I'm currently employed as an educator in an International School. What this means in the time of lockdown is that I am still teaching, via a virtual learning plan. As a parent, it means I am also loosely homeschooling my three kids with the help of online resources. Here are a few things I learnt today about how the kids - my school ones and my biological ones - are dealing with all of this.
This morning Sam, my newly five-year-old, had his first class interaction online. He was thoroughly overwhelmed. Andel was at the helm while I was helping Zac with his grade 3 work revision, and Sam vacillated between saying absolutely nothing, and throwing one of those tantrums I wrote about yesterday. Apparently Sam thought he was just going to be meeting up with his best friend; he didn't expect to see 12 other faces on a screen, including his teacher's.
Not long after that, I had an online "face-to-face" session with my kids. My first question to them was to find out how they were coping. Keep in mind, some of these kids are oversees either having vacated South Africa very quickly (like pack up your life in three days, kind of quickly), or having been away over our mid-semester break, and not being able to return. Some of them are exhausted from travel, relocation, and insane contact hours to maintain their South African school schedule. Some of them are sleeping in during our online sessions that range anywhere from local 08h00 to 15h00. Many of them, especially the older ones, are swamped with work and anxiety. All of them are missing interaction with their peers, and mourning the many activities they were looking forward to this term that are probably never going to happen for them. A few of them just didn't pitch up.
Interestingly enough, I also had a staff meeting today where these things were discussed, and upon reflection I have these thoughts:
* All of us who are working from home are feeling the pressure of needing to do more than we usually do. For the kids it's about needing to keep up; for the adults about needing to justify the wage we trust is still coming.
* The misconception about working from home and studying online is that there is an infinite about of time to do things. While I guess I can understand the logic of that in theory. In reality though, if everyone is expecting more that usual based on this, the net result is less time, not more.
* Connected to this: there are no office hours for online work. The day blurs into the night, and the week blurs into the weekend, instead of being more relaxed, we become more stressed.
* Suddenly the pastoral role of the teacher is almost greater than that of subject expert or master facilitator. In my 14 years of teaching I don't think I've had more meaningful influence that I have right now, and if I don't set healthy boundaries - for myself, my classes and my children - we will burn out before this lockdown is over.
Over and out. It's time an early night, I think.
That's why we take it one day at a time.
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