Why are teachers not teaching live lessons online

[Shouldistayorshouldimove]

This is not a teacher bashing thread.

Talking online with another mum in my son’s class today, both ourDCs are in p1 (Scotland). She is outraged that teachers next term will be posting work online rather than actually teaching using Zoom etc. Her argument is that universities are doing it so why aren’t teachers? And how is she supposed to work from home and educate her children?

Personally I don’t think teaching a bunch of 5 year olds a live lesson using Zoom is going to be all that effective and would probably require quite a lot of supervision anyway. AIBU to think that tasks posted online are quite sufficient given the circumstances? So as not to drip feed, I am also working from home with 2DCs.

My theory is that many Mothers are resentful of teachers because they have the capacity to discipline and test their perfect children and often children are found wanting; something many Mothers find confronting and take personally

That's a bit nuts.

It is a little strange that many sectors have massively changed how they work in a month but some schools (not all) can't do fairly basic things.

Ha ha! Most sectors requiring work from home have provided their staff with the technology to do it. Most state schools manage to dig out a years-old laptop for the staff and nothing whatsoever for the pupils. Also, slightly different expecting an adult to transition to working from home alone or perhaps with a small group in a videoconference to expecting 30 children to do so.

All this talk of platforms such as Google classroom or Microsoft Teams is great for those schools who already had these in place but the rest of us couldn't exactly get these up and running and staff, pupils (aged 4-11) and parents trained in using them in the two days notice we had of school closure.

Also, most of the parents commenting on these threads are from a very skewed demographic. I am really trying my best to get work out to pupils in a variety of formats accessible to all pupils (KS1) from those who have permanent access to their own tablet to those who don't own so much as a pencil. We have an online platform that the pupils are already familiar with where I set tasks and can mark them. Fewer than half of my pupils have even logged on. About 5 or 6 out of 30 are regularly completing tasks.

I emailed all the pupils on our learning platform. None of them replied. 2 out of 30 parents have contacted me via email. I did phone calls round families to check on welfare and many of them hadn't even been on the website where I have spent ages uploading work using a very basic and slow website programme, even though they have been told numerous times that this is where the work will be provided.

We are really trying our best in very unusual circumstances and it can be just as frustrating from a teacher's point of view when pupils aren't accessing the work you've supplied, but we recognise that this is a difficult situation for parents too and most of them are doing their best.

Teachers, why are you feeling the need to respond to these imbecile fishwives?

Seriously these threads would stop if you stopped taking the bait.

*We need our own methods to compensate for the lack of tech.

Wonderful idea. Please could you clarify these methods to the rest of us?

The duchess I don’t require to be addressed in a professional way but not being told to “fuck off” would be nice. We have received very very little from both schools. I have been quite surprised by that. But questioning this is clearly not allowed one must fall in with the party line because life is so hard for teachers. Well it is for everyone. I have always defended teachers to the hilt both my parents taught and my sister my grandparents taught but I have been surprised at how the teachers I have come across have responded to this crisis. The odd email then we are left hung out. My kids are “good” swotty and easy to teach we are doing our best but both working ourselves. I thought school would provide abit more back up but apparently I am unreasonable in voicing this.

hepburnmed of 8.57 above is so telling and so sad.

It's as if you think parents have absolutely no responsibility for their own children's education at all. If dc are disengaged and can't see the point that really is on parents. I have two dc as well as being a teacher and it wouldn't occur to me to blame school if they were disinclined to do school work - which certainly does happen. My kids don't take kindly to me 'teaching' them so I have to muddle through like every other wfh parent at the moment.

I do agree with you though that the dfe have been utterly shit on this and shown no leadership. Hopefully they are busy working on a master plan for how and when we reopen and we will be stunned by its brilliance when it's finally unveiled .

In direct opposition to the threads on MN, my Facebook feed is full of posts from parents about using this opportunity for their children to have a break from the pressures of schooling, to learn life skills, to enjoy family time. There is just no pleasing everyone.

