As the number of newly reported COVID cases increases, university officials in an effort to protect the health of students, faculty, as well as the larger community are diminishing their capacity to educate effectively. According to The New York Times, as of September 3, 2020, over 81,000 college students have been infected with COVID-19 since…
Tag: COVID-19
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…
The Shrinking Middle Class, Part 6
The middle class, and those aspiring to the middle class, families are incurring ever increasing amounts of debt to pay for consistently rising costs of attending college which many believe essential to achieve economic prosperity. Subsequently, to compensate for stagnating academic achievement in order to compete for college admissions, middle class parents are spending on…
In the Animal House, Is All Well?
When attempting to make one’s reality that is unfolding dynamically, instead static, then promote that delusion of consciousness as permanent, when its not, yet, then while lost in this contemplation accidentally stumble headlong into an icy cold creek, and although in that moment of clarity doubting one’s seemingly stable state, yet one continues almost chaotically…
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…
The Lessons of Distance Learning
Creative Marbles’ Jill Yoshikawa was a featured guest on Your California Life, a local morning telecast in Sacramento, California, discussing the COVID-related disruption of education on high school and college students, as well as their families. For more information about how Jill Yoshikawa, EdM, a UC San Diego and Harvard alum, helps students and parents…
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…
College Blues
As the 2020-21 school year dawns, with the United States mired in the global COVID-19 health emergency with no signs of abating, given vaccines or treatment protocols have yet to materialize, university administrators are scrambling to effectively respond, if even possible, in an increasingly political environment. In the heat of the epic man versus nature…
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…
“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,…
A First Day of School to Remember
As college students prepare to return to college campuses, scattered in varying locales around the nation, to begin the 2020-21 school year, it will not be business as usual given the surrounding outbreak of the novel COVID-19 coronavirus; therefore, monitoring the fluid situation, locally, regionally and nationally, will be of vital importance. The New York…
The Best Laid Plans are Those that Survive Unplanned Predicaments
In response to the COVID-induced disruption of education, the college admissions process is changing. Many parents and students are now questioning how applicants will be evaluated for Fall 2021 admissions and in years beyond. Traditional metrics for evaluating admissions, like GPA, are less reliable, given many high schools implemented Pass/No Pass-style marks in spring 2020,…
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…
Education During a Pandemic
On Friday, July 17, in response to the growing numbers of confirmed COVID cases statewide, California Governor Gavin Newsom ordered all public and private K-12 schools in 33 of 58 counties, affecting nearly 80% of all Californians, to begin the school year with distance learning. As we discussed in Managing a return to normal in…