To dread homeschooling

[Johan23]

I’m in Scotland where the schools don’t go back to the 11th, and for a week it will be remote learning (I imagine it will be longer). In the last lockdown my son was still at nursery, so we didn’t have to homeschool.

It was still a freaking nightmare working from home as he wanted our attention all of the time.

Our work is going through a ridiculously busy period, and we are all expected to just “get on with it”. But, I am totally stressing as I really can’t bear to go through all this juggling again.

@BooksAreNotEssentialInWales

I'm not even trying again. DD refuses to even try at home. Being a parent is a relationship, being a teacher is a skilled professional role. Our school don't offer any live lessons and the materials they provide are beyond poor. If they want blended learning they need to do it properly.

This idea precisely it. 'Blended learning' can not ever be allowed to be an excuse for appallingly low quality provision, which is what so many had in the Spring.

If there was some accountability for quality of provision I wouldn't be against some blended learning when and where necessary. But it can not and must not be allowed to fail children in the way it did for so many last time.

Nice to see people already blaming schools because the government have asked secondaries to do a staggered start in January and become mass testing centres.

I could have written your post OP. I will have a 3yo and 8yo at home while trying to WFH. The last lockdown was hellish for us all and I'm not ashamed to admit I had a wee cry on Saturday after the FM's announcement.

@SkySports @BooksAreNotEssentialInWales what do you class as bad provision / no effort? We got twinkl worksheets emailed, mathletics online, and feedback emailed back once a week on a Friday afternoon (year 5). Interested to know if this is good or terrible as I have nothing to compare it to.

@SkySports Does your job involve you being in an unventilated room with 30 other people and no PPE? Teachers have literally been forced to risk their lives this term to educate your child. It’s criminal and they should not be expected to do it any longer. The government should have put money into schools to make them more Covid safe. They chose not to provide a penny. The fact that we are in this shit now is on them so your anger should be directed there. All of my teacher friends worked like trojans over lockdown, going above and beyond the provide work and online learning. If your school didn’t then that’s something to take up with your school as it sounds rubbish. But again, it was the government not taking charge which allowed this to happen. They said the curriculum was cancelled from March, therefore schools did not have to provide an education. They should have not cancelled the curriculum and set minimum standards. Schools that did provide anything actually went against government guidelines. Direct your anger where it should be but do not expect any human being to have to take the risks that teachers are expected to take in this pandemic.

[quote SoscaredforJan]@SkySports Does your job involve you being in an unventilated room with 30 other people and no PPE? Teachers have literally been forced to risk their lives this term to educate your child. It’s criminal and they should not be expected to do it any longer. The government should have put money into schools to make them more Covid safe. They chose not to provide a penny. The fact that we are in this shit now is on them so your anger should be directed there. All of my teacher friends worked like trojans over lockdown, going above and beyond the provide work and online learning. If your school didn’t then that’s something to take up with your school as it sounds rubbish. But again, it was the government not taking charge which allowed this to happen. They said the curriculum was cancelled from March, therefore schools did not have to provide an education. They should have not cancelled the curriculum and set minimum standards. Schools that did provide anything actually went against government guidelines. Direct your anger where it should be but do not expect any human being to have to take the risks that teachers are expected to take in this pandemic.[/quote]
Also true (sadly)

Maybe there’s just no answer.

I am very jealous of my friends secondary school who provided live zoom lessons from the starts. Her kids have to be up and dressed and in front of the screen for lesson start at 9am. My kids get some stuff on google classrooms or whatever it is

Ooops posted too soon. No live interaction for my kids at all. The primary was particularly invisible to us.

Just in case people missed this small bit vital part of SoscaredforJan's post.

The government suspended the curriculum in March. Schools were not obliged to provide either online education or education to the keyworker children they had on site.

The government is the appropriate agency to direct your ire about the spring/summer lock down provision at.

But will be glad if contact tracing in schools is abandoned. Multiple lots of 2 weeks of them sitting around at home perfectly healthy didn’t exactly work brilliantly for their education either.

I feel your pain op. I can either homeschool my children or work. Trying to do both is extremely difficult and is making me mentally ill. Work is manic and highly pressured, I'm a keyworker so we're expected to put in the hours and then some.

I'm beyond upset. DS 14 does go to a private school but last time none of this school hours zoom classes that all the private schools allegedly provide. Last time I didn't start complaining until he got his summer report saying he hadn't logged into one of the topics - and by that stage it was too late.

He's in S3 and just so damn happy to be back at school with his mates and his sports and really engaging in learning his chosen subjects. He only missed one day of term due to needing a test because of a cough and waiting until negative results came through.

It's the rumours that are killing me. Someone at our exercise class spoke to someone who works at the Scottish DoE and they reckon its until Feb half term at least.

I know I'm lucky that DS can mostly learn independently, but he needs school work to be appropriately and consistently provided and dammit he needs his friends and exercise.

@christinarossetti19

Just in case people missed this small bit vital part of SoscaredforJan's post.

The government suspended the curriculum in March. Schools were not obliged to provide either online education or education to the keyworker children they had on site.

The government is the appropriate agency to direct your ire about the spring/summer lock down provision at.

I would forgive them for the lack of provision in the early days. It’s easy with hindsight to say this or that should have happened. But they’ve all had 9 months to sort out live teaching now. I don’t expect to see a single twinkl worksheet, or promises that they’ll reply “when they can”.

