JCC Coronavirus Escape Pod (Vent/Emotional Support/Share/Homeschool Help!))

@Pensivia @anakinfansince1983 I love online classes myself, unless it’s group projects. Haven’t used Zoom yet.

Anyway, thank you (and the other teachers here) for all you are doing.

There’s an awful internet provider Altice\Optimum, whom we thankfully ditched a month ago. Constant internet outages, no way to talk to customer service and a fake apology with no credits, nothing. Mom’s dear friend has been without internet for weeks now and she cannot jump to another provider.

I cannot understand why anyone would want to deprive children of the ability to learn (especially children and kids who are homeless.) I know why, it’s disgusting though.

My neighbors are so off the cuff noisy and rude... as they have been for years now. Hasn’t helped with my working from home at all. I truly loathe them and the people behind us. Asking nice doesn’t do anything, I have to curse at the top of my lungs for them to shut up. It’s frustrating and the only thing I do not like about working from home.

 

Thanks very much for both of those comments . I do think there are probably at least some of my students who may also prefer (or at least not actively dislike) online courses. Our in-house student surveys still show the majority saying they greatly prefer in-person (or at least the normal in-person of The Before Times...the jury's still out on the "new normal" version of in-person (rotating smaller subsets of students in and out of the classroom, socially distancing and masking, etc.)

Plus, I have several students sprinkled across my various classes this semester who did not return to living on campus due to individual health or family circumstances and so they really need the all-remote option in order to be able to continue their studies, so at least I can also feel I'm part of making that possible for them.

 

I can understand the need for in person classes, and I appreciate what teachers are doing with the online coursework. My awesome Meteorology professor from the community college I attended in ‘10 also designed and deployed the online classes for their science department. It takes a lot to do so. I prefer online because I put more effort into the work and no commute, etc.

May you and everyone else stay safe while teaching.

 

What are you doing this summer instead of hanging out at parks that seem overcrowded and going on vacation? I've been working on this:

Spoiler

It's 4,000 pieces and was a hobby of mine in my teens. I was always planning to do puzzles again when my kids moved out because I figured I'd be bored without them. I had to pick a photo that was super generic and kind of unwanted because if I got a place I like I would feel more depressed because I can't go there. This Covid thing is, for me, A LOT of trying not to get down, but it doesn't always work. I feel super depressed doing something I planned to do 15 years early. I don't want to get old this fast. Is it obvious that me not getting to travel is making me grumpy. It's making me grumpy. And there is no end in sight. In short I bought this to pass the time and even this is depressing me now. Everything that's not getting a hotel and standing in a crowd sounds awful. I hope it's okay to vent.

 

Looks like a fun puzzle - and vent all you want

 

yep, I agree with Tina, @Runjedirun , vent away...after all, this is a dedicated "support" thread!

I term I just heard mentioned on NPR today is "Coroncoaster"--a word to describe the kinds of regular ups & downs I think many of us are experiencing trying to get through this. here's one definition of it from the Urban Dictionary:

Coronacoaster
noun. The ups and downs of a pandemic. One day, you're loving your bubble, doing workouts, baking banana bread and going for long walks and the next you're crying, drinking gin for breakfast and missing people you don't even like

That about sums it up, I think!

 

That's perfect! Today actually ended up pretty good. My mom and sister texted me the presents they got my son for his birthday we are celebrating next week. I drove my son about 15 miles to a mall with a Sbarro so he could get a slice of Pepperoni. We went in got his slice and drove home to eat it here, his choice. But I'm glad because there were several people in the mall with no mask Then we filled up our tiny backyard pool so he splashed around and now I ordered Chipotle for dinner. I feel so spoiled when I order delivery for dinner. But there's no concert tickets to buy, so it seems I have more $ for the small luxuries.

 

Glad your day went well, @Runjedirun

 

I'm from an exceptionally small town and am back to visit family for the first time. Last night I bought everyone a metric **** ton of pizza from one of the, like, 4 places that serve food in town and when I went to pick it up...one of the dudes in the back had no mask. I wanted to be like, uh, remake that with a mask on but I was on a timeline and there really was no other food options around and it was just...sigh. Pretty sure he took my order too and was really nice. And granted it's piping hot pizza that should hopefully not let droplets stay viable for long but still.

Anyway it was delicious I'm just tired of these unnecessary emotional burdens WHILE GETTING PIZZA

 

So my family is being daring. We are going in late October to Cocoa Beach, Florida. We will order out or cook food in our vacation rental. We will sit on the deck or on the beach away from others. It seems a pretty safe way to get away, since we will be doing all the social distancing things we currently do at home anyway.

