There was one overriding concern at today’s faculty meeting: we have to do everything we can to make sure that this national emergency does not expand the achievement gap any more than is inevitable. We spent the morning talking about how to prepare materials for students to work at home with one underlying assumption: vast numbers of kids won’t do anything during this time. The “high flyers” will do everything we give them; the middle-of-the-roaders will do some of it; the ones who need the most help will do the least.
“They don’t even do much work when we’re hovering over them” was the common refrain.
So as we embarked on our planning this afternoon, working to create ten days of material for students to work on while we’re closed, we kept that in mind — a frustrating project, planning materials that we know will most likely not be used by kids who really do need to use it.
And the common refrain during that planning process: “We need to go ahead and plan for the next ten days because there’s no way we’re coming back at the beginning of April.”
We’ll cross that Rubicon when we arrive at its banks…