HOW do people not know this yet???

[tututastic]

DD6 is in year 1, class of 25 children. In each lockdown the school has had 2 live lessons a week on Teams and the rest is self taught.

Without fail, there are 5 + kids whose parents refuse to mute their mics. Why??? The poor teacher has posted messages and asks spends most of the lesson asking kids to all mute whilst she’s speaking but the same handful ignore her constantly. I just can’t understand why? Their kids interrupt constantly, there are younger kids and pets making noise in the background, and the feedback makes the call awful for everyone else. I know from a private chat that one of DD’s friends with SEN who is sensitive to lots of conflicting voices has been driven off the call. DD really struggles to follow through the noise as well.

AIBu to not understand people who don’t mute themselves as a courtesy in large online meetings?

@tillyTopper I get that you are being deliberately goady, so shouldn't bite, but you do realise a lot of private tutors are also state school teachers and a lot of (most) private teachers were trained in the state sector at the government's expense. Often with a grant or golden hello.

We are not two different breeds!!

This drives me potty! The teacher is constantly muting everyone but they just keep unmuting themselves. And it is always the ones with loads of background noise going on!

And it means the unmuted ones shout out the answers while the children waiting with their hands up don't get a chance. The teachers are good at ignoring the shouting out and asking one of the children with their hands up but it must make things harder for them.

Our teacher is great, she'll ask the children in question to mute themselves and if they don't she says she'll put them in the waiting room until they do - magically they all learn how to do it at this point.

DS's school uses Google meets (as do we in work and you can't mute others using that.

Also on Zoom if you mute everyone, you can't unmute them they have to do that themselves so if you ask them to speak they need to know to unmute themselves

I don't know about Teams, I hardly ever use it

DD in Y8 has 4/5 live lessons per day, and she's mentioned several times that there is one boy -- who has always thought of himself as superior to everyone else, they were at primary together - who constantly un-mutes himself to say things during lessons, unnecessary things, whilst the rest of the class follow the rules. Fucking annoying for her, I would imagine the rest of the class and the teacher too.

@TillyTopper

The teacher herself can "mute all". Not difficult.

I have been really shocked by the level of technical ineptitude seen from some. However, private tutors and private schools (yes I've experienced of both) seem to grasp it quickly and use it productively.

I. Don't. Have. Any. Words. I wonder which sort of establishment your kids are educated at?

Some people aren't very bright. That seems obvious but after being a SAHM for a number of years I was really nervous about returning to the workplace and appearing stupid. I needn't have worried as there's lots of people out there who seem to lack listening skills/common sense, it's actually shocked me but has certainly helped kick my inferiority complex to the kerb! I can't count the number of times I've been in a zoom meeting and a participant asks inane questions in the chat or more often asks about something someone has just covered in depth

I don't get it either. I would message the teacher privately and suggest she mutes everybody, that's what my DDs teacher does.

I. Don't. Have. Any. Words. I wonder which sort of establishment your kids are educated at?

Probably not charm school

Sweet Jesus you are NOT being unreasonable!!!
Just this morning we had to listen to a mum tell her ‘D’ child “I know you know the answer but Mrs X isn’t asking you this time” for the 100th time.
This kid is constantly interrupting and at times the Mum too, just in case the teacher hadn’t realised he wanted to contribute (again).
Sigh. We are at the point of leaving too. I would send a message to the WhatsApp group but this mum would probably turn it into an argument and I can’t be arsed!

And don’t get me started on the kids left in front of the device by themselves who can’t work out how to turn the mic off despite being told too by the teacher every lesson.

This is surely the case in real classrooms, too?
The same old disruptive kids.
Extraneous background noise is worse online, as one’s ear cannot tune in to specific voices.

Parents answering for their kids is clearly absurd, and helps no one.

Happens in all my online uni classes too.

I actually heard a dad ask the mum whether she had got the chicken out of the freezer the other day.