The best part is I don't even have to take PTO, so I can save a week to put into next year's pool. Instead I am gonna work from our balcony overlooking the beach.

We also hopefully will see the Crew Dragon launch, if it goes off as scheduled. Big if, but hey, it's worth a try.

 

Hope you get to see the launch. I was in Orlando one year at a work convention and a shuttle was due to go off at around 4AM. The convention ran a bus out to the Cape for people who wanted to see it but I was coming down with the 'con crud' by then and felt lousy. However, I figured out that the balcony of my room faced in the right direction so I set the alarm clock for around 345 AM and found a TV channel doing live coverage. As they counted down to zero I got out on the balcony and saw this ball of fire heading up in the distance til it got lost in high clouds. Was pretty neat! I later found out that the hotel had also opened a suite that faced the right way and people could watch from there if they wanted.

 

Hope you get to see the launch, sj!

 

Thanks! I've seen one from Orlando, but never from close by. If the Kennedy center sells tickets, we will buy some and just go down there for the launch. But I don't think they will yet. Still, we should be able to see it from the beach.

 

When I was senior in high school @Runjedirun I had a football coach tell me if I didn't start playing better on defense he was going to wrap my "you know what" around a tree. And is about the most family friendly I can put on here that was said to me/us that year by some of our coachces. Keep in mind I was on a team went that went undefeated and won a state championship that year. And as crazy as our coaches could be, they were nothing compared to some other experiences friends of mine had at other high schools including getting thrown up against lockers and having their throats grabbed as their coaches chewed them out. And this was not all that long ago. Again I graduated from high school in 1996 so this was the mid-90's. Just such a different world. The puzzle looks great btw. My wife finished one as well but I must admit I did not help that much. Puzzles are not my thing though I did some crossword puzzles this summer if that counts! And since school is back for both my wife and I, we are starting to pick up meals more often only a few times a week. We really want to keep the habit of cooking at home going even hopefully after this pandemic is over with. Just is healthier, better example for our kids plus it really does make a huge difference with $$$ long term.

The only problem it's been so darn hot, neither my wife and I feel like cooking. Typically when school is going on we do either something in the crockpot or make like a stir fry that has like chicken/pasta/veggies/cheese in a pan but again it's been so hot, don't feel like having either one of those running. I grilled some this weekend and my wife made breakfast (pancakes/eggs/cut up fruit/etc) yesterday morning but I got everyone Chick-fil-a on Saturday morning for breakfast since that was our usual spot before the pandemic started (even the older kids miss the playroom oddly enough) and then yesterday my brother's family (minus his oldest since he is at college crazy as it sounds) and my parents came over for lunch/hang out so we just order Portillo's. The kids have gotten so much older now that we actually just get a tray of beefs, pasta and salad. We found it's cheaper that way! Oh and I wound up ordering pizza on Friday afternoon since I worked from home (which was a bit of a mess but got thru it) and the kids wanted it which did not make my wife too happy since I could easily made them sandwiches but they were good throughout my zoom classes so I figured they earned a treat! And my guess is the kids will all be home anyway by October as I think they are going to even send us (staff) home by mid-October or so. Just going to be too difficult at least the way our district does it. If you have ANY symptoms, you required to stay home that day. Considering cold/flu plus allergy season is about to start, most staff/students will have to put down "no" a lot of the time. I mean my allergies are slowly starting to creep up on me as I had a running nose Saturday morning. Now granted it went away since it is just allergies but according to the rules I would put down "yes" for running nose on my health check this morning had it continued therefore I be working from home. Until we can test at home for this (which is coming most likely Q1 of next year though there is small hope they can roll those out by the end of the year) we really cannot have school even in a hybrid form.

And you are a braver soul then I am since I will not step foot in a mall until well this is really under control better so perhaps next spring? We gone grocery shopping (even gotten brave enough to hit Costco a few times now)! and we been out quite a bit to retail stores like Old Navy, Gap, DSW, etc but the ones we go are located in little outdoor malls. The massive indoor mall by us or even the indoor outlet mall we like to go to a few times a year that is an hour away we are staying away from until again early next year or so which begs the question how we taking the youngest one to go see Santa? The older ones don't care (they know Mr. and Mrs. Claus live with them) but the youngest one doesn't and she just love to go see him but again not going to a indoor mall unless something drastic changes (to say nothing of having her sit on Santa's lap or anything like that) and our extended family's Christmas party has already been cancelled and we always hire a Santa every year for that as well. So again not sure how that is going to work either. Perhaps get a friend to dress up like Santa and hopefully she does not notice the difference??

