The department of Catholic schools of the Archdiocese of Los Angeles has announced that its Catholic schools throughout Los Angeles, Ventura, and Santa Barbara counties will continue with distance learning through the end of the 2019-2020 academic year.
“After recent discussions with public health officials in the three counties we serve, public and private K-12 campuses will not be included in the initial stages of sector reopening. As a result, distance learning will continue through the end of the school year,” said Paul Escala, senior director and superintendent of Catholic schools for the archdiocese of Los Angeles.
Archdiocesan schools transitioned to distance learning on March 17, as schools throughout the state were urged to close in response to the threat of COVID-19. Teachers, staff and leaders of the 265 elementary and high schools in the archdiocese of Los Angeles responded rapidly to ensure that the 73,000 students they serve never stopped learning.
Daily schedule and structure of distance learning vary by Catholic school and grade level, but many include morning check-ins online to record student attendance, online religion class with time to share, speak, reflect and pray, video lessons from teachers, and virtual classrooms where students can see and hear each other, as well as chat and text capabilities. The archdiocese has deployed an additional 20,000 connected iPads through its C3 partnership with Sprint which the entire family can use. Since 2016, the C3 IGNITE program with Sprint has deployed over 24,000 connected iPad devices to more than 132 schools in the archdiocese. The devices are not only used as a classroom tool by students for their projects, research and homework, but can also be used in homes without internet access, as a mobile hotspot and/or a direct connected Sprint network device….
The above comes from a May 11 release from the L.A. archdiocese.
“Never stopped learning.” That remains to be seen. All the stories I’m hearing from my friends whose kids are “distance learning” is that it’s a train wreck. The kids hate it, they have massive screen fatigue, it’s not productive, and hardly any actual learning is taking place for all the screen time and busywork. Having a classroom meeting over Zoom doesn’t result in meaningful learning, if any at all.
But of course an official press release from the Archidocese and superintendent aren’t going to tell you that. Instead of writing about how many tablets were issued, how about providing data comparing test results at the end of this year with results from prior years? How about data comparing student wellness measurements such as happiness with students from last year? Distance learning doesn’t work except in the case of highly responsible and motivated adults.
Jodie, as a teacher I can tell you it’s much harder for everyone, including the teachers. We can see many students not doing as well as they would in a classroom. My students are community college students who have a little more maturity to handle a less than ideal situation, and I can tell you they are learning, though the process is more exhausting for everyone involved. I assume the “train wreck” scenario describes younger students with less ability to cope with difficult circumstances. That’s where parents might be of help. That said, let us hope everyone works harder to find better ways to deliver education in these pandemic times.
What Jodie does not seem to understand is that a good portion of classroom time, at least in public schools, is spent on computers anyway.
I saw public school classroom and latch key teachers use television as babysitters quite a lot of the time, and some of the programs in elementary school were PG (parental guidance), but no approval forms were sent to parents. That was at least fourteen years ago. Now it is probably much worse. Oh, we know it is much worse. Now they are trying to convince your children that it is “cool” to mutilate ones body in a “sex change”.
I did not mean to be so negative as I am sure there are many fine Catholic and other private schools. It is just that there has been so much infiltration by bad teachers and administrators in so many schools here in California, and it is so hard to get them out, that sometimes homeschooling seems to be the wisest choice. At least the parents know what is being taught in homeschooling. A great problem in public schools is that many parents do not get involved in the schools and have no idea, or do not care, what is being taught to their children.
Our altar boys are safe for now from homosexual members of the clergy. These lock downs should be maintained indefinitely to halt the spread of sex abuse scandals.
“These lock downs should be maintained indefinitely to halt the spread of sex abuse scandals.” Throwing the baby out with the bath water.
It does not seem like you are worried about protecting our children.
When will the Vatican look at a population map and realize this area should be split into at least two dioceses. I’d make a small wager that there are more Catholics in either Ventura or Santa Barbara than in many archdioceses in the United States.
Distant learning is new to most teachers, so they are on a steep learning curve to figure out how to teach effectively in the new world foisted upon us. The computer screen will never replace the effective classroom teacher, but the time spent on it will increase all the same.
Some on this site are old enough to remember when a set of encyclopedias was the basic classroom store of knowledge. Now everything in the world is on the white-smartboard in the class. Remember when we had rolldown maps? They are now on the white-smartboard.
Disruptions change the world and this pandemic is not different. It is forcing innovation. The old norm of a couple of months ago will never come back.