Do you appreciate teachers more, or less now than in normal times?

[Bluewavescrashing]

Genuine question. I'm a full time infant school teacher. Our school is offering more than most in terms of online education, personalised learning, 1:1 zoom sessions etc. But I wonder how parents feel. Has lockdown showed you how much teachers give to your children through planning lessons, making resources, delivering lessons to cater for all levels of attainment? Do you find it easy to teach your child? When lockdown ends would you carry on with home learning and deregister as they have made more progress 1:1 with you or are you looking forward to sending them back to school?

Nb I have a large group of key worker children, up to 25 each day whom I teach in person in school - this is aimed at parents accessing home learning rather than key worker / vulnerable provision in school.

Why would you expect to be given 3 days for teams training? Registered professions have a CPD commitment which is all done outside of work hours to enable you to do your job, it’s up to you to ensure that you’re trained sufficiently to do it. That’s not your employers responsibility.
I’m sure the vast majority of people are doing what they can in a difficult situation and working unpaid hours at the moment. I personally dont have a problem looking after my children or teaching them, it’s nothing new I’ve been doing it since they were born! I realise that’s not comparable to being a teacher and having to keep up to date with educational policies and cater for a large number of children with different needs etc. I didn’t take a keyworker space so what is difficult is working more hours than normal in a totally different way to normal in my own job whilst also being put under incredible pressure to make sure my children are doing everything they should to a good standard, turn up to all online sessions on time and understand everything taught. I was still helping with homework at 9.30 this evening, that is just not sustainable for anyone! I don’t blame teachers for that, I am grateful for the ones who understand how difficult it is. I’m sure it’s various government policies putting schools under pressure to perform and this is being passed on to parents. Most parents don’t want children to be engaged with online learning so that they can have a ‘break’. It’s so that they can do their own jobs or assist their other children. keeping the children occupied allows multiple parents to do their job- many of which will be services that you and your family want to use. I don’t really understand the frequent derogatory references to people expecting ‘childcare’ on various threads, I’m not sure it represents the views of the majority of teachers away from mumsnet. We’re all just small cogs doing what we can to keep the country running in difficult circumstances. Unfortunately the grass is rarely greener elsewhere

I do know teaching isn’t a registered profession btw, but I think it is equivalent in status, pay, training etc

@Frodont

I appreciate my dds RL teachers more. They've done a fantastic job and have stayed positive and just generally brilliant.

The teachers on Mumsnet are generally a nightmare however.

😂😂😂😂😂

The 3 days on teams comment was quite obviously a tongue in cheek comment. I can't imagine what that would involve! The point is that we were given no training at all to deliver our teaching through it or zoom. That might be specific to my school though. We've all upskilled massively on the tech through trial and error and can deliver interventions through apps and websites we subscribe to by sharing screens etc, we now have remote access to the school file system which has really helped. We make videos using zoom and voice over them using our PowerPoint and flip chart presentations.

8 mins of content on a video takes about 20 mins to film and edit. We provide between 30 and 40 videos weekly per year group. I certainly do not need to up my game in this respect. 5 year olds need short videos to keep them focused. The point of the videos is the introduce and model the follow up tasks, not to babysit them.

This thread has shown how little time many parents think that the home learning resources take to create. It is not straightforward to adapt our planning for home learning and whilst some schools may be uploading a few worksheets each week, what we are offering in my school is a full timetable of provision through 1:1 and group remote learning appointments, multiple videos for each lesson, differentiated activities, detailed feedback, we provide work packs tailored to each child's level, reading sessions, whole class sessions. We phone every family weekly. Whilst also teaching the key worker children we have in school.

I understand how hard it is to manage home learning. I've done it myself. But some parents are phoning our head complaining about everything, without offering any constructive feedback on what they would actually like to be given, other than 'longer videos so I can get things done.' on average I film two short videos per lesson so about 15 mins of content, one to recap concepts and introduce the new learning and one to show answers, show next steps etc. The bit in between is the independent activity that the children do themselves.

Are some posters really expecting hour long videos for each lesson? If I film my entire timetable in this way it will take me 30 hours a week just on filming. No editing, no planning, no making the powepoints and flips that go in the videos, no making worksheets and written tasks, no marking the work that has been done, no zoom meets, no phone calls, no reading sessions. 30 hours just on videos.

I spend about 6 hours a week making videos. I do the above tasks and meetings and actual bloody teaching. If anyone thinks I'm slacking off I'm genuinely intrigued.

And the reason I need key workers for my own children is that I'm in school from 7.30am until 6pm working,except for the odd morning when I have cover and I do phone calls and remote appointments online.

I think the amount of work teachers are putting in to making lessons online, gathering materials and making videos and slides is absolutely mind blowing...

