Teachers not doing live lessons

[Imsosorryalan75]

As an ex teacher, I know how hard it must be to be working online. I'm now a TA but my stress levels over lockdown are sky high. Before I approach my head, I wanted some perspective from those in the thick of it as it were.
We currently are on a rota system in school but Ta's days in school have just been increased. We are now working 5 days week compared to teachers, who are working 1 day a week in class. Teachers are at home planning lessons, marking and answering parental/child emails but not live teaching at all.
Is this justifiable? How is it working in your school? I guess I'm wondering why it's ok for us to be in every day at increased risk to us but not teachers?

I am a TA. Every member of staff , unless unwell or shielding, is working in school. There is a possibility that teachers may be allowed to take their ppa time at home.
We are two form entry, so one teacher is teaching the children who are in school and the other is teaching the live online maths and English sessions, as well as recording the videos etc for the other online lessons. Every member of staff, TAs included, is running live sessions - I run 15 each week, for SEN children who would normally get support in school. Some LSAs are also having live sessions with their 1:1 children, if the children are not in school. Time available after preparing each online session, is spent finding support resources that are suitable for home use (u surprisingly, most children don't have access to the same resources we use in school) and making welfare calls home.
It is very full on and I wonder how long we can sustain this level of work, given that we have not had a week where every member if staff was actually in school, so those who are in are constantly having to reorganise their days to ensure the disruption to the provision is minimised.

I am a teacher. I am not doing live lessons.
I am, however, recording myself doing lessons for every single lesson throughout the day and sending them home. I am then going in and teaching CW/V children every day (we are not on rotas at all). The parents prefer recorded lessons as they are more flexible/can be paused/can be rewatched. Do not underestimate how difficult it is to keep up with parental questions via email at all hours of the day and night (that’s the thing that is the most exhausting and demanding).

Please don’t question the commitment of schools not doing live lessons. I spent all last weekend recording lessons for the week just gone and I will do the same this weekend. It would be much easier for me to just do live lessons but it would not work for our families with shared devices/lots of children at home/parents who work during the day.

YABVU to not title this thread 'Teachers in my school not doing live lessons.
It's yet another one of those threads....

All private schools provide live lessons and pupils are making progress. Many who could moved from the state to private system after the first lock down because of this.

Barring daily online register when the teacher gives the overview of his day my nephew’s KS1 prep school day isn’t very different to my similarly aged state school child.

Every child should have a device of their own now. Parents should buy if they can and, if they cannot, there are so many schemes, from government schemes to school sponsored schemes to charities, which will provide both device and internet access.

Well they don’t.

No live lessons here - and I'm very glad for it.

Schools and communities are also helping not just the government.

This isn't available to everyone though. I teach in a deprived area and sadly there have been no community programmes available to our pupils.

@Imsosorryalan75

Thanks for the messages. I'm not an advocate of live lessons. My point was more the unequal shift system where ta's are putting themselves more at risk, being in class daily.

The title of your thread isn’t helping.

But even if the teachers were doing live lessons you’d still be in school lots more than them.

It does depend on the situation in your school I would say. A teachers time is not necessarily best spent live teaching to 5/6 students, when a greater proportion might engage with a video.

I'm doing a mixture of recording and lives depending on the task, and sometimes I've no choice but to pre record because I have my baby with me.

Year 2 teacher here...in school every day (just like I was during the first lockdown). I have over 2/3 of my class in school...so much for 'bubbles' then 🤷‍♀️ Our school is over 65% capacity, with the biggest numbers in KS1...tails off slightly in KS2, but not by much tbh.

I'm delivering live remote teaching 3 hours a day...8am-9am, lunchtime (when my in school 'bubble' are having their lunch) and 3.15-4.15. No break for me AT ALL! It's horrendous and I'm exhausted.

Our TAs are mostly at home, so no support in school. I can't go on much longer.

There are two issues here. The live lessons and the fact that support staff are seemingly at more risk. On the live lesson issue, I think you've had a good response and indeed a little bit of research/ thinking about it should lead you to the conclusion that live lessons are not always best and in many cases cause greater inequality. However you do have a point about support staff being in 5 days a week and being at more risk. Are you unionised? What do they say about this? Have you expressed concerns to your manager? This is also happening at DH's school, teachers at home support staff in school. It doesn't seem fair to me actually.

It depends on how big your school is and how many children are in aa to what works.
We have 2 form entry so the teachers are alternating weeks. One week home doing all the home stuff and one week in. If there is only one teacher with a small number in i guess they need to be home as a TA can deliver the learning pack.

@BumbleBeegu
I'm delivering live remote teaching 3 hours a day...8am-9am, lunchtime (when my in school 'bubble' are having their lunch) and 3.15-4.15. No break for me AT ALL! It's horrendous and I'm exhausted.

No break at all is outrageous! Ours has been shortened to half an hour but at least we still get one. You really should refuse to use your lunch break for live lessons and should use your union to fight your corner on this one, you’ll end up seriously I’ll if you keep going like that.

*I’ll not I’ll - stupid autocorrect

We aren’t doing live lessons.
Lots of our parents have said that they like to fit school work in around other commitments and what works for their child. A number of parents working from home have said that they have moved the weekend so their child does school work on the weekend but has two days off in the week. Others have said that they fit it in around the babies nap, feeds etc.
I feel that for the parents pre recorded lessons are much better than live ones.

*bloody hell - ill - must switch the autocorrect off

I teach part time (1.5 days)
We are all in school. This is my day.
Children in school - 10
Children at home - 20
TAs in class with me - 2 (one EHCP child with CP)

All work in uploaded to Showbie and all children do the same work.

