Over the past few weeks in the San Antonio Charter Moms discussion group we’ve had several threads with teachers expressing their struggles with adapting to distance learning, and also parents venting about the challenges of supervising their children’s education at home. Talking about these challenges helps teachers and parents to understand each other, treat each other with grace and forgiveness, and look towards the future of rebuilding relationships once we can go back to campus.
Teachers’ concerns: They are spending more time working from home. Suddenly, they have to move their lessons from in-person to online. Some of them have their own children to care for and educate. They miss their students, colleagues, leaders, and traditions.
Parents’ worries: They may be working from home, or reporting to work in essential jobs (e.g., health care), or may have lost their jobs. Supervising remote learning is not the same as from-the-ground-up homeschooling. It’s a challenge to supervise young children closely, and to motivate teens (and get them out of bed). The families who do have access to laptops/tablets and internet are asked to install apps and log in to multiple websites.
We are all under a lot of stress right now. As long as we remember that learning can happen anywhere, and treat each other with understanding, we can build stronger partnerships between teachers and parents.
