Reply to I'm an MCPS elementary school teacher...AMA

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]Screens for me but not for thee should be the MCPS motto[/quote]

[b]Teacher mostly use screens to engage and occupy kids while they work with other kids. For instance, our teachers use screen time (with educational apps) for kids during small group time, because the screens keep the kids she's not working with engaged so she can provide direct instruction during that time. It's a tool to help her do her job.

This is akin to a parent letting a child watch a TV show while they make dinner -- using screens to facilitate parenting.[/b]

But it is different than a parent planting a kid on a tablet so the parent can sit and stare at their own phone. THIS is the behavior a lot of us are objecting to. If teachers were putting kids on screens so they could sit in the corner of the classroom and scroll twitter, trust me, people would be upset about it. And that is precisely what a lot of parents do with their kids and it's why their kids are addicted to screens. No kid is developing a screen addiction because they spend 20 minutes on a Chromebook doing a math app while waiting for their teacher to get to their small group.[/quote]

Many of us would prefer this mot be the case. I do not want my kid using these educational apps that are still a passive distraction. And I do not want her to be “occupied” every second of the day. I would much prefer she read, draw, do a worksheet or do something else rather than be handed a screen. Just like when I make dinner and she occupies herself without a screen.[/quote]

Sure, I would also prefer that it not be the case. But I live in reality. I wish teachers always had smaller classes and an aide who could work with other kids and keep them engaged. I wish all the kids were showing up to class with the skills to work independently for stretches of time (as my kids are). I also wish parents weren't sometimes so stretched for time that they desperately need a distraction they can count on for their kids while they make dinner.

If my options were perfect, I would send my kids to schools with small class sizes, plenty of support for teachers, and a parent community who prepared their kids for classrooms. My options are not perfect. I'm not going to yell at teachers who have 24 3rd graders in a classroom for letting 16 of them spend time on a Chromebook while the teacher works with a group of 8 offering good, meaningful instruction. I don't love it, and I wish we all had better options. But it's not the teacher's doing. And a lot of the kids in that classroom have ZERO skills for quietly working if they don't have a tablet, and that's their parents' doing, not the teacher's.[/quote]

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