Do you work in education? Do you remember conferences? This was my hotel view from a conference that I attended several years ago. Those days are long gone (at least for the time being) as more and more conferences get either cancelled or shifted to a virtual environment.
I have the opportunity to attend a couple of virtual conferences within the next six months and to be honest, I am on the fence about whether or not I will even attend. If you knew me in real life, you would probably be surprised to hear me say one of my favorite parts of attending these conferences is the social aspect.
I don't consider myself a very social person, I am horrible at small talk, but I love networking at conferences like these and talking to other people who work in my field.
Instruction has moved to an all remote model for the school district I work at. It was a really tough decision. We had a fairly lengthy school board meeting the other night and it the decision was made to suspend face to face instruction for all grade levels.
The rising numbers of cases throughout the state of Michigan have been a big concern. If you were to watch the news, you would think that the buildings are just littered with infected students.
You would actually be incorrect on two counts if you assumed that.
First, our district does a really good job of identifying potential infected students and having them quarantine at home in a timely manner. In fact, that brings me to the second point.
The number of infected students has actually been very very small. If I had to guess, I would say maybe one to five percent of our total population.
The sad fact is, the largest portion of infections in our district have been from the staff members. That relative percentage is much greater than the students who have had positive cases.
As you might imagine, that creates a snowball effect in terms of staffing our buildings. Substitute teachers are difficult to find even when there isn't a global pandemic happening.
When you compound that with the general fear over contracting the virus that people have now, it is nearly impossible to find substitute teachers.
The decision to go fully remote was driven more by the inability to staff the buildings vs. the actual number of students with a positive case
This is likely happening all across the country.
When we moved into this school year, there was a big concern about students refusing to wear masks and following the safety guidelines which were implemented by the state. I can say without question the students have been wonderful in dealing with all of this.
For the most part they seem more than willing to do what needs to be done to stop the spread and get back to normal.
Sadly, as mentioned above, it is the adults who seem to be having the biggest issue.
So here we are. Starting another week of fully remote instruction. Sports have been suspended, and next Monday we have another board meeting to decide if we continue to be remote or we return to face to face instruction. I have a feeling the number of people who decided to head out and about for Thanksgiving will have a significant impact on that decision.
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Staff Writer/BOID Team Leader