I wonder if the NBC News story, South Korea’s return to normal interrupted by uptick in coronavirus cases, holds a clue to what we might be looking at in our next school year.
I’m also concerned that it could also look like this:
This COULD be important, but right now schools are not going 2 need money for facilities. Instead, they are going 2 desperately need 2 have their budgets 4 personnel bolstered, or we’re all in danger of seeing class sizes of 40-or-45 in the fall. If that happens, God help us all https://t.co/27eLoVe92Z
— Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo) April 6, 2020
School budgets will be decimated by recession we’re in, even worse than what happened in Great Recession. Then, schools received $100 billion from feds. Last month, schools received less than a third of that. Lay-offs & increase class sizes happened in 2008 even w/that support
— Larry Ferlazzo (@Larryferlazzo) April 6, 2020
Here another idea from a a new study that came out in the UK today:
“Countries that have closed schools, such as the UK, have to now ask hard questions about when and how to open schools. Interventions in schools, such as closing playgrounds, keeping students in constant class groups/classrooms, increasing spacing between students in classes, reducing the school week and staggering school start and break times across years or classes should be considered if restrictive social distancing policies are to be implemented for long periods of time.”
The key point to me is: keeping students in constant class groups/classrooms
For secondary students, it would be similar to the cohorting of the Long-Term English Language Learners we do in in our support program (see Research in Action: Ramping Up Support for Long-Term ELLs) so that they stay together in each class, which would reduce the chances of transmission.
One question this prompts for me is: In secondary schools, would it also make more sense for teachers to move from class-to-class, instead of the students?
What do you think it will look like?
Re “keeping students in constant class groups/classrooms”–how will this affect the needs of students to connect with their friends? Any thoughts on this? (I’m looking at this from a secondary perspective)
I think that’s going to have to happen outside of school grounds.
One issue that I see for high schools is that the students usually take different courses (electives). They may need to do core courses (english, math, science, etc.) at school on a particular day and either do the electives at home through on-line learning or by attending school on a different day/time slot for those electives. I think elementary schools (grades 1-6) will be the toughest because of the need for childcare on the days that the students are not in school. There are many questions yet to be answered.