Reply to Why are parents so fixated on reopening schools in-person?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Parents need to learn how to parent. Maybe start living in joint families. [/quote]

How dare you? I know how to parent. And if someone would pay me $100,000 a year to teach my child that would be one thing, but I am being expected to do that for free. I have a job. I cannot do it and also a second, unpaid job that I am not being paid for and that forces me to work an additional 8 hours for free. FIX DISTANCE LEARNING and take responsibility for your students.[/quote]

So, I can come through zoom and wake your child up? I can give your child breakfast so that they can focus? I can take the legos, stuffed animals, and video games away from him so he can actually focus on learning? I can give him a quiet background so that he can learn? I can sit with him for 4 hours to review all that he/she refused to get during instructional time? I can do his assignments for him? I can prep him for tests since he missed a lot of assignments? I cannot do ANY of these things. I can provide instruction, encourage, mentor, and have additional zoom time within reason to help him/her but I cannot do all of the above. That is the parent's job. [/quote]

It's funny, because you actually can do most of these things, in a building called a school. You just refuse to.[/quote]

The problem with these arguments that DL provides an adequate education *as long as parents fill in all the gaps* is that if the job of teaching, especially at an elementary level, can be done over Zoom from your home while providing childcare to your own kids, then it probably shouldn't pay very much.

I know teachers are working a lot. The problem is that 90% of what they are doing isn't educating kids. They are troubleshooting technology, they are performing administrative tasks that administration to make unrealistic claims about attendance and participation. Even the actual instruction is so poor, not necessarily because the teachers are bad (though some of them are), but because none of them were trained to teach in this way and most do not have the skill set to do it effectively.

I am happy to admit that as a parent, I am doing a subpar job of helping my kid learn via DL. I'm trying my best, but I'm not an educator, I find the technology clunky and frustrating, and I'm distracted much of the time due to my own job and the stress of having the whole family working and learning in our house for months on end. But at least I can admit that. I'm not a good teacher! I am a great parent but I don't know much about how to teach a small child how to read. I would love to have an actual professional educator do it instead. But DL has not offered that.

So yeah, we should probably open schools, unless school districts can magically figure out how to make DL effective at teaching kids things like basic literacy. It's one or the other.[/quote]

+1 Spot on.

The parents who tend to talk about how much their child is learning in DL are people who don't really understand education and confuse "quiet and not bothering me in front of a screen" with actual learning.[/quote]

Mine are learning a lot, probably just as much if not more in school.  They are doing a heavy focus on writing which is fantastic.  My kids are camera on, fed and go to the bathroom.  They are one of the few who actually engage with the teacher and participate.  They attend all optional sessions as well except when told not to as they have demonstrated knowledge of the material.  We make sure all work is done, we make sure if there were errors or low grades and there is an option to redo that they redo and we work with them on the redo.  In person, you really don't get that much more but as parents we don't see what's going on.  I would like more than 2 hours a week per class and more homework.  The math homework is minimal and practice is important.  Mine are also in several social clubs at school after school.

We have always worked with our kids.  We taught them to read.  We taught the math facts, handwriting, typing and much more.[/quote]

I have always worked very closely with my kids and that is why I understand how poor DL is. I think people who praise DL generally don't have a good handle on education. [/quote]

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