Tag: #NYCSchools

  • Learning to Read and Write

    I am not a fan of remote schooling, but I don’t know anyone who is. It is something that we are all putting up with. I have said this before, and that is that the remote teacher my daughter has is great. She is patient, and calm and very nurturing to all the kids. My daughter looks forward to seeing her teacher, and draws pictures for her. For this crappy situation, I feel very fortunate that she is our teacher.

    I am also aware of the short coming of remote learning. Mainly, it is difficult to consistently reinforce lessons in these spurts of learning. Even with parental support, which I know all of us parents do for the class, it is not reaping the same results as compared to the kids being in a classroom together.

    But there is one very wonderful thing that I do get to take part in; I get to help my kid learn to read and write. (The kid is an ace with math, which she totally gets from her mother.) I have made flashcards to go over sight words with her, and its fun watching her begin to recognize those sight words in the real world.

    “Hey, Dad! I can read that!” is a new fun phrase she likes to share with me. She is just beginning to unlock the world around her, and that feeling of the discovery beams off of her.

    And at the end of the day, the kid will sit in my lap and read one of her books to me. Slowly, sounding out words, connecting the thoughts in the words, and watching her confidence grow as the words are no longer a difficulty to her.

    With reading the books, she is now wanting to write her own books. We have bought her several notebooks to draw in, but now she wants to put words with her drawings. She labors over her desk, drawing images, and scenes for her stories. Then she starts the process of finding the right words to describe her pictures.

    It is pretty special that I get to play a part in my kid learning the basic building blocks of her education.

  • Morning Parenting: Creativity

    I played the Bee Gees for my daughter this morning as we were drawing together. I put on a play list while we were drawing together, and “Stayin’ Alive” came on. The kid told me that she liked that song, so I put on a few other Bee Gee songs; the big hits mainly, and she thought all of them were “really fun.”

    What this has now created in the kid is that she wants to “drum” on her desk and not pay attention to her remote class meeting. I can’t really blame her too much. The remote classes can be a little dull for her, especially when her teacher tries to get the kids to work on their writing. I mean, without everyone being in the same room, working together, it can be a disjointed mess. (I give her teacher so much credit for being patient and supportive with all of the kids.) And in that chaos, my kid likes to drum on her desk, or sing songs she makes up.

    And that is the rub for me as a parent; I need to kid to learn how to write, and at the same time, I don’t want to discourage her creativity. This is why we have started drawing together in the morning between classes. Not only is it something that we can do together creatively, but it is also is a chance for us to talk about things. I want her to be able to express herself clearly and confidently.

  • Screw It! Snow Day!

    Funny thing, snow days. I wrote yesterday about how NYC schools would stay open online, even though the buildings were closed, and in effect; no more snow days. And that is what happened today.

    But… We tried to have a snow day anyway. We went out and ran around in the snow twice today. Oh, we made snow angels, tried to have a snowball fight and to make a snowman, but the snow wasn’t the right type. Not the big fluffy flakes that pack together well. It was fine, skiing snow, in my opinion. We had fun; the kid made a friend while running through snow drifts, and we ended up at home, wrapped in blankets, and having hot chocolate. You know, snow day!

    I remember my first snow day. I was about my daughter’s age. My mother woke me up for school, as normal, but on this day, she took me to the back patio sliding glassdoor, which had it’s vertical blinds drawn. Then with a nod, my mother pulled the shades open to show me that our square suburban backyard was covered in an amazing, for Texas, two inches of snow! I remember making the tiniest of snowmen, and just playing, and running around to hear the crunch of snow under my boots.

    It’s nice to know that snow is still magical to kids who don’t get to see it very often. I grew up down south, I’m 44 years old, and I still get super excited when the weather says snow is on the way.

  • The End of Snow Days

    I don’t know if you have heard, but a Nor’easter is headed for the northeast today. If it holds true, then NYC will get hit with 5-10” of snow over the next 12 hours, and New England could get over a foot. Yup, here comes winter.

    My daughter is super excited! She hasn’t seen snow in over two years, and has been asking me if we can build a snowman when the storm hits. We bought new gloves over the weekend, the good kind that are made from Gor-tek that won’t get wet, and are best for throwing snowballs.

    With all of this snow, and the possibility that it just might be enough to shut the City down for a day, there still won’t be a snow day for the schools. With all the kids in NYC remote learning now, school will always be in session. No more checking the news in the morning, watching the scrawl at the bottom of the screen, seeing if your district has been closed. No more playing in snow all day. Now, she will have to wait for the last video meeting of the day, and THEN she will get to go out and play. No more days off.

    Yet again, we are entering a new world thanks to Covid.

  • I Didn’t Write Today, But I Don’t Feel Bad

    That pretty much sums it up.

    Oh, and I had plans today as well. I had worked on the outline, and I was ready to start taking a second crack at working on the narrative. I even started thinking about the tone of the narrator, and the cadence he would have in his sentence structures, and use of receptive phrases. I was thinking about it, and gearin’ to go.

    And I won’t even say that the day went sideways. It just went, and I had to roll with it.

    First of all, the school had a two new assessment tests that they wanted my kid to take to see where she was on her reading and math skills. I know what assessment tests really mean, but for the kid it was just fun, and she enjoyed all the math stuff. In fact, for a kindergartener, I don’t know where she picked up what she knew about fractions! She’s not getting the math skills from me, that’s clear. Once she had finished the assessment, the app we were using offered some math games to play, which she ate up! And I sat next to her, encouraging her to keep going, and it was so exciting and heartwarming to see that spark of learning in her. That feeling that all the world can be discovered and understood. That horizons are being broadened.

    It through my schedule off for the rest of the day, but it was completely worth it.