The principal set up a schedule for the kiddos. Each teacher (the school has three) is to meet with the kiddos for an hour a day twice a week online (via Google Hangout).
The students have been divided into two groups of eight. My days are Tuesday and Thursday. I got the 11th and 12th graders first, then the 9th and 10th graders.
Of the eight, one showed up in my first group on Tuesday. On Thursday, I again had one show up, but this time it was a different student. (For the 9th and 10th graders, I had the same two show up both days.)
It turned out Horatio had the same issue as everyone else; he could not get logged into the website where his work was. (Like many students of Mexican descent, he has two last names. Figuring out how that got encoded into his username turned out to be beyond us.)
But Horatio had other concerns. He wants to get his driver's license.
We ended up spending most of the time talking about that.
He's done most of the work already. He explained that he needed to find a driver training course, but they're all expensive. He had wanted to take it at his home school, but the counselor wouldn't assign him the class.
He was quite angry at the counselor. Apparently, there are issues there. And the way he talked about her...
I can think of three reasons why the counselor might not have given Horatio the driver's ed class. We went through Horatio's credits to see if he was up to date. He was. So, reason one didn't apply.
Reason two would be the class was full. Horatio said he had a friend in the class, and according to him, there was room for another student.
Horatio told me that the teacher liked him, so he couldn't imagine why he'd been denied entry into the class.
I did not explain, though, what I thought reason three might be. Because, that wasn't going to do any good. So we got to talking about something else.
See, reason three would be that the counselor didn't put him in the class because she didn't want to. And she might not want to because she wouldn't want to burden that teacher with a difficult student if she could avoid it.
I have a feeling Horatio and the counselor butted heads when they discussed anything. And as you all know, when you want something from someone, you are nice to them. I have a feeling Horatio was a jerk to the counselor. This was her revenge.
Of course, I have nothing to base this on. I could be completely wrong. There might be another perfectly reasonable reason why he didn't get the class.
But, it does illustrate a good lesson. It's best to not be a jerk to the person who assigns your classes.
Oh, and it turned out there should have been a dash between Horatio's last names when he logged into the website. *facepalm*
I often deal with clients with 2 or even 3 last names when the woman married and they can even have 2 first names..it gets really confusing because they will use their names in different ways for each credit card and yet, it's the same person. Poor guy should not have talked back to the teacher and good not to tell him that
ReplyDeleteThe name thing usually isn't confusing, but one never knows how the person in charge encoded those names in their usernames.
DeleteDon't be a jerk is a lesson most people seem to miss.
ReplyDeleteI think you're probably right as to why he didn't get into the class.
ReplyDeleteMaybe. There might also be something I was missing.
DeleteInteresting how it is going with the online teaching. Are computers provided for kids that don't have them? Think Horatio will ever get into driver's ed?
ReplyDeleteBetty
I've got a hyphenated surname. Why make it easy on myself or others? :-) I figure if someone can't find my name under the initial letter then look under the second name. It's too bad schools don't put up banners with wise advice like yours. Subliminal messages, make the kids think. Maybe one or two which is better than zilch.
ReplyDeleteOn line teaching is going to be the norm of the day for some time, and it is taxing for the teachers as well as the students.
ReplyDeleteAnd it's also possible his mate was wrong about room for another student. Even though they aren't turning up to Hangouts are they doing the work?
ReplyDeleteI believe driver classes was though the school was $20 and that included the permit
ReplyDeleteI think your guess about Horatio is right.
ReplyDeleteI use my maiden name as my middle name. One employer got it right for my email address but listed me as maiden name-middle name in the phone directory.
ReplyDeleteDeep sigh.
DeleteA life lesson for Horatio, and fortunate that he had a teacher to vent to. But please. No one in that district's IT has learned to work with hyphenated names by now, given the ethnic diversity there?
ReplyDeleteThey just didn't give us the template for how it was encoded into their username. Because I had him try five different combinations, and none of them worked.
DeleteSchool needs to get going for sure only here in Nashville I am not thinking that is a given. We consist of small counties that break up TN, I live in the capital county of TN. They are going to try virtual schooling here in this county for a couple weeks then they are talking of sending them back to the school. I am not sure how it will get done. As for other counties, some are going right into school, those are the counties that have fewer cases of the virus. But you have counties that think that they need to do virtual learning, the issues there are, if they are poorer counties how will they access the internet. They either might not have computers or can't afford the internet. Which also might be a given if the parents have been out of work due to the virus. Another issue like my daughter, she works from 7 till 5:30 or 6 most days. Hubs works diff hours. They are talking teachers will be doing the virtual learning but kids will have to log on at the right time. If you have kids at home that are the bouncing off the kids, who don't care for school....how can you be sure they log on, they do the work without an adult there? Up till now it has worked out with hubs being at home since the virus and drawing unemployment, but that stopped as of Friday. My oldest grand is getting a job so he will not be there....and then of course there is the issue of these younger kids having to stay home for school and they have no one to watch them!!! Everything is so SCREWED up.
ReplyDeleteAnd so we learn of the issues of not having a good way to deal with child care... The issue is that it's not safe to open schools. Even if you posit that kiddos aren't getting sick (which isn't necessarily true), they are still carriers, and that means staff can catch it from them.
DeleteWhat happens when the teachers start catching it? And the rest of the support staff? Imagine explaining to your child that their teacher has just died...
I rather hope that's not the reason, but we're all only human. Be well!
ReplyDeleteI don't know for sure. It's just a theory.
Delete