When stay at home orders were first given, no one really knew what to expect. However, one of the fastest acclimating fields was education. Now before this makes anyone upset, please know this is not to put any field lower than any other or not pay respect and consideration to the sacrifices we have all needed to make in this trying time.
We all get that. We are all going through it together.
But this might help you understand what your kids teachers are going through a little bit more.
I’m just saying that teachers needed to learn how to adjust with lighting speed. Meaning teachers had to move a 100% in person job to a 100% virtual digital medium within a matter of weeks. For some schools I know it only took a week to begin online teaching. Imagine that!
*What Teachers Hoped For
Every program is going to approach their online learning through different methods. And this is a good thing. It allows schools, other programs, and fellow teachers to share what is working best for them so other classes can try it as well.
At the moment, it’s a whole big melting pot of ideas. Except the training period was nonexistent and we go into battle with just these ideas every single day hoping one will stick.
Particularly for our program, which is a preschool, with students ranging in age from 2-4yrs old, we were hoping for something a tad more fluid. Something that provides comfort, learning, and skill building while being confined to their home.
We delivered parent surveys before launching so as to get as much information about what our parent community was looking for and deliver a program to them that was tailor made to their needs. We only requested materials to be available that we know every family already had, and asked for flexible parent support, especially in the first few weeks as the children became adjusted.
That was the hope. We wanted everyone to be comfortable, happy, and learning.
*When Reality Struck
The reality of what occurred and is still occurring is much different. And this isn’t anyone’s fault as this is unchartered territory for everyone. But this post is just to show a different perspective of online teaching that’s taking place and perhaps soften the view and temperaments from outsiders.
1. Schedule and Attendance Change
Let’s keep this short and sweet. Attendance is no longer mandatory although consistency would be nice. For any new structure to truly take shape in a positive form, repetition is necessary. So if you want your child to take to online learning and have it become more of the norm, at least for the time being, then you need to make sure they participate and follow the routine.
This does not happen. We also can’t force parents and don’t want to force parent to do anything they simply cannot do. We don’t know everyone’s struggles right now and must be sensitive to all situations.
So attendance is variable at best. And the timing of signing on is another issue unto itself. This also makes it difficult when trying to create a schedule and activities if we never know who is signing on when.
2. Participation Levels
Participation is key on both the parent and student side. It is extremely important in the introductory weeks to help teach the little ones how to respond to virtual learning successfully. And once accustomed to at home learning the hope is to continuously have the kids engage while the parent resumes their normal work from home activities as well.
The harsh reality is that with the physical distance and being at home, participation is basically at the discretion of the student. And when you’re working with 2-3yr olds, if they feel like getting up and walking away, they’re going to do that. If they feel like playing something else while you’re having circle time, well thats just going to happen too.
So its up to the teachers to make sure that their lessons are so psychedelically vibrant that it pulls the student away from any other distraction and gets them involved.
Again, hit or miss, but with preschoolers you just gotta keep trying.
3. Teacher Support Or Lack There Of
This is a huge area that teachers, including myself, are in need of. Teachers are often passed on instructions from administration and school heads that are rarely tested and just told to do it. Or just just thrown and objective and told to get it done.
Ummm… if you’ve never done it, how do you expect it to be a success?
Then you have parents expecting you to do better with a program you’ve never done or been taught to use, messages coming in constantly about what is continuously going wrong, school heads wondering why the parents are upset, etc.
I think the best one I have heard from a fellow teacher is that he receives daily emails from parents asking why their child didn’t get called on when their hand was raised. With all due respect parents, in regular in person class… Not Every Child Gets Called On Every Time Their Hand is Raised.
And the fact that these complaints get emailed daily is just mind boggling.
Then on the days that everything runs smoothly and is highly successful the teachers are overjoyed and the parents seem complacent at best.
It’s tough right now for everyone. But teachers have a couple hidden struggles at the moment too.
4. Lesson Planning
We’ touched on this one a little bit above. But with how much time teachers spend on this, we should definitely revisit what it means to lesson plan for online learning.
Depending on your grade and your school you’ll have different materials that you can plan for your kids. And not to be “grade-ist” (i’m making that a term :)) but it’s much easier to prepare materials for older students rather than younger.
Mature temperaments alone will get you through a math or language arts lesson with much more ease than possibly trying to push one with preschoolers. And thinking that you can just have preschoolers have a jam session online for an hour a day is quite out of the cards.
So let’s take a look into what my staff run through with their weekly lesson plans. We’ve had to move from monthly themes to daily topics. With 2-4yr olds you can barely keep their attention when in a physical classroom, so to do so virtually, the material MUST stay fresh, new, and engaging.
