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Distance Learning Struggles

First, I want to say that teachers really do deserve a hell of a lot more recognition for what they do. And definitely more money. I have so much respect for teachers and I know that I could not do their jobs. At all. Wrangling 20+ kids, teaching, dealing with parents, and having to answer countless questions every single day. I’d go insane. So yes, it takes a special kind of person to be able to do that job. However, what this whole pandemic has shown me, is that our schools were not prepared for anything like this at all. The game plan had a lot of holes. And unfortunately, it was putting A LOT of stress on parents who couldn’t stay at home with their kids. On families that don’t have access to high-speed internet. On children who do much better with hands-on learning. And well, this was a problem.  

On a normal day, my daughter is in what they like to call a “POD”. This is just another way of saying that she has different teachers throughout the day for each subject. So, when we were given the news that schools would be temporarily closed and all of the work would switch over to online, I assumed that this was something our schools had a plan in place for. An emergency back-up plan, if you will. Turns out, that was not the case. Our teachers had to come up with something within four days and then hope it worked for everyone. Now, I love our schools. They’ve always been pretty great when it comes to problem-solving and working with families. So, I felt confident that everything would work out and any kinks would be ironed out as best as they could be within the first week or two. It wasn’t until after we received the kid’s instructional packet & iPads that I started to feel a bit nervous. “Is this really how they’re wanting this done?” The instructions were confusing and they differed by subject. Online codes were incorrect, and there were partial assignments included for the first week. It’s now been six days of trying to get things going, and man has it been a struggle. 

Our kids were instructed to complete all school work via Google Classroom, which is great. However, each teacher had different methods that they would like the work to be done, shown, and turned in. Live Streams for lessons were scheduled in the middle of the day at times, and then there were THREE different apps that had to be used for communication. The same information was being distributed to both students and parents regardless of who it was meant for too. Then, each teacher had different online “teacher hours” as well. And some of these kids, who don’t have access to high-speed internet during the day, were not able to ask questions or receive answers because those hours would be over by the time we'd get home. Now, I know that this is a very sudden and new territory for ALL of us. And everyone is doing their best. I also get that these issues are something that families with a parent who is able to be at home could probably navigate through a bit easier, but for those of us who still have to work, we were left scrambling. 

With each passing day, my daughter was falling more and more behind. Since she has no access to high-speed internet during the day she wasn’t able to participate in the "Live Stream" lesson overviews which she really needed to be able to watch. So, I finally had to take a half-day off from work in order to help get her caught up. After a few back and forth messages with her teachers on Wednesday, we finally decided to opt-out of doing everything online. Instead, we’ll be doing what I like to call hybrid classes: paper packets during the day with online completion when she has access to the internet in the evenings. This looks and sounds like it will be a lot better for us. And I know that we weren’t the only family having these issues either because by Thursday morning there was a mass email sent out by the superintendent stating that this alternative would be available to ALL families starting today. 

Over the next two weeks, we'll see if this new method works better for us. When I first received all of the different instructions, paperwork, and classroom codes I felt completely overwhelmed. Not only was Emery falling behind after the first three days but she was having a hard time understanding what she had to do for each teacher's assignment to be considered "completed". I had no idea how we were going to manage and I was almost in tears because of how stressed out I felt by all of this. Thankfully, after a lot of communication with her teachers, I'm so grateful to them and our school for coming up with this alternative. For working with us, and understanding that this has all been a very drastic change for ALL of us. There will be a learning curve and it might get a little bumpy. Especially since they're considering keeping our school closed for the rest of this school year. But we're doing our best. And none of this would be possible without them.  

Wordless Wednesday