To wonder why teachers are not teaching my child?

[Nickynackienoo]

I am a nurse redeployed to itu. Doing 13 hour days and stressed up to the eyeballs at the moment. My children (12 and 8) go to school on my work days and on my days off i keep them at home with me according to the government guidance. As far as I can tell, the teachers at school are just childminding and not teaching anything. How is it that they can have just 4 kids in the school and not manage to get them to do at least some work? How can I possibly do the job of a teacher on my days off? They have send so many links via email that I can’t make sense of, it’s so overly complicated. Surely as key workers they should be doing the job they are being paid to do? I must be missing something, can someone fill me in?

We ensure the pupils access the work their own teacher has set. We do not teach lessons for many reasons most of which have already been explained.
Each teacher and TA in my school is in school supervising at least one day a week. During this time they have a barrage of messages from parents and students from the class they normally work with which need to be answered.
Everyone is juggling these days.
We had no days when we were closed over Easter and have already been asked to provide care on VE day Bank Holiday. In addition to this we will need to be open during May half term too.
As a teaching Head in a small school this afternoon is the first time I haven't had to be in school (excluding weekends) since February half term.
I give my time with a good heart to support our key workers. However, reading some of the horrible comments on Mumsnet at the moment, often from Keyworkers who still don't feel we do enough, I am beginning to wonder why I bother.

Don’t blame you fir being cross OP. Parents around the country are asking what teachers are actually doing at the moment, since in many places it certainly isn’t teaching (or planning, or marking). It really isn’t good.

@Piggywaspushed I can’t see how good nursery age care can be provided at all with no touching. Think I shall be looking a homeschooling long term if this continues. It’s not fair on small children’s development to have no touch or interaction with others, and no play or playtime outside . I feel for her as she’s an only and it will be a long time before she can touch another child.

Can you even imagine how livid other parents would be if they thought we were teaching in school whilst their children were missing out on this at home? There would be absolute uproar.

I wish people would get off teacher's backs. We didn't ask for this pandemic. We didn't ask for school closure. We didn't ask to set work remotely. We are simply doing our jobs as best we can, having not been trained for any of this.

Teacher's are not robots, or super-human. They are also parents and they are also struggling. Venting your fury at teachers is divisive and short-sighted.

Namechangedforthisreply7, if only those people asking what teachers are doing actually read any of the teachers' posts on here.

I just think it’s unrealistic to expect perfect equality and consistency of education during the very early days of an unprecedented global health crisis... and very poor form indeed to lay your complaints at the feet of teachers who are providing you with free childcare, often leaving their own children being cared for by other teachers or (paid for) childminders.

Nothing is normal right now. Be glad you are healthy, you have a job and your children are being cared for.

No, I agree but this is hub care not a nursery school you describe.so contact your LA who may be able to point you elsewhere. It is very difficult as your DD is so little.

It is the same for every small child in every country , though, sad as it is.

I think, if you can, keeping her at home might be best if she is so upset by it all, poor thing.

At school we do home learning in the morning and craft type things in the afternoon.

Namechangedforthisreply7

They should be asking what their children's teachers are doing.

Not teachers general and this should directed at the school that their children go to.

Piggy the LA found us this hub place. She is normally in the nursery class at the local primary and very happy. I’ve been looking for a nursery place at a day nursery but they are either full or cost a fortune - I don’t seem to be able to move her free hours from her normal nursery as they need them to keep her place when this is all over. It’s a minefield year

Mumnet HQ really need to rein in the teacher bashers. It's the same thread again and again with many of the same shouters and haters. It makes me even more anxious about things than I already am and question why I even want to teach, if this is the way people think and i'm a teacher of 20 plus years! The poor nqt and rqt must be rueing the day.

I'm ok with them all sitting at computer doing set work

There might not be computers available for all. Most primary schools have 15 laptops - a class set where pupils share 1 between 2. Or they may have a suite of computers all in one room. This is designed for each class in the school to have a weekly computing session, not for pupils to have access to an individual computer all day. In our hub school, we have around twice the number of children as laptops. There is also the issue of keeping them charged all day. They have to be put on a charging trolley for at least part of the day or the charge runs out.

Also, while children from Year 4 up might be able to sit and access their online learning with me floating between them for support, the younger children need pretty consistent adult support to do the learning tasks. I have at least 8 pupils in my group who are Year 2 or below. They're from different schools so haven't all been set the same tasks.

Like with most jobs, if you haven't been in the situation yourself, you're not really in a position to say what should or shouldn't be happening.

