My 5-year old is now masked all day at school, every day.
Our local school is doing remote learning at the school. Meaning some fraction of the school's kids come in to the school and are organized in a masked classroom where they set up laptops and log in to see their teachers - who are at home teaching all of the kids. Demand for in-person access to this kind of supervised remote learning was big, and the school has a waiting list that they're trying to address by hiring more "pod" supervisors.
Prior to the actual building coming online, we had a period of remote learning where my wife and I managed 2 kids logging in to zoom calls and virtual classrooms. It basically took one of us full time to manage the two. They would have zoom calls at different times, meaning one kid rolls off for independent study, or snack, or lunch, or break, while the other kid was on a call, and then switch. Just helping them manage the mute button, get logged in to the right website, find the sheet the teacher wanted to have them do, etc. was plenty to keep me running between two kids. My 5 year old can't read yet, so she gets presented with a password prompt and puts in her username. Stuff like that. Her laptop (chromebook) issued by the school, was actually pretty thoughtful. She has to put in a 7 digit number (and that's a tricky thing for a 5 year old, who could botch a number easily and not realize it) as her username. But then she gets presented with two picture passwords, which is a breeze. But the software has kinks, so when you shut the laptop and open it again, it wants an actual password, not the picture one. Which is not something she can easily recognize.
Also when she logs in she knows how to click on some of the right icons, but finding the "thursday" set of activity links is not necessarily easy for her. It's much easier for my older kid who can read the prompts on the screen. For the older one, she tries to unmute herself to say something and a prompt comes up in front of the video chat that says "the host has disabled the unmute feature" and then has two buttons that you can click for something like "ok" and "cancel" or somesuch nonsense. The 5 year old in the same boat now has this blob in front of the video chat and has no idea what has happened. The older kid can read through it and click away.
Also one of the teachers had a crap internet connection and basically couldn't be heard for 2 days. That led to some chaotic classroom experiences.
Honestly for remote learning, if my kids weren't able to go to the school and be supervised, I'd be tempted to pull them out of the school and run a homeschool curriculum. It would be easier to manage for one parent than what the school is asking for.
However, the learning pod situation is fantastic. There is a supervisor for like 10 kids who can deal with any technical issues, prompts, login problems, etc. for each of the kids and get them where they need to be. And the kids are with their peers in these groups and can see the other kids participating and hear them more easily. They also have friends they can play with during recess. It's a far cry from regular school, but it's way better than being stuck with your parents.
The school apparently prioritized kids who don't have internet at home, or who have single working parents, dual working parents, first responders, etc. in a tiered list for who got selected first on the list. They currently have a small waiting list that I think they'll be able to get into the system relatively quickly if they can hire some more pod supervisors. The kids are masked, distanced, sanitized, etc. all day long, but it is such a boost for them to be at school among the other kids. And it is a big boost for parents too.
Hopefully it continues to go well.
I should be starting college at the end of the month, but have no idea when. I have to isolate until the 13th so it won't be until after then for me. I'm predicting around the 21st of September, the second last Monday before October like the usual, but it wouldn't surprise me if they push it back to October due to all the cases rising (because of the increase of tests of course). Who knows, just hope the cases go down.
