There was a time, not so long ago, when I thought the idea of working from home was appealing.
Not anymore.
Maybe I鈥檓 still too distractible, after all these years, but I now realize that the buzz of a workplace and the face-to-face interaction was all part, actually the best part, of a working environment.
I suspect that it鈥檚 the same for kids.
For me, with 37-plus years working in a variety of public education-related environments, those environments were the connection between what I was doing and why I was doing it.
Which brings me to today, with some parents, teachers and kids alone together at home and online. As a classroom teacher who really enjoyed working with kids, it never occurred to me that I might, one day, have to devise ways of 鈥渢eaching鈥� from my home office. 鈥淥nline teaching鈥� would have been at the top of my carefully curated list of oxymorons (鈥減olitical science鈥� is number two), but, more and more, online teaching and learning are here to stay for a while and maybe longer.
So here we are nearing Christmas, always a fun time in elementary schools, with teachers and kids all over sa国际传媒 fettered by COVID and trying to somehow drum up the excitement of the teaching and learning experience for themselves and their 颅students 鈥� by Zoom.
As adults experienced in the normal 颅challenges of life, professional teachers adjust to this new unnatural education 颅environment and do the best they can, which is what teachers, certainly the best teachers, always do.
But for kids, it鈥檚 different 鈥� and we will get to what could be different for parents in a minute.
Children鈥檚 developmental needs 鈥� 颅exercise, outdoor time, conversation, play, even sleep 鈥� have all been disrupted.
Depending on whose analysis of the 颅situation you read, the disruption has been beneficial for kids or has exacerbated 颅mental-health problems.
Much of that depends on the home environment in which kids are trying to follow their online lessons. Some are happier and less stressed than they were in classrooms, while others feel lonely, almost abandoned by a school system they had come to accept and trust.
The desperate jump, unprepared as 颅everybody was, from classroom learning to online learning has also provided the opportunity for the political and professional leaders of modern public education to consider what has changed about instructional practice in the last 50 years and what really still needs to be changed.
For example, pandemic Zoom classes have revealed the extent to which the teaching today still relies on flawed classroom approaches 鈥� teachers talking too much, kids not enough.
Developmental scientists and educators have long known that academic outcomes, especially in the elementary-school years, are built substantially on a foundation of authentic conversation, with learning being a fundamentally social process.
And, as we are all learning, a Zoom 颅conversation is not really a conversation at all.
But now, and maybe more importantly, let鈥檚 get to the transformation of the parent role in all of this.
Parents are being asked to play a much different role in their children鈥檚 education than ever before. For that reason alone, 颅parents should seek the kind of information that will equip them to have some idea of what and how their child is doing online.
The best way to do this is to open 颅meaningful avenues of conversation with your child鈥檚 teacher 鈥� beyond the 颅perfunctory teacher/parent evenings three or four times a year.
To add value and make more meaningful even that conversation, parents can and should take the time (and it will take some time) to explore the excellent online grade-by-grade curriculum packages provided by the sa国际传媒 Ministry of Education.
If they understand the grade-based learning outcomes for a child, parents can communicate with their child鈥檚 teacher using specific terminology.
What was once a vague conversation about 鈥渕ath skills鈥� can now be: 鈥淒o you have some ideas about how I can help my child work on the Grade 5 geometry learning outcome about area measurement of squares and rectangles?鈥�
What this would mean is that the 鈥減arents as partners鈥� clich茅 might have real meaning.
What was once a clear division of educational responsibility could now, of necessity, become a very real shared venture.
As Helen Keller is quoted as saying: 鈥淎lone we can do so little. Together we can do so much.鈥�
Geoff Johnson is a former superintendent of schools. [email protected]