@ChloeDecker
My school is still using Zoom. It's still working. I am still having no issues. In Italy we can use whatever platform we want.
I berated nobody. I responded to people saying I was a liar. That we weren't doing online lessons. I also said that some of our teachers were refusing to do the online lessons. As the ministry has now clarified this, at least in my school, every teacher afaik is doing it, on whatever platform they choose. Some choose to upload pre-recorded lessons (the philosophy teacher in my classes does this for example)

Maybe we'll also eliminate Zoom. We all have G-Suite and the ministry of Ed platform, so maybe we'll move onto one of those lock stock and barrel.

I hesitated before posting on this thread last night because of you and your mate who relentlessly attacked me on that other thread when all I posted was my own experience (about which you know nothing) of teaching in a southern Italian high school.

As Plucked has said, as the situation has evolved, individual schools have decided on how they best want to implement the obligatory (from the Ministry of Ed) "didattica a distanza" which has, as I said, specifically instructed teachers that this does not mean uploading work only.

Mine is doing 3 lessons X day over 6 days, each lesson lasting now 40 minutes on the timetable. Teachers' hours for each class have been reduced proportionally.

@mumsie2020 we don’t generally use zoom in the UK due to safeguarding. I use an education platform that I can post pictures, videos and work, but they’re not live.

Love the idea of the education department delivering hard copies of work. I wish we had access to something like this.

So @MsTSwift your issue is with your school and not all schools and teachers everywhere. By very little is that very little work or very little "teaching" (ie videos, ppts, new content).

Why not voice your concerns to your school once the Easter break is over. They may have been putting together a plan over the holidays?

As somebody said earlier, if we're just sat at home twiddling our thumbs, why can't we could be furloughed! That way, I wouldn't have to go into a Hub school to look after students, create suitable work to upload, mark work and provide feedback, begin the hugely time consuming task of giving the year 11 classes their Teacher Assessed grade, and then deciding on how to rank them, complete my departmental improvement plans and write schemes of work..... the list could go on. I could just relax at home twiddling my thumbs.

@Floatyboat a lot of schools have no phone policies to prevent cyber bullying of teachers and students. At home it's free for all. I have seen disgusting things done to members of staff and students alone with technology and would never subject myself to teaching online where students can film me (or one another). It's all good and well if it's of no concern to you to ask other people to put themselves in such a danger, so please go ahead, become a teacher and teach a live lesson six times a day. Looking forward to seeing how your did.

I think the issue for me is around inequality for children.

Some are being taught and some are not. My children are not. The youngest had booklets in maths, SPaG and reading when this all began, which they completed in the first week and have heard nothing since. The middle one has had Seneca in sciences set and heggarty maths plus some active learn for French but no teaching so no progression. The eldest is in year 11 and has had sweet FA. Then I read on here that many are being taught via recording or live but are being able to keep some form of normality and learning going.

It worries me concerning the gap in learning that some children will be experiencing whilst others will be making progress. That is not fair or equal, so for that reason I think that there should be some proper guidelines that ALL schools and teachers should be sticking to. I can see why many parents are actually quite upset.

Her argument is that universities are doing it so why aren’t teachers?

Your friend is unreasonable, and ill-informed. Universities aren't all doing it. And there's a huge difference between a lecture to 18-21 year olds, and an online class with 5 year olds.

The teacher bashing is awful.

The Canterbury whales can I ask whether the technology in Italian schools is generally good? Do schools provide devices for pupils who don't have them? Is education well-funded overall? From my own experience technology in UK schools is abysmal but I am wondering if this is just down to funding, or education policy (the wonderful Michael Hove's focus on the 3 'R's), or something else.

