I am curious what the comparison would be to people who did not go through bedrest and were constantly active through the decades. 🤔 Either way it’s pretty terrifying the potential impact office work will be on a portion of the population 😬

The action of putting sugar on pastries

Oh, and turning gray furniture black again.

I agree, relationship building is what makes education impactful. In some states, substitute teaching is on call like that. In NY, subs are assigned to a school and work when there are absences. In NJ, subs can pick from a list of schools that will notify you the morning of for their availability. It is definitely not the greatest system, but it is already in effect, and can be used to cover teacher absences due to time off.

The teachers would still be there a majority of the time, it would just give them flexibility to take time off. And when kids are absent (at least when I was in school, which may be completely outdated as that was over a decade ago), you would just need to catch-up on your own.

I dislike the app approach to education. Shared suffering can make school fun, and as you implied can create BFFLs. With this approach, the kids will still be kept together with the same teachers but with greater flexibility on their time-off and without the imposition of ludricious camp fees and brain drain from summer that affects parents and kids respectively.

I imagine they can treat absences the same as they currently are. Teachers are told in advance when a child/children will be absent and can plan accordingly. I remember being given notes and the work I was going to miss in advance and needing to catchup. If teachers see that a lot of kids will be absent, they can plan alternate activities. Or maybe for a week a month there will be week long camp at school, which will be easier for students to be absent since they won’t miss class.

This is all theory I have not developed out. I would like to hear someone’s thoughts on changes to how the US school system runs.

I genuinely feel like school in the US should be year-round but with a set amount of “time-off” teachers and parents can use. That way time off is not so concentrated in the summer, holidays can be celebrated regardless of ethnicity/religion/culture, and the curriculum does not have to be so compressed. I am sure there are a lot of challenges this model will bring up, but it feels a bit more fair.

In the meanwhile though, good on NY for adding Diwali as school holiday! It seems like a lovely celebration that should be enjoyed class-free.