Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 2:19
Back to School: Positives
It. All right. So I'm starting the school year in well, professional development starts next week, but the school year, I guess, starts in a week and a half, and I actually thought it was two and a half weeks, which I'll get into, and I'm trying to decide how I feel about the coming school year, I guess. Some positives
Braxxton Brown
@Br33zy · 1:55
Extra time to prepare, um, students, extra time to sleep in. For me, I don't have no kids, so it's a win for me because I don't care. I work from home. I just wanted to pop on here and just spread some positivity. Have a good one
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 5:00
It may have been a situation where I've heard this happen before. I may have had to teach twice as many classes to kind of make up for a missing math teacher if they didn't find a replacement for the second 8th grade math teacher. So I guess there's a positive mix in there. The big negative to me is more at the administrative level
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 2:04
So that essentially is not taking responsibility on administrative level and doing nothing, which I don't understand. Um, I don't understand it's. It's, it's skirting away from responsibility and almost ensuring that the same issues you had last year happen again. The students don't care. And they will literally tell you this because they know nothing's going to happen. What are you going to do? Write me up? That is literally the answer
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 3:39
So if they could have that again, where I'm pretty much done my teaching by 1212 30 and maybe I have some other small additional stuff, but I could really use more continuous time for prep, that would be awesome. And then I don't know what with the disciplinary stuff, I wish they would automate suspensions based on just walking out of class or being in the hallways
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 0:29
Yo, I actually heard about this. I think this was on the news. We're like yeah, where they try to start the school year. Yeah, they try to redo the whole bus routing thing, and they had to shut down the school until further notice. Hold on, Todd. They didn't even have a date. Simply because I think I heard the latest kids got home was like, 1030 or something like that. That's nuts, man. That is nuts
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:24
So I think I'll get a lot of time, I get time back from that. The other thing I think I'm going to cut out is after school tutoring. I tried that and it kind of helped a few kids, but really the time it took away from family and from doing other things I could do, like lesson planning instead or whatever, it wasn't worth the outcome
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 0:33
It correction on school times. I think I said we start at 720 and end at 430. It's more like we start at 720, end roughly at 330, and the kids and teachers are out at four, but still at the same time, it's two hour longer day than the high school, for whatever reason. So 13 year olds spend two more hours than in the school day than 17 learn olds do
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 0:39
I think one thing I'll also do is really participate more in school spirit. I didn't avoid it on purpose, but I spent so much time focusing on the academics that when spirit dates came around, I didn't really pay attention to them on the calendar. And I wasn't really prepared in the same way. I I guess it's just another way to connect to the kids in the school at the same time. So that's on top of mine for me
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 1:17
I also think, you know, I didn't I didn't get to start at the beginning of the year. And one thing that holds you back later is when there's kids who are really don't have the fundamentals down. And of course, it gets harder and harder to catch up towards the end of the year because, you know, if you if you don't have the math is cumulative
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:54
It's somebody enjoying their summer. There's a lot of time that goes into printing, stapling, organizing, collating assignments and tests and all that. So if that can be taken off the map, that's fine. It's also easier to keep track of what students do and when, because they're automatically timestamped when they're submitted. I mean, the problem, though, with digital based learning is that they can easily be distracted by stuff, other stuff on the computer
miss. E
@MissEsMysteries · 4:57
Hi. My name is Missy. This is just, you know, my personal take, my personal opinion. I think the classroom going digital absolutely has benefits for both student and teacher. But I think the negatives outweigh the positives there simply because, such as myself, someone who has a learning disability, I can't properly learn certain things on a computer, especially math, I have to write it out because, yes, you have to work through the problem
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:36
They have what is it called, mid school math if you look it up, where they have video lectures and they have video assignments on top of that already. And the kids, some of the assignments are all digital already anyway. But there's also a visual components for some things you actually can't do on paper, like manipulating animations or graphs or that sort of thing on a computer screen. And the second thing, it doesn't exclude a teacher from helping you individually
miss. E
@MissEsMysteries · 4:44
And, yes, teachers are spread thin, and you had mentioned dealing with both teaching and behaviors, and and you had also mentioned the kids that didn't need as much help could use the videos to kind of move on, and then you have the time to give to the kids that need a little bit more attention
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:55
Or also some of the problem is some students will push ahead to get things done and perform meteorocally or not really understand the material. So even beyond allowing students to push ahead, I always have extra work for students because it means they can focus on doing the work rather than speeding through, so they can try to go to their cell phones or be disruptive. And it also means there's not this lag time in class where kids get bored and they make it hard to teach for everybody
miss. E
@MissEsMysteries · 3:40
So he was like, you can't be 100% certain what you're reading on the Internet is actually the correct information, and you can't base someone's life on that. It's much better to go back and reference the textbook that you know has, you know, the correct answer, because you never want to go into the situation with the wrong info, because God forbid and he was like, Even if it's because medicine technology goes on, medicine develops
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 2:38
You. So also there are still group projects like that. That is part of the curriculum. But just like in a sports team, everybody has different roles. You still have to meet each individual has to meet basic standards to be able to participate. Just like there are state tests or group projects are fine and games are fine. Those, again, like, I've done this in previous post
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 2:07
I agree with your dad. And to be clear, I didn't throw out the books. I basically redonated them to local libraries. So the way our library system works in the state I'm in, we have the inner library loan system, which means almost any library in the state I can borrow books from, and that includes universities
miss. E
@MissEsMysteries · 5:00
But again, that's more of a behavioral thing than a math thing. And again, I'm a nurse, I have to deal with the both as well. And there's going to be a lot of times, unfortunately, patients have to wait. It sucks, but
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
miss. E
@MissEsMysteries · 3:10
So, yeah, I'm really happy that you do that, and that's really great that the state that you live in does that mine doesn't too much that I'm aware of. So every textbook that I've ever needed, I've had to buy. And you're not really going to find it in your local library. Like, you would have to go to a university library
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:07
So if you leave time open, you leave it up to their teenagers. Remember, they just become disruptive. And a lot of what has happened is a lot of policies, I think, in the last decades have not so much been focused on creating a school environment that's optimal for the students, learning and safety, et cetera. They are worried about lawsuits and disruptions for parents and administrators have become pussies
miss. E
@MissEsMysteries · 5:00
But that that's that's always how I saw my my teachers in school, at at least until I graduated high school. You know, I I always saw them as not really apparent, but those are my guardians for that six to 8 hours of the day, and they need to be treated as such
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 4:24
If you don't not only add the ability or add some disciplinary disciplinary control and consequences, but put more faith in the teachers rather than just saying, well, I believe this, and my kid feels so and so individually, and I believe my kids should be able to do this, So everybody needs to adhere. You have to pay attention what that does to the entire system when you do. And yes, I definitely don't think I could be my most effective as a teacher
Kwa NateKo
@kwa · 1:05
And I guess just to summarize that I think a lot of these sort of sort of reactions and mass policies that kind of like and honestly reactions that are made with not full awareness of what actually goes on. In your average classroom, or 80% of them, affects teachers in a way that I think takes away the remaining reasons why teachers would teach in the first place
miss. E
@MissEsMysteries · 5:00
But I was always taught that when you enter a school and you enter your classroom, you enter your school, the law changes because they are now responsible for you. So, you know, like, I remember one time I had this teacher, like, she went on a huge tangent about this because I guess people were getting a little out of control and she was like, you guys don't understand that when you enter this school, we now become responsible for you