I guess it's hard for parents to homeschool because we're doing it with all the other responsibilities of working, cleaning, kids in different years etc so I don't expect myself to be able to deliver a full day of homeschooling at home like teachers do at school.

Quite honestly I think it’s brought out the best in some and the worst in others. Generally the teachers who love teaching have been super, the ones I know who don’t love it but carried on doing it because they like the holidays / don’t know what else they’d do etc have been far less impressive and generally complained the whole way through.

Some have been phenomenal and have really adapted brilliantly. Others have moaned the whole way through (whilst their kids are in kw care) about literally having to do their job.

Do I think overall they’ve done a good job? Yes.

Do I think they’ve had it much harder than everyone else who has adapted, including parents working and homeschooling at same time? No.

Has it changed my view? No, as an ex teacher I’ve always had high regard for the profession but I also know that there are good and bad, just like everywhere else.

I absolutely love my job. But it pisses me off when people think we are dossing about doing nothing. I still have responsibility for my own class andy key worker bubble-ensuring they make progress, managing interventions, meetings with the EP and the head, safeguarding meetings etc. It doesn't stop because some children are at home.

If I didn't love what I do, I couldn't do it. I really care about the children I teach and look after and really miss the ones at home. The parents are generally doing so well with the home learning. I guess the point of this thread was that I hoped through this time parents would realise more what we do to get to the point of being ready to teach-we are always working on the next week's planning and resources in school. (The actual teaching is the most enjoyable part but it doesn't just happen on its own). And maybe appreciate teachers more by realising that. Meh

I think there is a big difference between this lockdown when the teachers seem to be working their asses off. DDs primary teacher is teaching 15 in the classroom, 13 online (at the same time) and the rest with packs (no internet). Managing to differentiate for each group. Amazing and keeping DD engaged 3.5 hours a day.
First lockdown. They set a pack in a Monday online/sent home. The whole school had 20 out of 220 kids in so teachers rotated and worked not even once a week. Had a phonecall home every fortnight. Most of the teachers don't have children. That felt a bit if a pisstake and was when they could easily have learnt how to provide online lessons as it was obvious it was going to happen again to some extent.

Why do you need parents to understand more of your job?

We all have jobs that take up our time and some far more complex than others but we don’t need to discuss online what it takes to do our jobs nor do we need others to understand our jobs.
We are paid to do them or like myself we try to run our businesses.

We have all had to adapt to the governments crazy ways and some have ended up self entitled and very much think there better than others now.
So called keyworkers children in schools yet others are left to pick up the scraps they are thrown.

Realistic fact is there should be no such thing as key worker schooling as who has decided that some jobs are more important than others.
As a good example As teachers you deal with 14 percent of the populations needs a shop worker deals with 100 percent of the populations needs yet you think you are more entitled.

As to schooling online it’s pretty madness as expecting children to sit at computer screens all day is total crazy and is only causing other sickness issues like my niece with crazy headaches.
She had some teachers that seemed ok and organised but as many that seemed to have no idea and were as clear as mud when they were rambling on there lessons.
Normal times we don’t want them at computer screens for hours now as teachers you think it’s a wonderful thing for them to do.

Niece is now deregistered as it was the only way and I have her each day while my sister goes to her work and I work from home. No key worker status for my sister and she works 6 days a week.

I have always appreciated good teachers. But I think it is easy to approach this just from the point of the view of the teacher. I am currently paying hefty school fees. In order to do that on an ongoing basis I need to be able to work. So I do need my children’s teachers to step up and teach my children properly. Part of the issue with younger years is that the independent learning normally involves a lot of parental involvement, not least uploading stuff. Our teachers are doing mostly live lessons though with about 1/3 of it as independent learning and they stay on the meet for questions. Hard to get the kids to ask questions in first lockdown - they preferred to ask me! They have got more confident in doing so this time round.
Having seen our schools accounts, teachers get a professionals salary for a professionals job. Plus an awesome and very generous pension compared to most others. I respect them and value education but i think when you see things saying now do you see how hard it is, it’s silly - teachers are not trying to teach plus do another job normally - which is what lots of parents are trying to do.

Surely it depends on the school?
Our school put work up on google classroom which we can whizz through in a couple of hours.

The school has only just decided to deliver a couple of 30 minute live lessons per week and a couple of recorded lessons. The teacher didn’t even call my y1 child throughout the whole of the first lockdown. Pitiful.

We work with people who work in foo dprocessing plants, rife for covid transmission, everyone just got on with it without complaining.

Yes I’ll be glad to send my kids back because online schooling provision has been nom-existent to awful and the social aspect is so important. I can’t say that it’s because I have so much more respect for teachers and what they do! We’ve managed to do get through the pitiful amount set while working!

