Classroom Lessons via Zoom

[jjx111]

AIBU to expect the teachers at my daughter’s rs primary school to offer at least some lessons via Zoom? The feedback I have been given is that that they aren’t offering it due to a) safeguarding issues, and b) it would add to the teachers workload. Well, surely if we parents consent for our child to sign in for these lessons then no safeguarding issue. Plus, at present, we parents are doing at least 60% of the teachers work for them via homeschooling. (I appreciate that they are setting work for the children, but this is part of the planning they would do anyway).

DH works in a university setting.
My school has not been asked to do so, and I know that some Counties have forbidden it. But then along come threads such as this one, seemingly blaming "teachers" for not using the platform. Not our decision at grass-roots level.

Yes absolutely agree - it us up to the school not individual teachers, I did emphasize that more than once but it's disappeared upthread somewhere. The schools doing best provision locally (including DS's future secondary) are also being sensitive to individual teachers circumstances and working around what they can do with other staff supporting. Like all good employers really.

I really cannot speak for primary years but I will reiterate that secondary school students, especially in problem solving subjects, need face time to progress significantly. If they get stuck on a topic, they just stop and give up. And, even if they could be bothered to e mail the question, in the modified words of Don Rumsfeld, they don’t know what they don’t know.

The risks of Zoom (or Teams) are vastly overstated. With the new security features, Zoom is very secure and I really cannot imagine a teacher losing their job because a lesson is crashed. Can you imagine the employment tribunal?

It sounds like it is tough for younger years at primary, though, although my kids (second half of primary) would definitely sit through a Zoom lesson were one offered.

I think the unions and a minority of teachers are not doing the profession any favours by being against teaching face to face and now getting back into the classroom. I would go back and teach tomorrow if I could (and I am old enough for Covid to be a non negligible risk). It is 10x safer than just before schools closed when we had full staff meetings squeezed up together.

If my dd were not year 6 I would move her to a private primary. I am state educated and support state education but the lowest common denominator it’s all too hard mindset has demonstrated the system at its worst. I don’t blame teachers btw they are following orders

Yes absolutely agree - it us up to the school not individual teachers, I did emphasize that more than once but it's disappeared upthread somewhere. the decision to provide Loom videos at least in our case seems to be down to the teacher - a few teachers have done it - most have just set large amounts of textbook reading and making notes/answering questions that don’t get marked!

My children school have had new students join this week.
Its private with online classes 9-3.30pm.
Clearly parents are seeing the benefits and are prepared to suck up the fees to keep their children educated.

My school has new pupils this week. State. Kids from 2 private schools that have closed. Parents obviously think our state school is doing a good job too. Please don't generalise.

@mumsneedwine some state schools seem to do a good job. many don’t.
However, what usrd to be a problem if parents of children with SENDs is now a mainstream problem: either you pay, or your chances if your child getting an education are slim (some state schools have decent SENDs provision - most just don’t have the ressources, just as they don’t have the ressources to do decent off site provision).
i‘m not bashing teachers, their influence is tiny. But the system has been bled dry, but most people never realised just how dry.
As the parent of a child with SENDs , I hope this will lead to the general public to wale up just how underfunded the system is.
And maybe parents in the future won’t have to pay a fortune (or be very lucky) for their kids to get an education.

Yeah go for it - if you want porn images flashing up halfway through a lesson. Better to use Microsoft teams.

This is just rubbish. My children and my business use Zoom. There are no ads, porn or otherwise.

My kids have 5-6 lessons a day on Zoom. It's not perfect, but they see and interact with their peers and teachers on a daily basis. Design Tech has been a series of practical lessons. PE, choir, band, instrumental lessons and even rowing practice - all practically applied.

I have been impressed with the variety and portability of the lessons. It's possible to get it right.

@GADDay it's not porn ads that are the problem it's hackers or sometimes students who think they're amusing.
We're using Microsoft Teams which works really well for us as it's also where they hand in work and access files.

Oh I am getting so frustrated at all of this.
Do you all really think that both staff and pupils have all the necessary technology? Living in dream world if you think that all kids can access it and all staff have the ability to do it.
And class sizes of 30- how on earth does that work online?
This all just shows up the inequality in school systems.

I teach FE, and we gave video lessons a go. I have 16 learners in one of my GCSE resit groups. At best I had only 3 learners engage in the live sessions.

When we questioned the other learners as to why they didn’t take part they had lots of reasons - some are sharing limited technology with parents and siblings, some are helping with childcare, one has managed to get a supermarket job to help support her family, a couple felt uncomfortable about it, some said their internet crashed or wasn’t quick enough to deal with the live feed. Some tried to join in on their phones but the screen is too small.

We recorded live sessions but they felt that due to the large number of interruptions (people trying to ask questions and ending up talking over each other, my little boy trying to sing to me and show me the biscuits he was making for example) made the live sessions too difficult to follow when they viewed the recording.

I now record lessons, where I do the video then post it to our Teams feed. The learners can access the video whenever they like and post questions on the chat board. My learners feel that works really well.

@myself2020 brilliant post. I am trying so hard to support my SEND students but it is so difficult for some of them. We have given our LSAs a student each to help every day which is great but it doesn't cover everyone. Under funding has been a disgrace for years. Good luck and hope everything goes well.

