Can I drop out of 5th grade?

I'm so sorry....distance learning doesn't start here until Monday, 4/20 and the kids have been out since March 12th. Can't wait....or can I???

I think 5th grade is highly overrated. Pass your student on to summer vaca. Cocktails for the teacher!!

Distance learning hasn’t begun here yet. BC is so ass backwards.

Awww, fifth grade is the best grade of all the grades. I am sure that teacher is struggling meeting everyone's needs. Can you load a good book on the iPad and have him read to you every day while you are cooking or doing some other chore (if you aren't working from home)? Ask him questions about what you heard. Have him make predictions or draw conclusions. For math, I can't recommend KHAN Academy.com enough. Look at the skill he's supposed to be learning and look up the lesson online. I would have kids that would struggle with a concept and just having it reinforced by this guy almost always seemed to help.

I'd ask his teacher for help in getting things communicated to you in a different way since your son is not going to be helpful in that department.

I know most parents are having a tough time. I hope it gets better for you.

I'd like to drop out of 5th grade as well. My son is special needs and he can't do the majority of his work online. His teacher has been great, it's me that is failing.

You can drop out of 5th grade if I can drop out of 11th grade.

Right now I am reading A Handmaid's Tale along with DS and trying to impart information about 2nd wave feminists. Super fun! "Go burn your bra, mom"

My kid’s school is primarily using Seesaw. She has a main homeroom teacher, but starting this year the four various grade level teachers each handle separate subjects so the kids had been rotating through the assorted classroom areas for the different subjects. There are also specialists for PE, Art, Media/Library and Music for a total of eight different teachers.

Some of the teachers have their own tab on Seesaw and some have been lumped under the homeroom teacher’s tab and that gets confusing, especially since there doesn’t seem to be a way to get the notifiers for the messages that have already been looked at to go away.   

There are certain assignments the kids must respond to daily so the teachers can mark them present, which I understand. But some of the teachers have response buttons corresponding to assignments that they have said they don’t expect the kids to respond to, and then those notifiers never go away making it always look like the kid skipped or missed something. It’s making things way more complicated than it needs to be.

IMO it would be so much easier from a parent perspective if each teacher had their own individual tab. List in ONE PLACE each task the kids are supposed to do for each class. And for the love of all that’s holy, don’t put something up on there asking for a response if you don’t need or expect to see one!

And don’t even get me started on all the freaking *choices* of things they can pick from to meet the daily requirements. Both me and my kid are getting weary of having to make so many decisions daily of what she can do. Just for her math class alone I think there something like 15-20 options for four different sections DAILY, plus a problem of the day.   Life would be so much easier if they just said do pages XX-XX in your workbook and message me if you have questions, oy.

ETA: All in all I think my kid’s teachers are doing a decent job. I think my frustration is more with the platform the district has chosen to use than anything. It’s just not all that user friendly for the kids especially when so many extra variables are thrown into the mix.

I’m a teacher. Most of us are doing the best we can. Some teachers have no internet service in the area they live. They have to hot spot from their phones. To use their computers they have to drive to a location that has free WiFi and sit in their car. Others are attempting to teach while taking care of small children, helping their own children with school work, and having a spouse also working from home. Then there’s me. I’m widowed and only have one child still at home. He’s 22 and at work all day. I have plenty of time to plan and teach online.

Consider all that first. Then take appropriate action. If you have a teacher who is providing NOTHING for your child, you need to let the principal know. If work is spotty, talk with the teacher. If they won’t respond, let the principal know. if you have tried repeatedly to contact the teacher with no response, you may also want to cc the principal on future emails so they can see what’s going on.

I know this is hard. I can’t imagine trying to do this job from home with little ones and other adults at home during the day. I also cannot imagine being a parent who is working from home and trying to be my child’s teacher. However, we can be thankful this happened at the end of the year, when most material had already been covered. It also will prepare us for the future if something like this happens again or if this lingers to the beginning of school next year. (whispering - Please don’t let it happen!)

Stay strong, ladies!

I was just chatting with my friend who teaches 8th grade math in our district. She said the teachers had two weeks of training on setting up their material online, and started teaching classes on 4/7. She said it was going surprisingly well - she had been really worried that it would bomb. She's been able to progress in the course. Each class is for 90 minutes three times per week, and her students have been doing great.

We live in a great district. She also said that the school delivered chrome books to any student who didn't have access to a computer, and that Comcast has provided free internet service to any student who needs it.

My son is in college, so he was used to online courses. His music classes have managed to adapt. Not perfect, but he's graduating in a couple weeks.

I hear ya! I wanna quit the 2nd grade! My daughter and I both have ADHD. It’s supposed to be 1.5-2 hours per day but is taking us several hours per day! Reason it takes so long is that every assignment is on a new different website to try and figure out. I was about to lose my shit today trying to do a video on “Flipgrid”. Apparently I need to download new software to my laptop for it to work. Software won’t download. I don’t mind the classwork, I do mind all the different sites that we need to figure out.!🥴

I can scan documents. Haven't been able to save as documents, so when I put them on 'paper' they might be a bit wonky and I can attach them to email.
New phone, finally was able to male call. Every time I touch the phone it wants me to shut down for updates, which blocked me from successfully answering when my doctor called for my visit. I now know to swipe up at all times to answer or anything else I need to do.

Can you tell, my first smart phone.

Thanks, we might try that if they’re still showing there next week. I’m sure it’s just a learning curve all the way around. One of the specials teachers had all of the options the kid could choose from with those respond buttons on each one, the kid only had to do one of the four choices for the week. After that the rest of the options just sit there cluttering things up. I’m afraid that responding (even if only to say she picked something else) will mean that teacher is going to get 500 notices to weed through, and that’s just for one grade of kids in a pre-k through 5th elementary school. Oy.   There has to be a better way.

Hugs to all you parents and kids getting used to distance learning and to the teachers trying to keep up with the various technologies and keep in meaningful contact with all the kids. @breetheflea is there any way you can have the teacher include you in the loop about the 5th grade assignments? Dgs's school has an option for anyone in the family to log in to pick up the assignments.

My 7 year old ADHD dgs has been here and doing SeeSaw on line since April 1st. The teacher is wonderful. The assignments for grade one include options for how to respond--directly on the ipad with typing or pencil tool, recorded audio or video, or done on paper then photographed and submitted. The completed assignments disappear from the pending list, and all pending assignments disappear at the end of the weekend so the new ones will appear.

Keeping those busy little fingers off the keys and buttons on the screen is a challenge, but we have been able to meet all learning goals each week if not all the assignments. His best reading performance was when he built a fort behind the couch in the basement, took a book and a flashlight and my phone in there, and read for the teacher via a video recording.

My third grader has been getting consistent information from her teacher and had a Zoom meetings already - that were actually useful.

My 7th grader had his first Zoom meeting and it was only set up by one teacher but then had three of his teachers on it.  The teachers wanted to know how much time they spent on things (way less than they think) and then they did a TikTok dance?  And they were trying to feel the kids out on things but all through the year they were experts and us parents could not question anything.  OMG, I was embarrassed for their lack of professionalism.

This was our first week, but you can tell who’s trying and who’s just coasting.  My kids need the work to offset the lack of structure right now, but the balance of making it useful and not just busy work is important.  I know the teachers know that too and hopefully are in adjustment mode yet.