I'd like to share my remote learning perspective from a parent perspective. As a fellow educator, I know we are all learning & working hard to make this best of this situation, but it's NOT working. I'm sharing in hopes that it will spark a change (thread)
First, It took me over 2 hours to sort through the 20 emails from the boys schools and teachers to figure and write out office hours, expectations, etc. How many parents are going to do this?
(2)I have 2 boys. They each have 7 classes. Sitting with them, I'm finding that the assignments are too long. It's taking them 1-2 hours to complete an assignment. 2 boys X 7 classes=14 classes X 1 hour (if they're lucky) = 14 hr of work I need to support them through separately
(3)If u r thinking they should be able to do this on their own w/o my support you r mistaken. Their digital literacy skills are minimal. I've had to help them with basic tasks (submitting assignments, navigating, understanding unclear instructions & improperly linked assignments.
(4)In most cases 504 accommodations have not been provided/ communicated for my son who is dyslexic and has ADHD. The assignments have TONS of written instructions. I'm happy to provide support as we are figure this out, but for the avg. parent this make things even harder.
I am working to support educators full time time as well. It was literally impossible to support my kids last week while working all day. Remember between my 2 kids I needed to provide support for 14 hrs of support PER DAY while working! How do we expect parents to do this?
In addition, my family is going through a tough time. I was appalled at the lack of empathy when sharing with a teacher our situation. But there are also teachers who have been AMAZING and have shown that the people not the work are what's most important.
I understand educators wanting to share what's going good, but I also think we're painting an inaccurate picture of how remote learning is going. Its important to share what's going wrong so that it can drive change.
I applaud families and educators who are making it work, but for a lot of our families this is HARD and EMOTIONAL. We won't figure this out in the next two months, but I do hope that we can learn from the mistakes we are making now.
As this is being shared let me add, I don’t think any of these things were done on purpose. This is new and everyone is figuring it out. I know Ts are working hard & were thrown into this. My hope was to share what we as educators need to rethink/adjust now and long term.
