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The pandemic school year has been tough

It’s been a hell of a year. The extended home time caused by the third Covid-19 wave kept us virtual far longer than expected, then schools opened for 4 days and were promptly shuttered for a week due to an ice storm. School has was cancelled for rain, training days, parent teacher conferences which were all done virtually, this random holiday, that random holiday, and it feels like this is the first 5-day in person school week of my kid’s school year.

It’s probably not, but that’s what it feels like at this point. There are six or seven weeks of school left and they’re all listed as 5-day school days. Literally the only times it looks like either parents have the ability to do most of a work week in over a year.

I’m sure Covid wave-4 will knock that out in about two and a half weeks, but it’s been amazingly hard to schedule anything beyond “maybe we’ll do this…” working remote with kids has not been great. Literally do not know how they have a Zoom sensor built in to tell right when you’re on a call to start fighting or getting hurt.

Meh…

Covid cases are surprisingly low in the school system with my kiddos school having a whopping 0 and the only event last year being a teacher who was quarantined a week after starting classes for exposure – she didn’t have it. They’re testing left and right, no cases according to the threat tracker. Same with most elementary schools in Nashville. Seems they’re doing something right.

The intersection of kids and tech was what I liked writing about, but the forced intersection we’ve had for a year now has been mind-numbingly video conferency. You know what would have been interesting? Zoom and Teams for kids. Press to talk bluetooth connectors. We got the video conferencing and remote school without the kid based aim and that seems like something that should have been tackled early on.

Ah well… I took somewhat of a break here because the last year has been intense… trying to do multiple blogging and work remotely and then playing in-person catchup every week or two with Nashville getting hit by six huge shutdown-inducing events in a year has left me a little lax in my updates.

Paul King

Paul King lives in Nashville Tennessee with his wife, two daughters and cats. He writes for Pocketables, theITBaby, and is an IT consultant along with doing tech support for a film production company.