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Okay, the authoritarianism part isn't a surprise. I can't think of any school that isn't authoritarian. If you're lucky, you have a benevolent dictator who actively cares about the people under their charge and takes steps to help those charges learn and grow before kicking them out of the kingdom.
Clown School is not that school.
We take attendance every period. This is not new. It's also not necessarily a bad thing. Schools act in parental stead while the kiddos are there, and you need to know where kids are for the most part or have a good idea with developmentally appropriate loosening of restrictions if you're a benevolent kingdom. Last year, Clown School was not only far too lax but we were criminally understaffed, so we had some serious problems with bullying as well as some other activities that brought police investigation to the school. I won't say more, but suffice it to say, things were BAD and the school is very lucky that hasn't been shut down, and I suppose Dear Leader is lucky she's stinking rich. ANYWAY, as a result of last year's true failures of care, we're being more systematic with attendance and tracking students this year. In addition to taking attendance every period, all students are required to "clock" into the class with their ID badges. Teachers are expected to monitor this in the five-minute transition period between classes, as well as prepare for our next class and, in some cases, transition themselves to other classrooms (like our Spanish teacher, who also teaches middle school robotics, middle school math, and elementary computer science, which means she has the ENTIRE elementary school population in her class for 45 minutes, and she has NO co-teacher or aide to help -- FUCKING CLOWN SCHOOL).
If any teacher fails to take attendance, a Message of Shame goes out to the staff group chat. Same if a student fails to clock into the classroom. Message of Shame. Except, they don't check to see if the kid was absent before they send the message regarding the tap-in/tap-out. I was in one of the shame messages, thankfully because the kid was absent, and BOY did it trigger my anxiety about getting yelled at.
Like I said, attendance makes sense to me, but Clown School being Clown School, they take it further. One of the high school "electives" is an AI class where they are assigned to design a facial recognition program that Dear Leader wants to use in place of the ID card. You can't replace your face -- yet. We wouldn't want kids swapping ID cards and falsely tapping into a class, would we?
What do you do when this technology is inescapable? For example, some friends of mine moved back to China, and they have facial recognition to get into their apartment complex. You can't NOT go home, right? If there are complexes that don't have this, they are few and dwindling.
Honk honk, I guess.
Clown School is not that school.
We take attendance every period. This is not new. It's also not necessarily a bad thing. Schools act in parental stead while the kiddos are there, and you need to know where kids are for the most part or have a good idea with developmentally appropriate loosening of restrictions if you're a benevolent kingdom. Last year, Clown School was not only far too lax but we were criminally understaffed, so we had some serious problems with bullying as well as some other activities that brought police investigation to the school. I won't say more, but suffice it to say, things were BAD and the school is very lucky that hasn't been shut down, and I suppose Dear Leader is lucky she's stinking rich. ANYWAY, as a result of last year's true failures of care, we're being more systematic with attendance and tracking students this year. In addition to taking attendance every period, all students are required to "clock" into the class with their ID badges. Teachers are expected to monitor this in the five-minute transition period between classes, as well as prepare for our next class and, in some cases, transition themselves to other classrooms (like our Spanish teacher, who also teaches middle school robotics, middle school math, and elementary computer science, which means she has the ENTIRE elementary school population in her class for 45 minutes, and she has NO co-teacher or aide to help -- FUCKING CLOWN SCHOOL).
If any teacher fails to take attendance, a Message of Shame goes out to the staff group chat. Same if a student fails to clock into the classroom. Message of Shame. Except, they don't check to see if the kid was absent before they send the message regarding the tap-in/tap-out. I was in one of the shame messages, thankfully because the kid was absent, and BOY did it trigger my anxiety about getting yelled at.
Like I said, attendance makes sense to me, but Clown School being Clown School, they take it further. One of the high school "electives" is an AI class where they are assigned to design a facial recognition program that Dear Leader wants to use in place of the ID card. You can't replace your face -- yet. We wouldn't want kids swapping ID cards and falsely tapping into a class, would we?
What do you do when this technology is inescapable? For example, some friends of mine moved back to China, and they have facial recognition to get into their apartment complex. You can't NOT go home, right? If there are complexes that don't have this, they are few and dwindling.
Honk honk, I guess.