Can I just ask - why would it not have been possible to run classes as usual but just stream them? With working parents, we have had to accept that the kids’ education will slide backwards otherwise our jobs might too and that will create worse problems for our family. What we have needed is for our ks2 kids is to be occupied, so that we can continue to wfh as best we can. I would have preferred for them to have had something to look at on video since their written worksheets cannot encourage them to have a go at the work the way that a live instruction from a teacher would have, even if they didn’t do a great job!

I’m a bit at a loss as to why you have mentioned a couple of times about ‘babysitting’ - why do you view online contact as babysitting and not ‘educating’?

@Bluewavescrashing

I also think that if we weren't pushed to the limit by expectations to catch children up and assess them constantly in the autumn term we would be in a better place right now. No thought has been given to the mental health of these children. The expectations of the curriculum are developmentally inappropriate plus year 1 5 year olds sitting on chairs in rows all day is unnatural. These children need to explore, play, discover and this is really hard to provide for within covid safe guidelines. Which are a nonsense anyway

You are talking about problems with your own school. I teach Year 1. In the Autumn term we decided it would be appropriate to continue to follow an EYFS style of learning, so did not have desks in rows. We had the EYFS areas of learning and continuous provision. This meant we could follow the EYFS risk assessment.

We had a whole school focus on mental health and wellbeing. We certainly thought a lot about it and used approaches such as Thrive. Yes we did assess but very gently through observations and guided tasks.

Oh and we also had training as to how to deliver good lessons on Teams.

You don’t speak for every teacher OP.

That's because of the context of the parent's complaint.

Don't worry, I'm aware I'm not a babysitter. I'm much more skilled than that.

Why do you need parents to understand more of your job?

Because so many say what we do is not enough

Or is it to just make yourself feel better.

Why do you think you should get schooling for your children when others cannot

sonnysunshine

There are major differences between this lockdown and the first.

One of them is that in the first the curriculum was suspended and there was absolutely no guidance as to what should be provided.

@Frodont

I appreciate my dds RL teachers more. They've done a fantastic job and have stayed positive and just generally brilliant.

The teachers on Mumsnet are generally a nightmare however.

What you have on MN now are teachers that no longer take the shit that some posters throw at them/us and the profession.

These posters were much happier when teachers were more docile. and forgiving of the fuckwittery on the threads.

It just shows what happens when you push to far.

AfternoonToffee

It is very disingenuous to refer to it as a "brief craze" Threads where the replies were simply daffodils haven't been forgotten

The reasons behind the daffodils haven't been forgotten either.
Norhas the response from some parents or MN itself.

@Tentacles14

I have always appreciated good teachers. But I think it is easy to approach this just from the point of the view of the teacher. I am currently paying hefty school fees. In order to do that on an ongoing basis I need to be able to work. So I do need my children’s teachers to step up and teach my children properly. Part of the issue with younger years is that the independent learning normally involves a lot of parental involvement, not least uploading stuff. Our teachers are doing mostly live lessons though with about 1/3 of it as independent learning and they stay on the meet for questions. Hard to get the kids to ask questions in first lockdown - they preferred to ask me! They have got more confident in doing so this time round. Having seen our schools accounts, teachers get a professionals salary for a professionals job. Plus an awesome and very generous pension compared to most others. I respect them and value education but i think when you see things saying now do you see how hard it is, it’s silly - teachers are not trying to teach plus do another job normally - which is what lots of parents are trying to do.

I totally get this. We’re at a fee paying school. Luckily I’ve been able to get mine in but my friend who the manager of a large HR department is actually losing her hair over the stress of it. Her work is full on because of the covid situation, plus normal daily operational matters and she has to make sure her three children are doing their work and guide her 6 year old through lessons whilst paying full fees. It’s had a huge impact on her marriage and mental health. Our school have been very good and said if it’s becoming too much don’t worry about keeping up but then you have the guilt of your child not keep up with their peers.

But OP you have to stop throwing the term ‘baby sitting’ about. It’s inflammatory. Maybe you do want a teacher bashing thread...

One set of people I have watched in admiration are the team of staff at a care home my relative work at. ( not pulling any other profession down) this particular team have done so much to help their dementia patients and their families. They had a team meeting solely based on what they could do to try and prevent the rapid deterioration of dementia that the lockdowns brought. Honestly it’s like party central at the care home it’s just been brilliant!

OP I’m not really sure what you wanted from this thread except a pat on the back?

While you are confident you are doing a good job, I think this thread shows there’s a massive disparity in the offering of remote learning. People are only going to speak from their own experiences about the teachers they know.

Most of the teachers don't have children.

What an odd statement? How would you know that? Have you asked them all? 😂