Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 4:44
Swell Rountable: Education During Covid - How can we support our educators and students?
Children need our guidance and support now more than ever. And so what I wanted to do with this roundtable is invite a number of experts in their field to talk about this world we find ourselves in, get a nice back and forth going and talk and have an honest conversation about what we can do to support educational professionals, families, children, and just survive. What's going on
Erin Tanguay
@etanguay · 4:36
And I will admit, quite difficult as a teacher, you always have to work outside of school, not only just grading papers but creating curriculum, trying to be innovative, trying to be making the assignments exciting and enjoyable for students so that they want to be in your class and they're actually learning and hopefully remembering the material. And now doing that on an online format was really quite a challenge. I love learning new things
Ryan Huff
@Leddynamite · 2:09
How are we going to accommodate so many questions have been brought up regarding when we go back, but that is all up in the air right now and right now. The question I have is what's going to happen now, not just what's happening when we get back. How can we support the students and the families now? So I'm looking forward to this roundtable discussion so we can all throw together ideas and information collecting
ERIC S.
@ericbsand · 4:58
And I've also taught online too, prior to this, and not even that prepared me for other amount of effort that it really takes to be an effective online teacher in this unprecedented territory. And in reality, no one really knows really to be affect how well we are actually doing in terms of teaching our kids because we don't really get to see those indicators we normally do get to see when we're in the classroom
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 4:45
Now, the distanced learning is something that I don't think any of us expected or certainly prepared for taking classes here or there online is one thing, but teaching 200 students a day, all of whom have different needs and require different accommodations is such a daunting task. That leads me to my next point
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Erin Tanguay
@etanguay · 4:55
Many of them felt very disconnected. Not all students walked away with two to three friends that they already had. There were students there who had friends, a lot of middle school and a lot of school is showing up. We always say that to parents when they have kids who have chronic absenteeism that they'll say, oh, other don't have any really great friend groups to talk with. And we'll say a lot of it is actually being there
Ryan Huff
@Leddynamite · 2:31
So to answer your question, I think that having an open line of communication, having a way to be able to communicate with people and constant communication itself is extremely important in the time of distance learning and having ways to be able to communicate, being able to reach out to somebody and having somebody help you in return. And that's something that is going to be a struggle when you can't have that person physically help you. So we need to rely on an open dialogue times
And when I talk to her friends, they all kind of agree that online school is hard and they're all going into high school together right now, and that can be a hard transition to not have your friends around and to have to learn everything new online. So I do hope that there is a better future coming along and kind of soon
ERIC S.
@ericbsand · 4:57
I even saw earlier other were reporting that their idea was to have the kids in a structured setting from 830 to 03:00 here in La USD. And that's just far too long for anybody to be staring at a screen constantly for that amount of time throughout a year. I mean, that proposes significant health scenarios too that aren't covert related. You have eye strain, headaches, et cetera, et cetera and ultimately burnout
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 4:44
Heidi mentioned her sister had most of her social interactions basically cut to zero, no choir. Erin mentioned that her daughter was not able to see her friends. And at such a developmental age, middle school in particular, going into high school. It's a very worrying thing to have that support system removed from you right away. Great sort of analogy for the situation would be what happened with I don't mean great, as in it's fantastic. I mean, it fits other situation
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 4:48
So I'll start with the positives, and I think that right now, asynchronous learning is where a lot of education is really going to take place, it's going to be important that students are maintaining discourse with one another in a way that's productive and meaningful for them that's maybe done so in a familiar way to them, since they can't be in class and interacting with each other for six to 7 hours a day. I think it's important that they continue interacting elsewhere
Deborah Pardes
@DBPardes · 2:07
And we know that Swell right now is poised to help the human voice play a real significant role in communication at the education level, for people to just hear the voice, not on Zoom, where you're sort of distracted in a million different ways, and there's lots of people around you and you're sort of wondering what you look like and all the other things that Zoom has. This app is perfect for Sonic threads to be created, and I could talk more about that later
Michelle Taylor
@MichelleT92 · 4:13
Hi, Taylor. Thank you for the introduction. My name is Michelle Taylor. As Taylor explained, I have worked in special education and I'm a private Hebrew school teacher. Going off of his question on how personally I'm feeling going into the New year. I'm feeling a lot more prepared than I did at the beginning. When this first occurred and Quarantine first started. I know for myself within my private company that I do special education. There's been an ongoing situation of training
Howie Rubin
@Howie · 5:00
I don't know the whys and the wherefores of this, but I base that conclusion on stats that I have read that our students are not learning math or English to the degree that we hope they would the dropout rates, this and the other thing. So I actually believe that the combination of hardware and software can help turn out a better product
Howie Rubin
@Howie · 0:24
I hope that my Ramblings made sense to you. I'm available to anyone or anyone out there who would like to discuss some of the things that can be done and how you can put together programs so that you can get co leaders involved so that you can actually find solutions that will better educate
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 1:38
We have students who are English language learners who are either new to this country or are recently acquiring a new language after having moved here, I remember I had a student who moved here from Armenia and did not speak a word of English other than Hello. And I got to think to myself, how is it that during this time of distance learning, that student is going to get all of the help that they can possibly get students with special needs?
