Skip to main content

Guest Blog by Symphony (My Niece)

                                                 
             
                 Distance Learning
                        By Symphony, age 10
Distance learning has flaws, but it’s kind of the best we can do right
now. I’m in fourth grade, and I go to a French school. My class only
has three and a half hours of school each week, and this is a problem.
I’m not saying I’m a superfan of school, which I’m not, but because
my teachers don’t have enough class time, they give insane amounts
of homework. That may be a bit of an exaggeration, but just yesterday
I had to do 6 or 7 things for school. (Some things I did procrastinate,
but still.) It took over an hour. 

I’m okay with the balance between class time and homework, but it’s
still sort of a problem. I understand the teachers’ job is to educate us kids,
but they don’t get the time to do so, so they give us a whole bunch of
homework instead! Just this week, I probably did over ten things for
homework! I can’t imagine the horror college students must be going
through. In high school and college, they already have about 3 hours of
homework a day, and with less time for class it must be around 5 hours!

My class had nearly 6 hours at school every day, and now when we’re on
Zoom with my class, it’s only 1 hour of French per day on Wednesdays and
Thursdays, and on Tuesdays I have 1 hour of English, and then on Fridays
I have half an hour of French reading. You’re probably asking yourself, “Why
is she listing her class schedule? I don’t care about that.” Well, I know that, and
I don’t mind. The list of my classes looks long, but it’s really not. If you do the
math, it’s only 3 and a half hours.
 
There’s not even really a website designed for distance learning, I mean there’s
Google Traslate and Zoom, which is what my class uses, but there is not
really one designed to video chat with your class. But most people use Zoom,
so it's a good enough platform.
 
In conclusion, distance learning has its flaws, but it’s doing okay. Sort of.




                                                                           Note: this is an opinion.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

The Best Mistake

I recently wanted to get a pedicure (I promise this will be important) and was looking at nail salons nearby. I knew there was a place called Kim's Nails near my exercise class, so I quickly googled to see if I could make an appointment online (I hate calling on the phone) and it let me, so I made an appointment for a few days later and went on with my day. Later that day, I got a text confirming my appointment and I realized that I had made the appointment at the wrong Kim's Nails! I meant to make an appointment for the one in my city and I made one at a nail shop in the next city over (Kim's Nails is a common business name). Because I had already made the appointment and they had taken the time to text me, I figured I'd just go with it. OK, if you're still with me, this is where it gets exciting! A few hours after I got the confirmation text, the owner of Kim's Nails texted me again. the text just said, "Are you a teacher?" I didn't know why they...
1 comment
Read more

A Loss

  (I have been putting off finishing this blog post for months. You'll see why)  Today, I was cleaning a bookshelf and I found the journal from one of my third-grade students, who I call Fred in my book , in 2001. I still had it because he didn't come to the last day of school to get his stuff this year and I guess it got put in a pile and somehow I've kept it with me.  He didn't come to the last day of school, probably because his family was a mess: dad in prison, mom in an abusive relationship, all the kids (understandably) acting out violently. Fred was expelled from our school in second grade for hitting a teacher. Then he was expelled from the other school, I don't know why, at the end of second grade. He came back on the condition from the administration that he be in my class because I had him as a student in first grade and he listened to me and worked well with me.  We had a really good relationship, although Fred was definitely not easy to have in class....
Post a Comment
Read more

A New Prison, Part 1

My former student, friend, and co-author was moved to a new prison during COVID. We (myself, Mitali, and his Abuela) have visited a couple of times via the video visit functionality they set up, but we've also been trying to visit in person, ever since in-person visits were allowed again. After four of them being canceled (sometimes we were told why, sometimes not), we finally got a visit. I was super nervous about this visit. (I felt better when Mitali mentioned that she was also, because she is an inherently positive and optimistic person!) I am not proud of this, but there was a large part of me that was hoping that the visit would be canceled, just like the previous four were. I felt a little better when someone I know messaged me privately to tell me that they had had very good experiences visiting a family member in that prison. But I still didn't sleep well at all that night, worrying about the guards, the many things that could go wrong, and the projected 111-degree hea...
Post a Comment
Read more