You will @Pensivia & @anakinfansince1983 know if it is a license version of Zoom based off the options you can do like the poll feature, forcing students to log in with their school email account etc. Plus I believe it says under "my account" whether or not you have the basic account or not. Again it really does make a difference so hopefully your university/district winds up purchasing the license. Then again with the problems Zoom currently is having it does not really make a difference right now LOL! It was expected though. I remember last spring Schoology essentially crashed for two days because so many schools were trying to use it all at once (many of them for the first time) therefore Schoology had to increase broadband on their end to meet demand. I am sure Zoom is doing the same thing as we speak and will continue to do so since many schools are still not in session. Like CPS do not even start until after Labor Day so this could be a issue for the next few weeks. Hopefully not but I would not be shocked if it was. BTW a quick fix at least for us was using it via their app. If you are on a desktop/laptop, just do a search for it and it should pop up. I along with any of my colleagues could not get thru the website (since it's down basically) but I could get on using my laptop shortcut. Hopefully that continues to work. I am really trying to enjoy "remote learning" for what it is as there is a few parts of it I enjoy (like working from home Friday when I had no other child care) but I am already seeing how were just not going to get thru as much via remote then we do otherwise. Plus building personal relationships with the kids is extremely difficult especially since we only see them an hour every other day. Really hard to build relationships seeing them so infrequently to say nothing having none of them in the building. As a colleague put it perfectly, a school with no students in it is just a pile of bricks. Yes we are in the building but with no students here means it's really nothing more then a giant office building. Guess one good thing out of this, we won't complain having to come into work again once it all goes back to normal. At least not right away.

Yeah I noticed @LloydChristmas a few times I picked up food the cooks weren't exactly wearing masks properly though all had gloves on. As you said, the piping hot pizza should make it safe enough to eat as experts have ranked picking up food as one of the safest things you can do right now along with opening your mail. But it is still off putting. Perhaps that is why we been ordering a bit more from your usual spots like Portillo's because you can see inside their kitchen and how everyone has masks on/gloves along with how clean it is. I do like giving the mom and pop places more business right now since they are really struggling but I also noticed they are less regimen about masks and stuff so again it's a tough balancing act.

That is @solojones the only way to really safely "vacation" right now like we did earlier this summer with the kids. Just rent a place, either grill out/order out and just chill. I never seen a launch before but I have family in Florida who would go to them all the time and said it is truly something you should see at least once in your life. So hopefully the launch goes as planned and you get to see it. Florida is usually nicer that time of year. Typically October-November along with February-March are the nicest time of years down here, at least in my experience.

And @heels1785 I thought I was the only other person addicted to Cherry Coke Zero.

Edit: And I will never EVER get use to how this is set up for school. Not even if we do it *god forbid* for the next year and a half. Right now I am currently grading/planning as I read lunch awhile back while listening to Spotify in a empty classroom like how many of my colleagues are doing as we already been done with school for over an hour. Just truly odd beyond words.

 

Yeah it's the only kind of vacation I feel comfortable with. Just going somewhere nice on the beach to basically continue doing what I am now, but on the beach

 

Is this where I say that I am numb. I am out of feeling. Civil unrest, hurricane and Covid. I know I have feelings about today, but I just can't begin to sort them out.

Yesterday was a good day, the tutor we hired for my son, who's been working with him exclusively on Zoom has been amazing. He's made a lot of progress this summer. I've talked to his 2nd grade teacher and she is appalled that he got no formal teaching after the schools shut down in March last year. She's told me she is determined to do right by us and even said she might be able to come set up a toy store in our yard so he can learn to understand money better. He grasps time and dates very well, but he can't tell a quarter from a dime and I think it's because he's never seen us spend coins. And since it's Covid time we aren't about to walk into a store now and pour a cup of coins on the counter to count them out to a cashier just so he can see how they work.

 

I really value and cherish any time I have at home with my parents now. I mean, I did before the pandemic, but now, especially. Really looking forward to going home in two weekends.

 

Really feeling down this morning. Very stressful week. Virtual middle school orientation was a disaster. I felt so bad for the teacher. Basically my son has 8 classes. English, Math, History, PE, Science (environmental science, I'd love to hear more about that one) his two electives this semester are engineering and beginning computers (which is Word, Outlook, Power Point Excel (sounds like a day in my office, ugh) and the final period is Learning Seminar. Learning Seminar is usually a study hall and some kids wouldn't take it. This year it's more of a structured class and everyone takes it. A lot of it will be dedicated towards making sure students are socially and mentally well. While also making sure they are understanding their class material. Anyway they had this orientation on Wednesday evening. They were all given a link to their Learning Seminar class where the teacher showed them their own personal virtual planner. And they were to go to their school email account and find each invitation from their 7 other classes and put the links to their classes in the their planners. This is a good idea because they have 8 individual emails with 8 different links to 8 different classes and you just know those emails are going to get lost or harder to find as the year goes on. Well my son only had two email invites, and all the other kids in the class were missing invites too. There was no planning, how was this the activity and less than half the teachers knew that email with the link needed to be sent out by Wednesday night? Not a good way to start middle school.