Does Teams have a "mute all" option for the host? I see it's been mentioned but I'm not familiar with Teams.
I know Zoom does because when my DC were in lockdown last year (I'm in Australia, sorry) that's what we were using and they were always muted for the lesson part, with a 5 minute unmute to ask questions.
There was also the Message facility for people who urgently needed to ask something while muted - does Teams have that?

It is incredibly rude of those families not to mute their mics during the lesson though. YANBU.

DC1’s teacher muted him last week when he was being a bit slow muting himself. His school is doing the live lessons on Teams.

I’ve got 2 primary school DC who typically have their live lessons at the same time, plus a pre-schooler, so I can’t keep DC3 out of the way of the lessons and keep an eye on both live lessons simultaneously. It’s just not possible.

The parents in your DD’s class may also have reasons why they can’t supervise their DC’s lessons. The kids may be unmuting themselves when the parent isn’t there, both of my primary age DC had figured out very quickly how to mute / unmute themselves.

Although it’s also possible that the parents don’t understand how to mute, or just don’t care.

Re: State and private school teachers, in my opinion if a teacher can teach and get good results at an inner city school, he or she is far superior to a private school teacher who has small classes of selected kids.

We had a maths tutor. Dr C who taught cannabis dealing teens from deprived inner city and he got very good results.

A teen came in with a huge bag of reeking weed and Dr C just said
“
I think we had better open a window, don’t you?”

He was good at non confrontational discipline.
He could teach anyone and get good results.

Retired now, but there will be many others like him.
Gifted teachers who can bring the most disengaged student around.

@Ilovenewyear

I actually heard a dad ask the mum whether she had got the chicken out of the freezer the other day.

Not for a work thing, but my DH has been known to ask inane questions on Book Club Zoom....

The teacher needs to set up the meeting with the option that they can’t unmute. They have control of this in the meetings options when they schedule the meeting. She can then get them to put their hands up button on when they want to answer a question or speak. The teacher then manually unmutes the individual student.

I asked precisely the same question last week OP!

You'll get the same answers too no doubt.

The worst situation for us is DS’s weekly Zoom Scouts meeting. They like to encourage chat which is of course lovely, but there is one kid who keeps up a running commentary throughout the whole meeting. It’s infuriating!

They were baking some biscuits a few weeks ago and we couldn’t hear the leader over the top of this kid. It took another Scout telling him to shut up for him to finally get the hint.

Same kids making inane comments every day and interrupting the class.
like a normal day in school then. If only there was a mute button in real life.

I totally agree with @oakleaffy teaching motivated students whose parents are paying for the privilege and want their money's worth is much easier than teaching deprived kids whose parents aren't interested.

Parents answering for their children is really annoying, though, I have experienced this in a different educational setting.

We've been using Teams in a professional setting (lots of relevant training available, no shortage of opportunities to practice) for almost a year now for the vast majority of meetings and my team are still having to sit in on things like Directors briefings (to upwards of 100 staff) so that there's someone who can pounce on the list of participants and mute the silly sods who are rearranging their desk, arguing with the cat, swearing at their OH/housemate or making their lunch in the background.

On one lovely occasion we had a visiting speaker interrupted by someone shrieking 'Roger! ROGER! Come here and tell me which bloody button is mute again, I can't remember! ROGER!!!' until one of us managed to switch her off. Then we had to keep re-muting her

From what I've heard from DS's school staff they haven't had a lot of training, don't have many options to customise how classroom sessions are set up, and are working with students using lots of different types of kit to access the lessons so I can understand them not being confident in issuing instructions or using all the available features.

I expect private school teachers get proper professional training on how to use the technology.

I knew I could never be a primary school teacher but listening to remote learning has confirmed it. Inane questions. Kids not listening, like, at all. Mics on/kids ignoring instructions and online you really only have 'the voice' as a discipline tool (apart from kicking people out). The vast differences in ability/ knowledge. Bloody hell it's exhausting to listen to, must be hell to do.

Oh yeah and the added factor of knowing there are (some) parents listening! Oof.