How are you guys handling the Coronavirus chaos?

Well, I went to the grocery store today and asked one of the cashiers if the wild story about the hostage situation was true. It was. It actually happened two Saturdays ago when we were in South Dakota, so it would have been right after the mask order went into place. Hopefully people will settle down. I was in the P.O. today and 3 of the 4 people who came in didn't have masks at all, and the worker had hers around her neck. This is the most lax I've ever seen people in the P.O. since March, so I almost wonder if the mask order either made people rebellious, or if people are just plain weary of "the new abnormal".

 

Kind of a nice message from an Australian paper I thought you guys might like:

 

Sound advice. I am off to eat all the things.

 

Agreed

 

Our county just released the upcoming school plan to be all virtual. They want each kid to do 6.5 hours every day of online learning. But where I live, WiFi isn’t an option. I have tried for three years to get the local cable company to run internet up here, but where they provide service ends half a mile down the road. They said it would cost me 5 grand to have them run access to my house. I don’t understand how the schools can expect us to to do online schooling when we have no internet access available to us

 

That is the question on many parent's and teacher's lips. In my daughter's district every child was given a chrome book and supposedly a hotspot if needed. There were never any instructions on how to achieve this access. She is not even sure how many of them are still in the area.
Now she is expected to do 6 hours a day. Out of her 30 students last year the most she ever got on at one time was 15. She was hard put to keep them interested for 2 hours.
I am not professing to have the answer in any way. This is just what is happening to her. (This is y other daughter, not the one who homeschools.) She teaches 5th grade in public school.

 

The school should have a hot spot for you. I believe that money was (or will be) given to them to provide internet access and some type of computer to students who need them. Call the school until you get an answer. I hope that we can all get back to normal very soon! I have satellite internet which is not good when it rains, so last year I took one of the hot spots that we had for the kids. It worked most of the time.

 

While I have Internet (I'm working from home now), many people at our local schooling do not, as I'm 'in the city' and 'in the country' simultaneously. This also means I'm on severe lockdown, heh - no travel, no leaving the property save one person once a day, no going 5km from house. Our school has created specialised information packets for those students with poor connections, so they have a big pack and specific items for each day to work through. Not sure if this would help your teacher friend, but they are clearly giving support to the teachers. The school does the printing and has a helpline to resolve issues.

The school library also mails out books for the students.

They have also been very clear that teachers are not expected to maintain previous formats. My daughter tends to complete her days' schooling in about 1 1/2 - 2 hours. Other children will take longer, or less time. I am lucky. My kid is neurotypical and very good at entertaining herself - but it is hard on her. Both of her parents are working, and in my case, I am frequently in multi-hour meetings that cannot be interrupted. I say 'cannot' because my clients and superiors are getting used to seeing her head pop up

For us, the hardest thing is PE. It's winter here, and very wet. I live on a steep slope, and everything is a foot deep in mud. It's cold, there's a tonne of leeches, and exercise outside is not remotely appealing. My family is great on academica, but we don't even HAVE a football 'to kick around' or, indeed, somewhere to do it. Once it warms up, it will be easier.

 

They have 800 chrome books for the entire county for kids who don’t have one. Even if I was able to use one of them, they don’t provide hotspot unless you sit in the school parking lot. There is no way I would drive 15 miles everyday to sit in the car while my son and daughter each did 6.5 hours of online school.

 

I'm so sorry to hear that.... That is absolutely ridiculous.

 

At one time..you could link your cell phone to a tablet and use your phones network. Would that help.any? I used to do that for my online classes.

 

I have dial up- glad my kids are all grown up. Half the time our internet is down!
Make little cubicles for each kid, then they could go to school! Little plexiglass cubes!

 

If they let me borrow a laptop then I’m gonna connect to my phones hotspot. But straight talk only gives u 10 gb a month. I’m not sure how long that will last

 

Maybe that will change due to the changes of the covid19. I hope so.

 

I talked to my daughter last night. She is being allowed to remote teach from her classroom. She is happy about that as she has all of her materials and class is not interrupted by dogs barking and kids/husband coming and going.

We did a *social distancing* Southern Hospitality picnic yesterday. It worked pretty well but just not as fun as being able to hug and laugh out loud and stuff. Still, it was just good to socialize a bit. And I did *eat all the things* and felt like I might burst.

Cases in our county are so bad that we may not go home. My son-in-law has multiple medical problems and has lots of appointments. They are now requiring a Covid test before all scheduled procedures. At least they have been negative; so that is one up-side.

 

Oh! We got a goat fix last night. The little girl my sister takes care of wanted us to meet Oreo. Her precious little pet Pygmy. His hooves were badly overgrown so Rod trimmed them for her and educated the mom on how to keep them up.

 

That is so true. Happened to me!