To tell the teacher to tell the children to MUTE THE BLOODY LAPTOP

[samanthawashington]

Listening in to the homeschooling, trying to keep my primary age child concentrating (in itself a full time job) trying to nudge him to answer the questions and talk to him about the task, I was completely put off by the other children constantly asking questions, talking over each other and asking bloody irrelevant questions. Like questions about Neighbours and hamsters. DS mutes himself as he was asked to do and only unmutes when asked to by the teacher. If we mute everyone we can't hear instructions and end up lost on the topic. I've emailed about this already, AIBU to email again. Its hard enough as it is! Do children interrupt during real classes?

I mute everyone on Teams lessons and get them to type responses in chat. Year 7 still manage to be cacophonous, just typing.

DD' s teacher uses Zoom - after 5 minutes hellos, mutes them, does her bit, unmutes for questions, reads a story then unmutes them to have a chat amongst themselves and say goodbye.
Earlier years more frenetic - I think the aim was more social for some of it and there was more Q+A involved. Mine only want to be on mute tbh, we go on them out of politeness more than anything (they aren't compulsory and only once a week).

Yes, children interrupt quite a lot but you can tell them off when they are in front of you! Ii imagine teams and zoom is more like performance-teaching for Ofsted although my favourite colleague is the same in every situation ever whoever's watching, has no fucks to give and tells it like it is. Kids and parents love her.

Still my favourite skit of last year!

I am whipping through the specification due to online and not having to sort out in class behavioural issues or students getting lost between lessons. Teams gives me ‘only presenter’ power

I'd be very pleased if there was a bit of chat in my lessons - it's mostly silence and staring at initials on a screen.
It's a delight to just hear those who turn their microphones on to answer the register.
I think you're barking up the wrong tree, OP, and that it's a good thing for your dc to be able to hear a bit of normal chitchat from their classmates.

@HomeschooIerRockthemicrophone I love that clip

@Armi

I mute everyone on Teams lessons and get them to type responses in chat. Year 7 still manage to be cacophonous, just typing.

I popped in on Y7 DS in his science lesson the other day: the chat constantly popping up included things like a girl posting “I’ve cut my dad out of my life - do you think that’s wrong?” I imagine the teacher followed up on that one after...And some kids posting how bored they are! So rude! I told DS to turn the chat off but he can’t as questions are often posted there by the teacher.

We use Google meet and we all mute ourselves and unmute when it's our turn. I say we because it's a reception class so the vast majority of kids have a parent just out of shot who controls the buttons. But the kids are great and know to wave or thumbs up if it's just a quick question, and unmute properly when it's their turn. They also know to pause before answering so we hear the whole answer depending how quick their mouse finger is.

Quite sad, in retrospect.

Do children interrupt during real classes?

Ha ha ha ha ha ha

Yes 136,486,028,578,294 times a day.

That's why when little Bobby says "the teacher is mean and is picking on me", no it isn't it's because you won't bloody shut up Bobby!

My sons teacher mutes everyone and they put a virtual hand up and she invites them to speak in turn. There is the odd daft question but mostly they share their work and ask questions about the topic she is talking them through or that they have just done.

She lets them have a mad five mins on the chat sometimes and they sometimes play games also, as this is also an important piece they are missing - the socialisation.

But I reckon a teacher who. Is poor at class control online is possibly poor at face to face crowd control anyway.

@maddening no I can control tricky classes in person no problem and mostly online is fine but my slow IT skills let me down from time to time, different skill set.

The first few zoom assemblies my kids had (primary) were an absolute cacophony of noise and feedback from unmuted children and multiple teachers in different classrooms trying to chat to each other not wearing headphones with inbuilt speakers/mics. Utterly confusing for kids who couldn’t understand what was going on and totally pointless as a way of communicating. It’s got better over the last couple of weeks but a very poor start given this tech has been so widely adopted and used over the last year in most work settings.

Were other work settings brilliant at using it straight away with no hitches with a bunch of children?

Sick of kid's parents wandering in and chatting.
So it's alright for you to be there, but not the other parents?