8.45 children in school do morning task in books whilst I have a Teams meeting with home children for 30 mins.
9.15 - 9.45 Joe Wicks for all
9.45 - maths. I’m on Showbie for chat with home children throughout lesson
10.30 - break
11.00 Teams meeting to go through answers with home children.
11.20 Children start next task - usually grammar or comprehension
1.15 - Topic for the afternoon. I upload all materials onto Showbie - usually a PowerPoint I make, plus video links and any worksheets children need to use.

I am on Showbie all afternoon to mark the morning work and give feedback.
TAs support children in class and sort out any issues - like laptops crashing!!!
It’s hard!!!

@ILoveMyMonkey I know...I'm already getting serious heart palpitations, something I've never experienced before. As a school staff, we have raised this and been told that as we are in RI we can't be seen to 'drop the ball' and risk an Ofsted call. I say bring it on! I think even Ofsted would be horrified by the expectations being placed on us!

It is nothing to do with the teachers, op. It is poor management. If teachers been instructed no live lessons, that is from management and government actually Are they recording lessons? Are they creating learning suitable for distance learning? Are they adapting resources? How are they contacting parents and how frequently? As that takes hours. Have they been told to re-do schemes and assessments? Or do you just not know?

Your issue is what you are doing. So that should be your starting point for discussion. How could your time be better spent? What work could you be doing from home to benefit the school more than looking after the key worker children?

How is it justifiable not to do live lessons?

Research, and even the government guidelines, all state that live lessons are usually no better (or worse) than pre recorded lessons.

Not all schools have the means to do live lessons effectively.

Not all school communities actually want live lessons.

We have 40-50% of children in school right now. All of our teachers and TAs, bar one, are in school full time with classes. The teachers get 2 half days out of class for producing remote learning and giving feedback, for found a daily welcome video as well as the lessons, for calling families weekly and for doing a short live zoom call for the whole class. . They do the rest in their own time. The one not in school (me) is due to health conditions and they are overseeing all remote learning, setting it all up, providing almost constant contact points for parents via messaging and email - long long hours right now.

Our school catchment and community is not ideal for live lessons. The vast majority of our families don't want them. Many of our children (infants) don't enjoy the live weekly session as it is, many find it too much and don't live being on the screen and/or seeing their teacher/class in the screen. We have a lot of families who,are working from home, sharing devices with parents and siblings, who don't have several devices, who don't have a lot of wifi, etc, so,this is why we justify non live lessons.

Some people, on MN mainly, think live lessons are the golden ticket. Reality is that for many they just aren't suitable and alternatives are a better solution.

@BumbleBeegu
@ILoveMyMonkey I know...I'm already getting serious heart palpitations, something I've never experienced before. As a school staff, we have raised this and been told that as we are in RI we can't be seen to 'drop the ball' and risk an Ofsted call. I say bring it on! I think even Ofsted would be horrified by the expectations being placed on us!
That is so awful, someone needs to hold your SLT to account for that - OFSTED would not be impressed, where’s the staff well-being? I hope as a staff you are involving your unions.

Every child should have a device of their own now

We are infant school. We aren't eligible to receive any devices from the government scheme, we have applied for some from the local Lea scheme (businesses provided them) but have not heard back. Some generous parents have donated 2 or 3 devices to school and they are with some families now.

But the reality here is that we have a number of families who have one device (usually an old laptop or very old tablet) between them - often parents and 2 or 3 siblings. We have children trying to access remote learning from an old phone with limited mobile data.

@Imsosorryalan75

Thanks for the messages. I'm not an advocate of live lessons. My point was more the unequal shift system where ta's are putting themselves more at risk, being in class daily.

So why is the title of your thread about teachers not doing live lessons. Your annoyed you have to go in everyday and are actually having a dig at teachers to prove your point. Glad I don’t work in your school and find it sad you would set up a thread this way. Fwiw every member of staff is in at my school simultaneously teaching kids in class and online would that make you feel better ?

It’s justifiable because it’s advisable not to have too many staff in the workplace at one time. If you only need a limited number of staff to be in school supervising the keyworker/ vulnerable students then it makes sense to use TAs to do this because there is unlikely to be an awful lot they can do WFH, especially as it’s unlikely they have been allocated resources such as laptops. Teachers on the other hand should have the technology to already be completing tasks from home (ie: a work issued laptop) and will have a lot of paperwork in terms of planning/ assessment/ preparation/ meetings and emails etc which they are able to complete from home. It makes sense therefore to fill the ‘hands on’ shifts first with the staff who can’t WFH (Eg: TAs) and leave the WFH shifts for those staff who actually have a workload they can do from home (Eg: teachers).

My dc school is keeping teachers at home and TAs supervising at school, because if a teacher falls ill it will impact learning for all the children.
A TA falling ill just means a kw bubble isolating, but they will still be able to access learning from home.

@Imsosorryalan75

Thanks for the messages. I'm not an advocate of live lessons. My point was more the unequal shift system where ta's are putting themselves more at risk, being in class daily.

That is the way your school,has set it up. The school management must have set it this way.

At my school every class currently has a teacher and a TA in it. The teachers do have some time out of class to produce remote learning - usually 2 half days a week. Some of our TAs also get a half day out in order to provide remote learning tasks.

I am the only teaching staff working from home. It's because I have health conditions and have been quite ill following covid. My current role can actually done more effectively at home where I have better tech and better wifi, My headteacher is helping to protect my health right now by allowing this, she doesn't have to. If it makes you feel any better though, I am working far longer hours than when I work in school itself, including into the evenings and at weekends.

Fwiw, I'm actually a HLTA right now, not a teacher. I am also an ex teacher like yourself.