Next up is my 2nd grader. Now like I said before most of the families I know have decided to home school (not use the county program at all just wing it on their own) or send their kids to private school so they can get in a building and learn. Now my kid is an autistic classroom, last year his class had 8 kids. On Thursday when we logged into his orientation it was us and one other kid. We do really like my son's teacher, my son was very excited to do the practice class and participated in the whole thirty minutes. And it would be awesome if it's only him and one other kid, but man do I worry that there are just a lot of kids in my county and the whole country who can't log in because their parents are working and the parents just don't know what to do. Our county's home page can translate into about 10 or more different languages for a reason. One of my neighbors didn't even know the going in two days thing had been taken off the table until I told her and she speaks English, really good English. I think she was just so consumed with getting her older daughter off to college, her work stress and who knows what other stress that she didn't get the information she needed for her other younger child who is in my older son's class.

Also that other kid and his dad who logged into my son's class, there was a TV blaring in the background. Most of the time they put their mic on mute, but when the teacher called on him and they unmuted for him to answer all you could hear was the local news. How could they not have the common courtesy to turn down the freakin' TV?

School starts Tuesday. I have Tuesday and Wednesday off. I have 0 expectations and I still think I'm going to be disappointed. Oh and also there's this. They got all new computers for 5-9th graders. 10-12 got new computers in 9th grade and you just hold onto your computer from 9-12 that was a thing here before Covid 19. But 4 on down to Pre-k got left over computers. Look at this email from our elementary school yesterday:

Hello Camelot Families,

We are looking forward to the first day of school on Tuesday, September 8! K-6 students should log into their homeroom classes between 9:00am and 9:05am. PreK students will follow the class schedules provided by their teachers.

If you have technology issues, there are a couple of resources to use for troubleshooting between now and Tuesday (and thereafter). One is this FCPS website (scroll down to General Computer Use on this site): **** You may also call the Parent Technology Help Desk at **** On Tuesday (and thereafter) you may call the Camelot office and our office staff will have someone reach out to you. To be frank, as in most elementary schools, our computer inventory is very low, and we know that some computers are running slowly. Unless a computer is simply not working, we will not be able to replace it at this time.

Thankfully the computer we got had a good connection for the orientation. I think it's going to hold up, but it is quite old and clunky. Also as soon as things get better he's one of the priority kids to get back in school, but I don't see things getting better. I saw I95 jam packed with cars yesterday, people going on last minute trips to further spread the virus

Hope you all are feeling more optimistic than me.

 

On the IT issue - do you know if the school has tried contacting local businesses to see if they have laptops/PCs that are no longer being used? Maybe they'd consider donating to the school. Might be worth suggesting if you live in an area with some large businesses.

 

Well....I found a t-ball class for my youngest son. It meets outdoors, they just go over the basics. I'm sure some kids will be learning to play for the first time. But it's either t-ball ages 5-7 or baseball ages 6-12. He played t-ball last fall and he loved it. Always wanted to be the person in the field making the play. We were going to sign up him for coach pitch baseball last spring, but COVID. And now he's too young to be considered for organized games because COVID rules said you had to be 7 by Sept 1st and he turns 7 today. My husband really isn't on board for me signing him up, but I don't know what else to do.

Yesterday I went to the park near here and shot hoops on a somewhat lonely basketball court, but the tennis courts were being set up for a tournament. Kids 10 and up were arriving signing in and warming up. I know kids 7+ are back at baseball, and there were even swim meets this summer. If my kid sits home he's just getting behind and he enjoys sports. I'm not robbing him of a pro career by not letting him play. I understand there's a .000001% chance he'd be that good especially with our genes and athletic capabilities, but it's not fair for him to have to sit home and get further behind either.

Anyone else struggling with what to allow their kids to do? It's going to be much harder in winter when sports will be inside only, then unless a miracle we will have to sit out again, but at least we did some practice this fall. Hoping I made the right decision. Also I can't wait to check in tomorrow afternoon and let you all know how school goes. No expectations. Trying real hard to have no expectations.

 

After being in quarantine with my family for 6 months, my brother went home to LA this weekend to look for a new roommate. He plans to come back once he finds one... But still, it makes me sad. I miss him.

 

My boss ok'ed my plan to go to Florida and work from a condo overlooking the beach for a week in October. So that's nice, having something to look forward to anyway.