Tbh, I would expect parents to be around to assist with any tech issues, but not sitting there at the computer, and would find it really off-putting to have parents sitting in on my lesson.

I would assume a bunch of 5 year olds on Teams is slightly different to a business meeting on Teams.

I am amazed someone asked if children are as noisy in a real classroom. I was a parent volunteer when DC in Primary School. I always thought be it would be good for some parents to be a fly on the wall to see what their little darlings got up to, when they used to moan at me at the school gate about their child being told off again for being disruptive. Low level disruption was pretty much constant in some classes.

@thesunrising But the issue you describe is about training the children, not a failing on the teachers' part. My first week of lessons with my small class had a lot of teething issues, like children telling me I wasn't on their screen. When they're all using different devices, that takes time to sort out. I accepted we'd have a week of slower progress and we did - after that it's been pretty smooth sailing. As has been pointed out several times, on a lot of the main platforms you can't mute children so are relying on children or their parents to do it themselves.

We have assembly on Fridays. Chaos for a few minutes as everyone joined, then we all muted and on we went. It was lovely to see everyone.

Your child's teacher clearly is not doing well teaching remotely...it's not easy, to be fair, but the option to 'mute all participants' is hardly the most challenging of our current issues! I'd definitely email again and ask why they are allowing this free-for-all! It's not acceptable.

My lovely Year 2s are brilliant at following instructions, and do what they are asked instantly...on their own too. I'm so impressed with them 🥰 No reason why your child's class can't (or won't!) do it 🤷‍♀️

Emails are not the way to make a point the second time. Perhaps phone and leave a message with the school admin team to pass on, assuming you cannot talk directly to the teacher.

Ask because once children become adults and go into the world of work, a good chance that remote working and Zoom/Teams or other calls will take place for many of them.

As for Neighbours, at least it's not the violent Eastenders they are talking about.

@peak2021

Emails are not the way to make a point the second time. Perhaps phone and leave a message with the school admin team to pass on, assuming you cannot talk directly to the teacher.

Ask because once children become adults and go into the world of work, a good chance that remote working and Zoom/Teams or other calls will take place for many of them.

As for Neighbours, at least it's not the violent Eastenders they are talking about.

Most of the Admin team are working from home. Just send an email; it's exactly what they have to do to reach the teacher as well.

This is what happens in real classrooms, but sadly we cannot mute children in real life.

It's one of the bloody dads on DS3's calls who needs muting. The teacher is trying to talk to another child, and you've got UberHomeschoolingDad telling either telling his child off for not producing the works of William Shakespeare in the 15 minute writing lesson, or effusively praising his child for producing the works of William Shakespeare better than William Shakespeare himself. He never. shuts. up. If the teacher mutes him, he just unmutes himself so that everyone can get the benefit of his superior child-educating skills. He doesn't even mute himself if he's on the phone, or having an argument with his wife.

My dd's school has been absolutely amazing this term. Zoom lessons 3 times per day, worksheets in Google classrooms that can be edited online then turned in electronically so no printing or writing out by hand. Completely different from last year.

DD is year 1 and the teacher will mute everybody and ask them to unmute to answer questions. There is an extra teacher in every meeting that mutes children that have managed to unmute themselves, answers typed questions and ushers stroppy parents into breakout rooms for a chat. Almost every parent has been overheard losing their shit during the class. It happened to me, apparently leaning on the space bar unmutes you and everyone can hear you snapping at your child to just sit still!

My DC's schools have done an amazing job with online lessons. All muted and hands raised icon (plus frantically-waving actual hand!) when they want to answer a question.
The only issue I have is kids using the chat function to answer maths questions. The teacher asks a question and gets the kids to write down an answer then asks if they have worked it out, hands go up and someone is asked for the answer. Perfect in theory. But in reality, the class maths whizzes type the answer into chat really quickly, then loads of other kids copy them and spam the chat with the same answer. Meanwhile, my DS is getting into a panic because he is still working it out and seemingly every other kid is firing the answer into chat!

They are told not to do it daily, but it still happens!