Baseline: My son (15) goes to a private school, but I kept him home as I'm vulnerable and I think them being shoulder to shoulder all day without masks is not safe. This is not up for debate, there are a lot of threads about this.
He is bright, has done great in online school, excelled in some subjects. School actually was great at switching. He wants to learn*
But.... now they are back to onsite, and what they are now expecting is for my son to join in the class via g.meet and just get on as if he was in class.
The problem is that the meets are rubbish. He can't hear the teacher, has no idea what is going on, can't see the whiteboard half the time. And not all teachers stream, but when they do it's a last minute meet link update. This means that he constantly has to monitor his emails and g.classroom, can't really start anything because he might have to join the next lesson. The streams are of no value, I listened in.
What we are asking for is the teachers to share the curriculum, expectations for the term and let him get on with it at his own pace. Obviously he is doing homework, but he wants to do the classwork at his own pace (eg. all classwork daily from 4-6pm or something like that).
He is spending all day faffing about in g.classroom, doing something that is out of context or waiting if the next class will be streamed/will he have to join, and really feels like he is wasting his time. And I agree. Of course, there are 1-2 teachers who are doing a great job of streaming, but that is the exception.
He doesn't get feedback on his work mostly. Which is annoying on an essay where he gets 7 marks out of 10 but has no idea how to make it better or what he missed.
What we've asked for:
- teachers to share curriculum (they must have this already, so no extra work)
- share resources that he can use as practice
- share which textbooks he needs so I can buy them (although we actually pay for them through school, but don't care).
Neither has happened, science textbooks I bought as I'm fairly sure that there can't be that much of a difference between edexcel or AQA at a gcse/igcse level.
QUESTION:
Am i being unreasonable that I think that if I am asking for material that they already have and not to produce something bespoke the school should supply it?
On one hand I understand the added workload because of the whole world situation, but on the other hand we are paying for a service that is not being delivered even to a minimum. And I think what we are asking for is already there, just needs to be shared.
Additionally it would be great to have proper feedback as well.
Additional 2: I would have expected the school to put together the textbooks and ask me to pop in for them, instead of me buying them randomly. There are ones that I can't make a judgement call, eg history ... there are so many and they do differ a lot...
*no, he is no angel, there is a lot of moaning.... :)