I’ve done both jobs. Loved them both. Was dedicated to them both. Was exhausted and often stressed by them both! It’s difficult to fully understand other people’s jobs. I think you just have to accept that and believe that everyone is usually doing their utmost- with the best of intentions. Obviously I think education is important but it’s not the be all and end all at the moment. And I absolutely believe we will all catch up on missed learning. I think what I’m trying to say is to please rest and relax as much as you can and be as kind to yourself as you can. You so fully deserve to. 💐

Teaching are teaching, just via online apps. Every week they set and upload work, while marking the work from the previous week. In the meantime, just like other key workers, they have their own kids to look after.

They are looking after the younger ones who will frankly struggle to do their work without the regular structure and supporting the secondary school do do the online work they are set.

With only four kids in a school it would be ridiculous to have lots of teaching staff in. Therefore there may only be a couple of teachers there.

All the kids missing out on schooling now will catch up. One of my sons missed 6 weeks of school in year 6 and I was a bit shocked to find he hadn't really fallen behind

It is really. I would suggest contacting LA again and telling them how distressed she is.

My daughter hates going, is distressed about how she can’t play

Sorry to hear this. The pupils in our school play. We are careful a out disinfecting the toys or games they play with and encourage them to not play games that involve physical contact, but it's a primary school and it's impossible to maintain social distancing with young children.

What constitutes a teacher bashing thread though?
Every thread on this topic ends up having a mixture of horrible posts and actual good advice like this one.
It wouldn't be fair to stop parents starting threads on the topic and people wont always search for similar threads before posting.
In the kindest way, I suggest you ignore them. Or post once if you have advice and then leave the thread.

@Really12345

Which LA are you? Have you tried looking at childminders? We've been finding that our LA is directing parents to nurseries and not childminders in an effort to keep the nurseries open: we're getting parents approaching us direct instead.

You should most certainly be able to move your DD's funding to her new provider if you are forced to move because your nursery is closed. I think you should raise that with the LA.

I could upload some of the work I’ve been doing. Wrote 3 lessons today, a course outline, Zoom meeting about grades, answered emails, a menu choice of tasks for students to dip in and out of.

Still got another lesson to write and a load of uploaded work to look at. Non stop so far to day.

TBH nighttime I get what you mean, but you can normally spot them from the thread title, which in this case was pretty much a lure to teacher baiters, if not deliberate!

A teaching bashing thread would be one which generalises 'why are all teachers......'.

There do seem to be a number of posters here though whenever anyone questions anything which happens in a school says 'oh great another teacher bashing thread'. This is obviously daft.

I agree OP, and I don't mean in in a teacher-bashing way, but they're trained teachers, so surely it makes not much difference if they do a spot of teaching when they're in school, rather than just childminding?
Obviously it would be bits and bobs according to what they have subject knowledge in, but to say no teaching is to take place in schools is ridiculous
Of course it makes a difference teaching or not, because the whole point is that schools are operating a much reduced provision for those with no alternative. They're not offering teaching because that defeats the point of being open for as few who need it, otherwise you get what we saw on here when schools were first closed and some people were determined to send their children in because they could even if they didn't need it. The pointy elbows came out.

That's precisely why students on site, certainly at all the secondaries I know, are studying the same materials as their peers with staff support and supervision.

We have around 12-20 children in school, from Reception to year 6, several with EHCPs and a wide range of abilities! You can't TEACH such a range, particularly as the number varies from day to day, but you can support. There is a difference!

Frustrations are running high.
People are divided furloughed versus non furloughed. Key worker versus non key worker! Tough times depending which career path you took.

But back to the original question OP. Most of Europe didn't even offer the keyworker childcare provision, I thinks its good we do have that.

Speak to your school directly about why they aren't facilitating the work for home there, most are, but as we don't have a National Educational Service there are inconsistencies.

Don't stress about the work at home for your DC. You're frontline, need the rest, just ask the school to let them log on whilst there.
For everyone else teacher bashing. Speak directly to the Senior Team of your DC school or the Education Secretary regarding the provision your DC is recieving. Or go Private. HTH.

If I wanted to be goady, I could ask why you don't leave the Home Learning tasks for the days you are doing long shifts, and catch up on one of your 4-day rest periods?
I admit I probably know as much about your work as you know about my teaching role, but I'm going off what someone told me, although in this case it was a hospital consultant. Her actual words: "Intensivists do like to moan! But in this case, yes, they've got it tough, but they do have long rest periods on their rotas.".
The vast majority of schools are facilitating home learning tasks and that's it. Some will call that "teaching" but it's not and it shouldn't be, for all the reasons that have been explained a gazillion times on here.