Remote live teaching with my own children around.

[motherrunner]

Hello,

We are remote live teaching Yr 10 and Yr 12 and planning and uploading lessons for KS3. We are to continue to mark to policy and after Easter once Yr 11 and 13 would’ve had their study leave we are going to be assigned schemes of learning to prepare to upload. We are also have twice weekly form tutor periods, a dept meeting and a staff meeting all live via a stream.

I am really struggling with the live teaching as I have my own children (8 and 5) at home. So far it’s just been 1 lesson a day but Thursday I will have 2 x doubles so 4 hours where my children will need to entertain theirselves.

Is anyone else going through this? Any suggestions how to cope?

Our HT started with wanting the most dynamic, meaningful (but easy for parents to manage) pieces of work to be set that would then be able to be marked and assessed when the kids return (in about a month, according to the HT) so we can then use it for our levelling.

Yep - out of the window as soon as we argued that it can't all work like that - and 1/3 of my class haven't looked at what I set yesterday, never mind today too.

I wouldn’t want anywhere in my house on a live stream either, never mind the children!

@Onceateacher I’ve been checking the Union website and the advice as it stands today is all work from home should be ‘reasonable’, obviously I have a different interpretation of that to my HT.

I’ve tried contacting the union rep in my school before on another issue and she replied with ‘that’s just the way things are here’.

What’s worrying me is that another friend has told me that it could be deemed as ‘neglect’ for my own children.

I’m not a teacher but I would call their bluff I think. I doubt they’d dare not pay you when it came to it and by then the Union will be contactable and will no doubt back you up. It’s completely ridiculous to expect that much of you when you’ve got your own kids to care for. I’d even consider contacting the local authority as you can’t get in touch with the union. I hope you get it sorted.

@motherrunner I think I heard you be violently sick and that sounds like it will return over the next 24hr period and your kids may then get it so tommorow and the next few days you'll have to call in sick as you won't be able to live stream.

A bonus of having children

The slt at our school have discouraged this. They say apparently unions discourage it. What an awful pressure. Additionally, I don't think my internet could take it.

Yes, I think you must be very ill!

Maybe you'll find your internet is down tomorrow. Not enough 4g to cover that amount of live streaming online.

@CheekyMango You are cheering me up!

I have emailed the local union rep so I will await a response.

I think another challenge I have is that I’m the only staff member I know who has young children. My HoH and second don’t have children and other staff members have much older children who can work independently.

@bettyboo40 You make a good point. Whilst I was uploading some files this afternoon I found it very slow.

As a parent with a school aged child, I think what you're being asked to do is utterly unreasonable. You should be helped to care for your own children, as well as support your pupils where possible.
I would say to your head that you'd appreciate their help as it isn't possible to care for your children adequately teaching X hours a day. Put the problem at their doorstep & let them solve it. Sorry, I wouldn't normally take that attitude, but Utterly unreasonable.

This Is absolutely ridiculous. Our HT absolutely forbade us from live streaming. He also banned parents of young children from coming to school to look after the children of key workers. I feel guilty but the argument is that, as parents, we are doing our bit by looking after the children in our homes.
In any case, I’m not joking when I say that I’m flat out home schooling my own 9 til 3. Their school’s online platform is working really efficiently and they are tearing through all the work. I’m not sure a non teacher would necessarily be able to support everything they are doing, but there have to be some bloody benefits to having a teacher parent! Meantime, your own DC are seeing no benefit from having a teacher at home. Time to put a stop to this surely?

I would phone the union directly.

You can't really pull the "I feel a cough coming on" as we're now all at home anyway @motherrunner😜 but there are sickness bugs doing the rounds 😉

I'm the only one with a young child in my school dept, too, so I was worried endlessly about being seen as skiving off.

In the end I hoisted up my big girl pants and emailed the head explaining my situation. He was great about it and much more understanding than I'd expected, and we came to a reasonable medium. Please, do the same. Reach out to your head and explain your circumstances.

Good luck.