I have already heard my year 8 won't be back, my year 11 is doing exams

Our school has already had three weeks off isolating- wk1- excellent online
Wk-2 some online
Wk-3 no online barely turned up for more than five mins

Very poor- where were the teachers?

Anyway, it feels like we are heading back to March

@rookiemere if that’s the case they better up
Provision for parents who aren’t classed as key workers but can’t work from home or are not furloughed

I’m not blaming the teachers or the school, it’s not their choice. And I’m sure this is a massive pain in the arse for teachers (especially head teachers) many of whom will have their own children to teach at home.

I’m not even blaming the government; I’m sure that if they could avoid having to shut schools, they would.

I’d love my work to let me take some holidays or unpaid time off, but I just can’t see that happening (or going down well if I asked)

I really hope it’s just for a week; that would be tolerable. But I think it will be a lot longer than that

Ds's off for the first week jan.
Dh and I recon it will be announced soon for a 6 week lockdown.

I'm dreading it already!

I would forgive them for the lack of provision in the early days

The government diretecd this, not schools

It’s easy with hindsight to say this or that should have happened

It's not hindsight. This information was available at the time

But they’ve all had 9 months to sort out live teaching now. I don’t expect to see a single twinkl worksheet, or promises that they’ll reply “when they can”

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/the_staffroom/4110138-Teacher-laptops

Oh, and teachers don't have to use their personal phones for work., either.

Can an employer dismiss you if you need to take some time off to look after your kids or just stick to your core hours?

It's clear that parents really rely on teachers. How about supporting them to safely and reliably do their jobs this time instead of leaving your children in the front line of fire? Wouldn't it be good if we didn't have this new variant which seems to strangely infect children more? It's almost as if it evolved in an environment where it was passed back and forth in a reservoir of children. Also, wouldn't it be nice if we could rely on having our children reliably in school for lots of the time?

I don’t expect to see a single twinkl worksheet, or promises that they’ll reply “when they can”.

Whoever said this needs to give their head a wobble. Wtf???

[quote Lemons1571]**@SkySports* @BooksAreNotEssentialInWales* what do you class as bad provision / no effort? We got twinkl worksheets emailed, mathletics online, and feedback emailed back once a week on a Friday afternoon (year 5). Interested to know if this is good or terrible as I have nothing to compare it to.[/quote]
We got a google classroom with sheets dumped on there shared between a whole year group, sheets that had to be printed and woefully badly formatted, no interaction with the school and bugger all else - couldn't do zoom lessons as too "dangerous"!!

Really, what did you think was going to happen? Mary Poppins beamed in as a hologram? A free VR headsets? Yes, there's gonna be worksheets, there's gonna be printing, there's gonna be things posted on google classroom. The reason there's so much of it is because people like you complain. You can get by on an hour a day in primary, maybe two in y5/6. At my school we're not behind because we did what parents could manage. You gotta fit it round the other shit you gotta do. Nobody likes it. But we've brought it on ourselves with the way we opened schools.

If you can think of a way to transplant the knowledge directly in to children's minds, I'm all ears. But in nearly every case, Twinkl have already done it and they've done it better than I can when it comes to distance learning.

Like everything else in life there's the people who just get on with it and the people who just can't seem to. It's no easier with 4 kids when you're a teacher yourself if you can't get a key worker place and your other half can't get furlough.

@iamusuallybeingunreasonable I remember this too. In the end I couldn’t bear to read any of the weekly emails from school talking about what’s going on there, and watching the pre recorded assemblies for the kids that were allowed in. It was a fine line - they were trying to be inclusive but it came across a bit “look at what your kids could’ve had if your job was deemed more worthy”.

I really want schools to stay open (by which I don't mean online lessons which my younger one didn't get any). The six months of no school we had from March to September felt like a nightmare that will stay with me forever. People who cry save NHS have no idea how much this is damaging people's mental health and putting strains on family relationship. At what cost are we trying to stop a virus that is not a lot more deadly than flu?

This is the kind of garbage that was sent for my dyslexic, dyspraxic, autistic child to "educate" him for 4 months.
Utterly inaccessible. Not even readable on a phone screen from the messaging app it was sent on.

Home learning was hopeless. With his autism, DS1 (9) couldn't cope with school life intruding into his personal life. DS2 (7) was just too immature and with an SEN sibling being hard work, he copied the act.

I have no drive left to manage another round. Especially at the hardest time of year with under-exercised, pent up children.

I didn't put DS1 in as vulnerable last time as it was not education provision and it would have been socially unstable for him. I would need him in school this time. Preferably with DS2 too because being isolated at home with only DS1 for company makes him display depressed behaviour.

School is supposed to be going down the video teaching route during isolations.... not sure how they will get on with teaching empty chairs for children who refuse to sit in front of a cmera and talk to anyone not physically present. 10 is getting too big to repeatedly hunt down, carry around the house and keep putting on a chair...

I sincerely hopr that school remains open before we break.

@Johan23

I’m in Scotland where the schools don’t go back to the 11th, and for a week it will be remote learning (I imagine it will be longer). In the last lockdown my son was still at nursery, so we didn’t have to homeschool.

It was still a freaking nightmare working from home as he wanted our attention all of the time.

Our work is going through a ridiculously busy period, and we are all expected to just “get on with it”. But, I am totally stressing as I really can’t bear to go through all this juggling again.

One hour of home schooling is worth 3 hours of 'at school' tutoring. Don't do everything they send, just a few chosen bits. Kids have got it tough at the moment. Lots of praise and don't shout or lose your temper if they don't want to do something. Go easy on them, and yourself.