Home schooling wasn't something I ever planned on. I think my kids benefit from being around other kids, they benefit from their teachers rich experiences, I like them being away and at school 9am-3pm! I don't think this has changed as I don't believe I am home schooling now. I am educating them at home as I do normally on a weekend through our experiences as a family and we are topping up with a bit of structured reading, writing and numeracy tasks on top. I didn't consciously choose to home school, I didn't agree to deliver a full curriculum at home. I am merely helping out whilst school is closed. My kids are missing their friends and luckily we all live locally so often we socially distantly accidentally bump into kids on our daily walk. We have a group whatsapp and can share with his classmates and their parents there. His and my close mum pals can video call. It isn't the same but it is the best I can do and they are staying connected.
The bit I cannot fulfill is that relationship with their teachers. That connection, that understanding that belief that they can do anything their teacher asks them to do. I am mum, I am boring, I am a nagger who feeds them. I do not have that yellow aura glowy halo that they see when they look at their teachers. I am someone who is stopping them from playing in asking them to do boring work. I know I am not alone, it is a common source of discussion with my pals. As the one who is an educator though, everyone looks to me to help, I have little to give!
One thing that has helped me is a structure, something simple like maths one day, English the next, enrichment or science project followed by a maths day and an English day. We do school work straight after breakfast. That way they haven't wandered far by this point and I can sometimes even keep them in their seats after breakfast to get them to do their work straight away! Luckily our school is a faith school so we have daily prayers and updates from the school to share, this also helps them stay connected. It also helps me in the pretense that any misbehaviour will be reported back as I clearly have a direct line to school!
Another thing that has helped is to hold the belief that I am not home schooling. I don't have to cover the entire curriculum. I had a call from a pal in tears as war had broken out with her son who refused to do any work for her and she was terrified that he was going to fall behind when they return to school as he was already at risk. I explained my view to her that we are not home schooling and everyone will be in the same position when we return. She hadn't seen my point of view before, she was putting herself under too much pressure, instantly causing friction before she began.
Parents are teachers, we know what is best for our child, but we teach through rich family experiences that a teacher cannot generate. Teachers are not parents and they teach through their own expertise of the curriculum and knowing what is best for your child. Lockdown hasn't changed this. Parents trying to become teachers isn't the answer. We are helping and supporting our children in their education but we are adding in some more structured work to help this support as we are away from our kid's teachers longer than the usual 2 day weekend. Parents need to give themselves a break, it is a tough enough job without taking on a new teaching career too. SJ
Showing posts with label home schooling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label home schooling. Show all posts
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Monday, May 4, 2020
Home Schooling Part 1
I have been an educator for almost 10 years now. I like to think that I am OK at my job. I know what a good lesson looks like, I know how to check for progress, I can give feedback and next steps etc. Yet home schooling in lockdown has caused me challenges that I wasn't expecting. I expected some challenges in terms of managing content, it's not my age range specialty, obviously the relationship with my kids and them wanting to engage would be my main challenge. The last day at school I was given a huge pack of fun educational things to do at home. This wasn't useful. I knew how to make play doh in the microwave already. Now this wasn't school's fault, they didn't know what to do either, it was all very quick and sudden.
So I dutifully created a login for the age appropriate teacher resource site and began planning some lessons. Whoa did I struggle! There was so much content. Sentence prompts, they look easy enough, I will begin with those. Cue 1587 resources on sentence prompts. How do I know which is a good task? How do I know my kids will be able to do it? How do I change it from portrait to landscape in this website? This made me think, how are other parents, non educators managing? It was very overwhelming.
I think that there is a wider problem in that we haven't learnt the skill of curation yet or it certainly isn't embedded yet in our ways. We teach the 6C's in education settings but as adults, leaders, educators of a different generation of when the internet first arrived, we haven't been taught this skill. Part of my job is to help educators create LMS content, Google Classrooms for example. All too often I see reams and reams of information in a stream, no topics, no structure. The educator has posted articles that they like, assessment tasks, slides from class, wellbeing updates, contact details for pastoral care...all good stuff but how does a learner access it easily, how do they find what they need?
In a social media world we are used to pinging a link, sharing something funny, it's easy. But as educators and leaders we need to adapt to a different skill set when sharing with people. We need to be explicit about what we want them to access. Google Classroom (disclaimer I am a Google Certified Trainer) has some great tools for this. Material posts are when you want learners to read something. Assignments are when you want them to do something etc. However educators need to use the topics tools too. A good place to start is always, admin tasks, pastoral information, exam information and then subject specific tasks. Learners can then navigate easier by clicking into the topics they need and then searching in a smaller area for the information they are looking for.
Even with these tools staff still need to curate the content, it's not a case of sharing every article that you see. There's a saying, think before you click. We should extend this to think before you click the share button. Is it the best example of what you are trying to share? Does it add value to your discussion? Will the experience be enhanced by you sharing this content? Tools like Wakelet help with this. Wakelet lets you pop all your bits in to one place, all your websites, articles, infographics from the web and then you can trim your content down and curate it on Wakelet. Why not share your Wakelet board and your number 1 example? Let people view your collection of resources and ideas and then promote your best example. Surely that is a more positive experience than asking people to scroll through streams of posts?
So home schooling got off to a slow start, I struggled to plan and access the content, spoiler alert, there are further challenges ahead in my home schooling journey...SJ
So I dutifully created a login for the age appropriate teacher resource site and began planning some lessons. Whoa did I struggle! There was so much content. Sentence prompts, they look easy enough, I will begin with those. Cue 1587 resources on sentence prompts. How do I know which is a good task? How do I know my kids will be able to do it? How do I change it from portrait to landscape in this website? This made me think, how are other parents, non educators managing? It was very overwhelming.
I think that there is a wider problem in that we haven't learnt the skill of curation yet or it certainly isn't embedded yet in our ways. We teach the 6C's in education settings but as adults, leaders, educators of a different generation of when the internet first arrived, we haven't been taught this skill. Part of my job is to help educators create LMS content, Google Classrooms for example. All too often I see reams and reams of information in a stream, no topics, no structure. The educator has posted articles that they like, assessment tasks, slides from class, wellbeing updates, contact details for pastoral care...all good stuff but how does a learner access it easily, how do they find what they need?
In a social media world we are used to pinging a link, sharing something funny, it's easy. But as educators and leaders we need to adapt to a different skill set when sharing with people. We need to be explicit about what we want them to access. Google Classroom (disclaimer I am a Google Certified Trainer) has some great tools for this. Material posts are when you want learners to read something. Assignments are when you want them to do something etc. However educators need to use the topics tools too. A good place to start is always, admin tasks, pastoral information, exam information and then subject specific tasks. Learners can then navigate easier by clicking into the topics they need and then searching in a smaller area for the information they are looking for.
Even with these tools staff still need to curate the content, it's not a case of sharing every article that you see. There's a saying, think before you click. We should extend this to think before you click the share button. Is it the best example of what you are trying to share? Does it add value to your discussion? Will the experience be enhanced by you sharing this content? Tools like Wakelet help with this. Wakelet lets you pop all your bits in to one place, all your websites, articles, infographics from the web and then you can trim your content down and curate it on Wakelet. Why not share your Wakelet board and your number 1 example? Let people view your collection of resources and ideas and then promote your best example. Surely that is a more positive experience than asking people to scroll through streams of posts?
So home schooling got off to a slow start, I struggled to plan and access the content, spoiler alert, there are further challenges ahead in my home schooling journey...SJ
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