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 4:19
And the word that you coined, I believe a combination of education and entertainment is something that I've been thinking about a lot lately. Given the pretty intense shift towards technology lately. We know that students these days interact with their phones, interact with their computers and video games on a non stop level
Michelle Taylor
@MichelleT92 · 3:36
Hey Taylor, Yeah, I can definitely tell you what I know is happening within private companies that are working with special education and onetoone therapy. I cannot speak on behalf of La USD because I know that they are running things a little a bit differently. However, what I can say with being with a company that works within LAUSD, we have been having to get approval from LAUSD to deliver one to one therapy currently right now during COVID, as well as we have a COVID emergency pandemic team
Ryan Lewis
@RLewis · 2:41
As challenging as it may have been, it's been good trying to figure out what is important to do in person and what consumers do on their own, under limited supervision and what's in between. And I've appreciated that conversation that has arisen, though the challenges of accountability and parental involvement and students really doing their best and attempting to do their best have been difficult. But trying to navigate and learn those new normals is definitely part of the challenge
Brelyn Frelot
@Brelyn · 3:24
As far as supporting my community and to your question about mental health, I believe that the mental health of children is the most important factor to the success of their education
Larissa Ach
@pdiddy · 4:11
So I'm not necessarily from United States. I'm from up top in Canada, but we're all dealing with covid 19 around the world, which is easy enough to say I am also not a teacher. I'm actually and students that actually recently finished the school program, which was 80% in person 20% online
Meranda Troutt
@MerTroutt · 0:27
Hi, guys. I am Meranda, and I am a home school teacher. Of my two boys, they are four and five. And I just wanted to ask you, educators, non educators, whatever. Parents, home schoolers. What do you like about literature for Kindergartners? What are the books that you recommend? What education styles, what things do you try to incorporate just anything and everything to do with literature for around that age, four and five. Thank you
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 2:27
I can imagine that when the new school year starts, there's going to be a number of new, probably protocols and rules that are rolled out nationwide and obviously on a district by district basis. But that doesn't really change the fact that students are going to be home with their family and the family is going to have to take up a lot of that responsibility when it comes to making sure that the child is being properly educated
Meranda Troutt
@MerTroutt · 0:47
Hi again. So from a home schooling perspective, nothing much has really changed. But I did want to note that there are a lot more online resources that are providing more free opportunity for kids in education and things like that due to the current stance of what's going on. And that has been tremendously helpful, because before now, while we could find a lot of things for homeschooling, I mean, the homeschooling community has grown a lot in the past ten years
Howie Rubin
@Howie · 1:38
So in my simplistic way of thinking about things, I think that if we start with parents, the swell members who consist of parents and teachers can use the system very, very effectively by going to your local PTAs and setting up private groups so that members of the PTAs can talk to each other
Paul Levinson
@paullevinson · 3:47
And I think it's good that we have now the video and audio modes to more easily do online education. Back in the mid 1980s, when my wife and I were doing Connected Education, it was all text. Now it's that much easier. So I'm going to listen to as many of your swell about this as possible. I'll be interested in what you have to say, and thanks for setting up this little form. Think it's very useful
Swell Roundtable
@roundtable · 2:00
We're not here necessarily to say, oh, distance learning is all bad. I'm positive that it can be good if we make sure that everybody is trained properly and has the right tools. That is an uphill battle that we're all trying to face together right now and solve. But with the right support system in place, I believe that we can make strides together, and I believe that this is one of those strides talking on Swell together. Sharing ideas and concepts is a truly wonderful thing