Teachers know that distance learning has put unprecedented challenges on families. While you as a parent have found yourself trying to work from home while keeping an eye on your children, your student’s teachers are experiencing the very same things. The lack of balance of home life and work-life has been taxing for even the most seasoned teachers.
Due to this lack of balance, teachers have a list of things they hope you keep in mind during COVID-19 distance learning. Teachers are tired, overwhelmed, and were highly underprepared for the sudden jump to online schooling.
Your student’s teachers aren’t bad, they were just untrained for this environment. A great teacher may not have access to a great laptop, and that might make you as a parent feel like a teacher is failing. Instead of criticizing teacher performance now during the COVID-19 pandemic, let’s take a look at a few of the things teachers want you to know about their side of the screen.
Many teachers never received instruction on teaching in an online classroom at the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. While that might not seem like a massive deal to many, a lack of training might appear to parents as lazy or unprofessional.
For example, if a teacher hasn’t been appropriately trained on using a parent portal, they may miss your emails through that portal. To a parent, it would look like the teacher is inattentive, but in reality, it shows the fact teachers were thrown into a difficult situation they were unprepared for.
Not every district provides teachers with top-of-the-line computers to use from home. Many are trying to run their virtual classrooms from old and outdated laptops, which aren’t the best for running modern distance learning programs.
Because some teachers did not have the best equipment at home, your student may have had to wait a little longer to hear feedback on assignments, which can be frustrating for students and parents. Teachers hope that you understand the delay isn’t intentional and is likely a result of access issues.
During the pandemic, teachers have had to work longer hours for the same pay they made pre-pandemic. None of these assignments were digitized, and none of those fun online games were pre-made.
Teachers invested, and continue to support, countless extra hours to make students’ experience in the virtual classroom as great as possible, but it comes at a cost to the time teachers have outside of the workday.
They also may have more students in a class than ever before. Many districts have teachers instruct both online classrooms and in-person ones, meaning that teachers effectively have to teach two classrooms with different demands at the same time.
Teachers fully understand that you, as a parent, are experiencing unforeseen circumstances, too. When you notice your student is struggling and take the time to ensure they’re getting the help they need, you’re doing them a favor.
In physical classrooms, teachers were able to approach struggling students and help guide them quietly. Being online, this sort of help is much more difficult. It’s hard for teachers to see a student struggle with a problem when there are 20 other students on the screen, so it’s helpful when parents take steps to reach out or even consider virtual tutoring options for their students to keep ahead of assignments.
Teachers understand that you’re performing a juggling act right now. You’re trying to do your job from home, all the while you’re trying to keep your students focused in class. But teachers need your support, now more than ever.
Posting on social media about their faults doesn’t help them improve. Teachers would much rather have that you reach out and open conversations about the struggles or issues you’re having. By doing so, they are better able to foster better relationships with one another.
This also means that they’d appreciate you taking the time to get to know the online programs your student is using. It also means that you should understand no teacher wants to be stuck in this situation. Almost every teacher wants to be back in the classroom, but they can’t do so until it’s safe.
Online learning is challenging at best, and it can feel overwhelming when you’re trying to teach large classes. Avoid teacher burnout and feeling at a loss for interactive ways to teach students.
At DeAlba Math Center, we are passionate about creating products and services that facilitate the ability to reach the Math STAAR performance level of each school. No matter if your goal is to educate an entire campus, a grade, or a specific group of students to master or meet their performance category, DeAlba has a program designed for your students.
We strongly believe that all students and teachers can reach their highest potential when they have the appropriate support network!
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