparents can't be used as care providers because of the risk. The children and parents have to isolate.
We know what works: masks, sanitizing, ventilation , social distancing, vaccination and hand washing. As we approach winter, ventilation is going to be a challenge. Getting people out into the cold and wet to get vaccinated is going to be hard. RAH has broken some thinking barriers and is directly dealing with people who have needle phobia. What a positive thing to do! We have to problem solve our way out of this and find what works so we can all keep going.
Deciding to shut schools early or not is irrelevant. Covid doesn't care what we decide but if we move it will move with us. We have to stop the spread.
Schools provide education. It is convenient that allows parents to work but the prime purpose of a school is to educate children. We have an education act. Teachers have qualifications in subject areas and education. They are trained in mandatory notification, first aid and social justice. We had a world standard distance education unit. Home schooling has to meet certain criteria and currently parents in Australia are choosing to home school their children. since covid more schools and departments have developed online lessons for students. Home schooling means the parents deliver the official curriculum but teachers are marking it. Online learning means the teachers are delivering lessons to students in their classes while the students are at home. The parents are supervisors.
By now, all schools ought to be able to deliver online curricula. By now , students ought to be able to learn at home or at school. Some schools do easily change from face to face to screen to screen learning. Some parents have just gone to home schooling. We need hubs where children of parents who have to work and there is no one who can supervise can go...school buildings with teachers, presumably. With our numbers we should be encouraging options to get the case numbers and people numbers down.
We haven't even considered other things which would help and maybe we shall now. We have technology. We have social media. We have connectivity. We are used to it. Some teachers would be comfortable as online teachers only, I am sure. Some teachers and others would be great online content producers whose content could be shared. We have our home schooling curriculum to be a framework. We have to add online content creators and teachers and then have face to face versions . We could be flexible. I wonder if we dare?
No comments:
Post a Comment