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?

I'm amazed this still happens at work - people not muting themselves in meetings (frankly they look like idiots). But then I suspect they are the same people who "reply to all" on every email.

We have way more live lessons than that in reception, so clearly a young class all trying to ask ridiculous questions and talk but it works quite well really - the teacher mutes all. Sometimes she’ll then ask a particular child for their input (so they or their patent un-mute) and once it’s over she will then mute that person again remotely so it doesn’t drag on and on.

Ds's fwacher orobabky gets views of me in the background doing stuff and can orobably hear me washing up as well. Yes he can mute but then ds unmutes himself.

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.
Actually, the 'inane' questions are one way of assessing the child's (lack of) understanding and figuring out their train of thought was one of the things I enjoyed. Constant interruptions are something else, though. I think it must all be extremely difficult to deal with online and I'm glad I retired 6 years ago. Teachers have probably only had rudimentary training in the technology and most of the parents have had none.

@starfishmummy

Ds's fwacher orobabky gets views of me in the background doing stuff and can orobably hear me washing up as well. Yes he can mute but then ds unmutes himself.

I don’t mean this in a rude or mean way at all, genuine question. You don’t mention how old your DS is but could you tell him not to unmute himself unless needed or tell him to mute himself again when he’s done speaking?

@samanthawashington

I asked precisely the same question last week OP!

You'll get the same answers too no doubt.

Haha I thought I’d read every AIbu thread out of lockdown boredom but I must have missed yours

@starfishmummy

Ds's fwacher orobabky gets views of me in the background doing stuff and can orobably hear me washing up as well. Yes he can mute but then ds unmutes himself.

Do you see a problem with your son doing this?

@urbanmist

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.

Thank you, I’ll pass it on to the teacher in a private message

Whenever someone is on unmute in my uni lectures they are immediately pounced on with a barrage of "JOHN CAN YOU PLEASE MUTE" messages from other students.

If she is being ignored by someone, she should ask them by name to mute themselves, not just keep saying "can everyone please mute".

This is surely the case in real classrooms, too? The same old disruptive kids.

We have the standard annoying kid who won’t shut up in ds’s (year 4) class too.

After listening in to one particularly tedious session I commented on how irritating it must be to have to deal with the constant interruptions from this kid, and ds told me he doesn’t do it at all at school. I thought that was interesting.

The way teams is set up is not ideal for teachers / teaching that's the problem. It's also really annoying when you force mute everyone and they want to ask something - they put up a hand , you realize , unmute them , they realise then ask the question then you mute it really slows everything down.

@ThePlantsitter, it's not huge fun on zoom but I love it IRL! It is hard work and I guess the more parents that realise this the better - it would be nice for parents to recognise that their child is a PITA too but we live in hope on that one .

The host can mute everyone. It’s Easy to do I’ve had to do it for some of my teams calls.

@VenusClapTrap that is interesting! The two kids that are dominating my zoom lessons do exactly the same in school so they are not a surprise. What is a surprise is that both of them have mums in the background who are doing nothing to discourage it .

I know in DD's class there is a child who does all of the irritating stuff. Teacher gives him one warning and then he's put into the waiting room for the rest of the lesson.

His DM keeps it unmuted so the teachers can see that he is just as much a PITA at home, as at school.

@bumblingbovine49

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

@bumblingbovine49 The first person into a google meet has control and can mute people.

What could also be happening is the following - 6 year oldunmutes themselves (on purpose or accidentally). Teacher realises they are unmuted and goes to mute. Parent/child also realise they are unmuted and goes to mute at the same time. This results in the child being muted and unmuted again and background noise continues. And on it goes...

I put them all on mute, and lock it, for the first part of the lesson. Then they put their hands up to speak. After that I am individually muting the same few children over and over.

@CaptainMyCaptain

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. Actually, the 'inane' questions are one way of assessing the child's (lack of) understanding and figuring out their train of thought was one of the things I enjoyed. Constant interruptions are something else, though. I think it must all be extremely difficult to deal with online and I'm glad I retired 6 years ago. Teachers have probably only had rudimentary training in the technology and most of the parents have had none.

Yes I didn't really mean the inane questions about the lesson, that's fair enough. I meant the inane questions on a completely different tangent as if the child has been living in a little world in their head and then come back and realised they were supposed to be doing something! Which is cute, but I'm always so impressed how patiently the teacher deals with it .

Laughing at the attempt of goading.

My son attends school in one of the poorest wards in our town. I think there are more social workers per head than most other schools.

Yet their approach to learning is second to none, the teacher (2 years out of uni) has complete control and unmuting is not tolerated. She is brilliant. As the weeks have progressed the mute situation has practically vanished (Year 3).

We use Google Classroom and I think you can mute individually on there?

Must be really irratating for children and the teacher. However I'm surprised other children struggle to hear, aren't they used to the extra noise from the classroom?

HOW do people not know this yet???

and then

Ah right, I only ever use teams for school calls so didn’t know about the mute all facility

HOW did you not know, OP?!

@starfishmummy

Ds's fwacher orobabky gets views of me in the background doing stuff and can orobably hear me washing up as well. Yes he can mute but then ds unmutes himself.

Then make sure he doesn't.

It isn't really acceptable.

I wish our teacher (yr 3) would mute all at the start of the lesson. It's the same child constantly interrupting possibly 8-10 times a lesson and we have live lessons all day so honestly well over 50 interruptions from the same child every day. It's tiresome and frustrating and no matter how many times the teacher asks him to stop, he carries on. I really feel for the teacher you can hear her frustration, but surely she should be doing more? There is also a child that always unmutes, he has 4 siblings, the house is crazy and the noise is ridiculous, he unmutes several times a lesson and he can't even hear the teacher telling him to mute so it takes bloody ages! Honestly I'm so fed up of listening to live lessons 😬

@Herja

Happens in all my online uni classes too.

Eternal battle to try to persuade ours to turn mics ON these days (we're zoomed out).

As for the parent blaming judgement. School decided to reschedule all the class calls so, rather than being staggered like they were for those sharing devices or with siblings needing supervision... they're now at the same time - so 9am here involves me attempting to do an online lecture, two junior age kids logging on to a class call, DH logging onto his morning call so the kids ARE fecking well going to get left to it and the teachers can exercise some behaviour management skills to control the flow of it (we've made sure the kids know to use mute, where it is, and the rules but we are NOT in a position to stand over them both while juggling our own commitments and enforce it, along with all the other bloody home school work).

I see now the pandemic has given a whole new avenue for judgemental bastards on here though - to judge people's interiors, their kids' clothing when at home, and the fact people aren't able to pull an income out of their arses.