I hesitated before posting on this thread last night because of you and your mate who relentlessly attacked me on that other thread

Relentlessly attacked?!?? You were the one who said we didn’t care enough about our pupils if we didn’t use Zoom! You were the only one making attacks like that. It is you who should be apologising and I’d seriously reconsider using Zoom with your pupils now you know it isn’t safe for them.

Gove

@Monsterpage and it also fabulous that the Netherlands have the ability already in place to be able to do that.
Unfortunately, many more fabulous teachers don't have the same ability here.

And yeah another school using Zoom ffs. Schools especially should not be using this and I'm actually wondering if some of the supporters haven't been sent over here to try and discredit some extremely serious security issues, including exposure to porn. When this happened on this site, there was outrage and too fucking right.

Regardless of your own views on porn, who the fuck really wants it on their screen regardless of its size when your children are around. That there is some proper fucked up thinking. Since when did it become acceptable to have porn without warning on screens? And when the fuck did laws change to make children getting exposed to porn completely acceptable?

What fucking safeguarding issues? Fuck me and some of you want to be let loose and be encouraged to teach anything when understanding some very basic problems is too far-reaching for your understanding. It's not the fault of teachers for the failure in this area, this is one of those times it really is down to parents. What were they doing during all those hours you were in their care?

Any other time outrage and concern would be raised for the overuse of screen time. Rightly so. Oh but hang on, no longer an issue, really?

Now apply all this batshit thinking into the context of a child. Essentially no different to being glued to a screen all day. Essentially no different to using a screen like a fucking baby sitter. What about your job as a parent? Getting off your ass and engaging with your child is far more productive than posting on here and even more so when you are complaining about no-one teaching them anything new.

MrsTSwift Fair enough, no one likes being told to fuck off, but this is MN and aibu so... And, tbf, no one likes being told they're lazy etc either.
Why is it that teachers are always accused of claiming to have things more difficult than anyone else? No one on this thread has said things are 'so hard' for teachers as individuals, but people have pointed out the many practical difficulties with online teaching, but you don't want to hear about that...

Still no comment about safeguarding and kids sabotaging online materials I see .

Dippy, I think it depends from region to region tbh, and even from school to school. Our actual schools are not technologically sophisticated- in most of our classrooms we are still on blackboard and chalk.
Since the Covid crisis though, the govt has sanctioned pockets of money for schools and teachers (individually)
My school has about 700 kids aged 14-19. I have 10 classes, and in mine iirc the school has given out about 10 laptops/tablets.

Parents you do realise that we are in the middle of a global pandemic right? You have to realise that things aren’t running the way they usually do and we all just have to do the best with the materials we have.

Does it make you feel better having a go at teachers because you hate being at home with your kids?

canigooutyet

Our school is doing lessons from 9 - 4.30. So all day on a screen.

All parents and children have signed a safeguarding contract with severe penalties for breaking it including expulsion. The difference is that the parents amd children care enough to make sure safeguarding isn't an issue. Not the same in your average state school I presume.

@TheCanterburyWhales
It is quite obvious your school isn't technically sophisticated.

One of those pesky little safeguarding issues educators here are trying to avoid using is a platform such as a Zoom that has severe security risks including exposure to porn. We take these things extremely serious, so much so that it's a criminal offence.

Are you honestly still happy to use Zoom knowing about the. porn. risk and other highly known serious issues spanning years?
If so you are in the wrong profession tbph.

They are using teams and luckily have been doing this for 18 months already. We as parents moaned about having to buy all the tech but I am now very relieved. I realise my experience isn't the norm.

I think it depends on many factors really. Some children won’t have a laptop or tablet to watch a live stream on, some children will have to share one computer or laptop between siblings. Not every child is fortunate enough to have their own device, some particularly deprived children might not even have access to WiFi.

Also don’t think it’s worthwhile for key stage 1 children, particularly 4/5 year olds in reception and year 1. I doubt they’d sit nicely at home for an hour or more, they’re comfortable in their own surroundings so will undoubtedly fidget and such.