@mumsneedwine mine go to an independent school with focus on pastoral care (i.e. a school
for children with mild additional needs), and the provision is excellent.
i am however angry about having been forced into the private sector (all our disposable income goes on school fees), and being called names for sending my kids to a private school on top.
State schools are so bled dry, they just don’t work anymore. Teachers can’t help that.
However, the opposition’s brilliant idea to just get rid of private schools was even worse - it would just make sure that even less kids get an education. the whole system is a disgrace

@myself2020 I am angry for you too. My school has a specialist unit attached for a small number of students with physical and autistic difficulties. We are lucky that it is very well funded as we have charitable donations as well as state funding. We have a very clever business manager !
But I do wish I had more LSAs in every classroom to help. For now, I have sent some of my students video recordings of personalised lessons so they can access the work. But it's not as much as I'd like to do.
Maybe people will realise the under finding after all this,in both the education and care sectors.

Dd2 year 9 replaying her first zoom lesson she is getting so much more out of it than sheets and internet. Am jealous tbh would love to be doing gcse English her teacher taking a feminist perspective she’s very good. For secondary it seems to be effective for academic subjects anyway

I’m an international teacher (recently was in UK though) and my experience echoes those who mentioned international schools above. Ours is not a private school but the understanding was from the very beginning that we needed to provide some sort of meaningful, interactive teaching to our students. We had a plan from Y1 up to use google classroom live, but in the end our youngest (up to y4) never stopped attending. It worked absolutely fine, it wasn’t as good as face to face teaching, no one suggested it could be, but we did a tech audit with our children and pretty much everyone had access to at least a smartphone that they could use to access the online material, we offered those who wanted to the opportunity to borrow chromebooks from the school but actually very few did.

We got better at using classroom as time went on, but the many safeguarding shouts that seem to come from U.K. teachers really seem to be of negligible risk using classroom, no one can join unless they are in the class, all meetings can be recorded start to end, children don’t have to turn on their cameras. Teachers can choose to or choose just to present behind a PowerPoint or other presented material. I liked to be visible but that was my choice. On another thread I was accused of just “lecturing” the children and there was generally a huge amount of defensiveness from U.K. teachers who seem to have the attitude of “this is not what we do so it’s impossible”.

We supplied a big bundle of material to each student before we shut down, we had been gathering it for a week and had scoured the schemes of work to get it all together- of course somethings got missed but hours of preparation before we went off meant they had most of what we needed them to and so we didn’t have to ask them to print everything out.

Once in a lesson we would do a whole class introduction and then split them into groups of five or so to work on differentiated material, I visited every group in term to teach, guide, facilitate etc (it was lovely to join a conversation and hear them all discussing whatever we were doing) they also knew their “rooms” (where the small groups were) were being recorded so any issues could be addressed if necessary. We are back at school now and the feedback from parents and children has been overwhelmingly positive.

I am not suggesting this is the best or the only way to make online learning work but it did work for us and the majority of issues with it raised by U.K. teachers were possible to deal with. As for my own dc, the little one has his preschool every other day (so they could halve class sizes) but otherwise watched too much tv and dd (7) was doing a similar online programme with her own teacher so apart from occasional tech help, she was self- sufficient.

@NeverTwerkNaked I'm sorry, but what a privileged post about dance lessons etc online. Do you know some children don't have access to the internet? These are often the children whose parents use food banks, never mind pay for dance lessons. That's lovely your children can continue to access their hobbies online, but believe me this isn't an option for all families!

we parents are doing at least 60% of the teachers work for them via homeschooling

I provide my children with a space to work. I tell them when it's time to work and when to have a break. I print things that need printing. I very occasionally help with something if they get stuck. The teachers are providing the work, marking the work and chasing up for work not done. I'm barely doing anything really and not a Zoom lesson in sight. Completely unnecessary.

If you feel you are having to do too much for your children, speak to your school. It's got nothing to do with fucking Zoom. I simply do not understand the obsession people have with it.

@nobodyimportant that really depends how old your child is. giving your reception child a book/worksheet and telling then its time to learn to read is unlikely to be successful.

that really depends how old your child is. giving your reception child a book/worksheet and telling then its time to learn to read is unlikely to be successful.

Fair point, but pretty much Y1 onwards should be able to manage SEN aside. And honestly, if a child learns to read at age 5 or 6 instead of age 4 I really don't think it's going to affect their chance of getting into Oxford.

@nobodyimportant i would think more year 4/5 for new stuff. for repetition, no issue

i would think more year 4/5 for new stuff. for repetition, no issue

In KS1 repetition should be all they need, so they don't forget the stuff they do know.

Honestly, hand on heart, I don't think that missing one term of primary school, especially when everyone else is too, is really going to make a huge difference. What will make a far bigger difference is having parents who value education and encourage and enable their children to make the most of it.

I'm actually quite disgusted that people think their children who have access to the technology should be prioritised and taught at the expense of teachers being able to provide properly for the ones who don't. Those children are likely to be the most advantaged anyway and will be absolutely fine!

flatwhite I don’t think nevertwerk’s comment was about dance lessons. It was making the point that if online dance lessons can be done without the minefield many suggest blowing up in their faces, it should also be possible for schools to use the same technology. I take your point about the poorer families and it would definitely be important for schools going down an online teaching route to ensure families who did not have the right equipment could be loaned it.