Grumble

So! Online learning is not off to a great start. These are the things I hate:

1. The kids are required to use district-issued laptops. Which are terrible: laggy, unpredictable, massively frustrating.
2. The district is using Google Classroom, which seems to be creaking and groaning under its current load: more lags, more frustration.
3. Google Classroom is spewing out enough automated email to overwhelm my sixth-grader, but the teachers are not providing much guidance as they require her to do stuff she's never done before. It's not hard to make a video and embed it in a PowerPoint slide, but it's also not a skill anybody is born with. And at the risk of sounding bitchy and entitled I'm going to say, here at the end of our third very long online learning day, that I don't think it should be my job to walk her through each one of those steps during the workday on a sub-par machine in an overloaded course management system.
4. The teachers are scrambling, and I can't fault them for that. The district did not give them much notice here; they're not to blame for that. But at the same time I'm already weary of the fallout. If you tell an 11-year-old rule-follower that she's required to use a particular app, but the terms of service say it's only available to kids 12 and up, I am going to be the one smoothing down her ruffled conscience. Oh, and can we talk about missing class for a dentist appointment? and the teacher who, when emailed about makeup assignments, said Stella would need to watch the recording of the entire synchronous class session? Would it surprise you to learn that this was not in fact a good use of her time?
5. The kids are lonely, and it is hard to build community over online video. I do not envy the teachers and administrators their tasks. Maybe, though, the kids could talk to each other sometimes? Maybe a little more communication with classmates, a little less reliance on parents?

In this moment I am feeling very grumpy, very flounce-y. It could be so much worse, I know: we have reliable internet service, my job is the most flexible that it will ever be, I have smart kids who are trying hard to be independent, and when they can't be independent I can (mostly) answer their questions about embedding videos and solving pre-calculus problems.

Counting my blessings is not actually helping me feel any better right this minute.