It would be an understatement to suggest that Ontario’s public schools have experienced a couple of years like none before.
Students have been in school, yanked out of school and placed in front of PCs and laptops for poorly organized and designed remote learning, and then called back to school for in-person learning, only to be yanked out again.
As of May 27, students remain at home perched behind their computer screens counting down the days until this debacle is over.
And yet, there is talk of sending students back to their schools for the remaining few weeks of the waning 2020/21 academic year.
WTF?
Let me repeat that, WTF?
While in-person learning in the schools may not pose much of a health risk to returning students, is it really necessary to disrupt their year even more?
I think not.
Let’s leave things as they are and start planning for a safe return to in-person learning in September.
Let’s also give some significant thought to how we can help students “catch up” after two years of disrupted learning.
And as for talk of a so-called “Hybrid Model” of learning/instruction that combines in-person and remote methodologies, let’s not even think about going down that rabbit hole.
Hopefully, years from now when COVID-19 is behind us, we can look back on these last two years as a learning experience of what to do and what not to do in regard to our kids’ learning.
RY. May 27, 2021.
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