The teachers have to submit not weekly, but daily objectives, daily discussion questions, daily links. Also the number of links way exceeds what’s actually used. If one link doesn’t work then you need a back up. If the kids don’t like that one, then you need to go onto the next.
You also need to hit numbers, letters, shapes, colors, name IDs, comprehension throughout your online session. Did I mention this has to happen daily??
The immense amount of planning that has gone into every day of online learning is more than anyone would have ever fathomed and few understand except for teachers.
And for our preschool particularly…we are live with our students 3 hours in the morning and 2 hours in the afternoon. We are live for a full 5 hours a day, 5 days a week. Obviously we split up the work and try to balance it out, but you get the point.
It’s a lot of planning.
5. Tools and Materials
The next thing teachers need to asses, and this is what makes planning extra hard for the little ones, is the materials they are able to use. For older students you can send packets and all they will really need is a pencil and a computer.
Well for youngsters who cannot write yet, thats not possible. We can’t just send over packets for the kids to do because the kids wouldn’t be able to do it, it would be the parent completing it for them.
We did try and survey our families to see what similar materials each family has and begun our online teaching trying to incorporate content projects that way. But we found that the kids were never suited with the right materials and we just had to make do with the car or ball they had for that day. Maybe they had a puzzle one day and a stuffed animal the next.
Needless to say despite having the materials in their home, they weren’t quite accessible to the kids and therefore the teachers couldn’t plan lessons around them.
All we had left at this point was the internet. We crossed our fingers that the Internet connections remained strong and that the parents could designate a place for their child’s “Classroom”. Then the kids were able to engage when they could.
6. Exhaustion
The last part of the reality of online teaching, the truly surprising aspect is the amount of exhaustion online video and teaching actually is.
If you are a fellow teacher you know that teaching in the classroom is already physically exhausting.
But trying to teach preschooler online for hours on end is a whole other monster. I had one of my teachers tell me that after our 3 hour morning session she has to take a nap before the afternoon starts. And I told her “I thought I was the only one!”
It’s unbelievable how energy sucking it can be and again, unless you are teaching online, you may not know.
Because the engagement aspect is so important the teachers energy needs to remain excessively high with constant talking, movement, laughter, and more just to get the kiddos to look at you. If you don’t take a nap after teaching preschool for 3 hours online I’m not sure you’ll make it.
The exhaustion is killer.
*Summary
The continuous need for online learning doesn’t seem to be going away any time soon. But hopefully this post is able to help a few. If you’re a parent, perhaps it opens up your eyes just a tad more to how hard your teachers are working for your kids.
And if you’re a fellow teacher, hopefully you know that you’re not alone in this and we’re all experiencing these things together.
And in the spirit of teacher appreciation week, please throw a few extra thank you’s or smiles to your fellow colleagues or school members. We all need a little extra kindness and support right now.
And to my teachers who I work with day in and day out… I hear you, I see you, and I’m proud to work alongside you each and every day. <3
Happy Teacher Appreciation Week!
George Sofikitis says
Hi Allison!
I’m George from Greece and I think that your article is absolutely on-target!! Now it would be really helpfull if you could share with me your opinion relatively to the computer equipment students use and to narrow this down, especially on screen size. More explicitly, computer screen size varies from tablet to laptop to desktop and in some cases even to TV among the households and I believe that the smaller the size of a screen is, the lesser attractive is to the students not to mention possible eye strain. So, any thoughts on what would be a good range of screen size for the students to be more productive? Thank you in advance for your time,
Best regards,
George
Allison Tylek says
Hi George,
I’d love to help if I can. Screen time is something all parents are going to need to tackle during the stay at home orders, and honestly beyond as well.
Of course minimizing the size of the physical screen will help with eye strain. However! If you are looking to use a screen during online learning where we do want the children to attend, you will need an appropriate size screen to do that. We can’t use a really small screen during online class in hopes the child will lose interest and put the screen down. That’s not the goal here.
The ideal size for at home learning would most likely be a laptop. It is the perfect size for a child. A desktop can be too big sometimes depending on your model, and of course a TV is basically blaring blue light and UV light into your child’s eyes and head.
The other thing to consider is balance. If you do have a larger screen but balance the amount of screen time in proportion to what they are using, it would be much more beneficial. Meaning, if you have a bigger screen then lessen the screen time. If you have a medium size screen that you can adjust the brightness, volume, etc. then the child may be able to work longer.
I would only use screen time right now for online learning and about half hour of leisure time. Reason being, because all online learning is already happening through the use of screens, you really want to limit what the children’s eyes and head are being exposed to.
I hope this helps!
-Allison