Recently, Art and I reflected about the effects of COVID-19 for our company and in our history. As an educator in private practice, I have pivoted frequently not only to meet the needs of clients, but remain competitive in the near perfectly competitive educational support industry. I, working with my partners have continuously sought to improve, in order to most…
Tag: Parenting in a Pandemic
COVID Crossword
In response to a reported case of COVID-19, K-12 school administrators and teachers in one California district must navigate the myriad, interlocking actions as outlined below: While everything works in theory, when created in a vacuum, the theory may be less useful in practice. One teacher shared that their school nurses, working in conjunction with the county public health officials,…
Guest Post: The Declaration of a College Applicant
Ellie, a high school senior, wrote the following reflection for one of her college essays: In life, I have just been going through the motions, never stopping to pause and contemplate or observe anything. I chased happiness, but once I finally held contentment in my grasp, it quickly slipped through my fingers and the chase started all over again. Until…
Frustrations About Testing
To stymie cheating, teachers are changing assessments. Instead of simply reiterating the concepts learned, students are being asked to explain their answers or apply the concepts learned. However, no one shared the changes in how they’ll be assessed with students, inciting frustration amongst students as well as parents, and also teachers. Online, students have access to calculators, Wikipedia and other…
Trouble in the College Market
Two-thirds of all US universities are expecting enrollment to decrease in Fall 2020, with obvious impacts to fiscal revenues. For universities already reporting growing fiscal deficits from the initial COVID-impact in the Spring 2020 academic term, the loss of revenues can further compound the sustainability of the modern American university. According to the latest statistics from the National Center for…
Schooling during the Time of COVID
In the 2020-21 school year, students, teachers and parents are not learning in pre-COVID ways. Kids commute from bed to desk, parents are deputized teachers, and teachers are now broadcast news anchors without the production team. Educators are seemingly rewriting the rules on how to learn, yet trying to rely on the old rules at the same time, which can…
Timely, Innovative Advising Services for the COVID-disrupted 2020-21 year
Creative Marbles Consultancy is offering a new advising retainer to help families navigate the current COVID-induced disruption in education. We can assist in the sometimes complicated transition from a teacher centered (pre-COVID) to a now more student directed learning process, the new normal in the 2020-21 COVID-disrupted school year in order to ensure that long term educational goals are met. …
Is Sentiment the Cost Now that Freedom Has Been Lost?
The Modern College, a place where students guided by mentors, supported by peers, experiment with adult responsibilities, free to discover their life’s purpose, only impersonates its Pre-COVID self. To mitigate health risks of the pandemic, in March and again in Fall 2020, university administrators are restricting students’ freedoms, for which they believe they must, yet, in doing so, their actions…
Diminished Learning from a Distance
The 2020-21 virtual K-12 schooling experiment, born of necessity from the wholesale disruption of the modern educational process and haphazardly planned and implemented by an institutional elite that does not have to practice managing entrepreneurially since the educational industry is relatively monopolistic, is failing for a variety of reasons. Although I admit that the sample of students I’ve polled (public…
Between a rock and a hard place
Parents, students, neighbors, the old, the young and all points along the age spectrum crave a return to a time before COVID-19, when life seemed to unfold predictably, though, maybe at times too predictably where one could count on what next week, season or year would bring and even somewhat plan accordingly in order to maxmize the odds of obtaining…
The Shrinking American Middle Class, Part 4
The American middle class is shrinking, as educational achievement plateaus at the average level of attainment and more middle class families compensate the lagging educational achievement with discretionary spending on extracurricular activities and supplemental academic support services. By the late 1970’s, the collapse of American manufacturing sector made way for the meteoric rise of the knowledge-based service and technology sectors,…
Stay Frosty, Keep Your Head on a Swivel
“Plans don’t survive contact with the enemy”, pith advice on the dawn of the new school year, especially when the enemy is multifacted and the commander is a novel virus. Those who will thrive in the 2020-21 school year, are the one’s who are flexible and lean into the disruption, instead of exhausting themselves trying to fight that which they…
“Like a rolling stone…”
Life is divided into three terms – that which was, which is, and which will be. Let us learn from the past to profit by the present, and from the present, to live better in the future. –William Wordsworth We crave static and loathe dynamic, but today’s reality flips that paradigm on its head. Yet, disruption is steeped in the…
Paradise Lost
Many are doing more with less, while living through the global, systemic retreat from “life as we knew it”, induced by a virus we cannot see. For some, though, doing the “same with less” is now their life’s maxim, having accepted substantial pay cuts to remain employed during the current economic upheaval. As Megan Casella of Politco writes: Now, with…
Normal Interrupted
Until mid-March 2020, parents and students each had defined roles and processes when working together to manage a student’s education. Yet, the COVID-induced closure of school campuses and the subsequent implementation of distance learning, upended a well-worn family dynamic. During a typical Pre-COVID school day, all students had a ready-made structure to manage their academic work. Bells indicated the next…