Breathing Room: Three Ways to Be Less Overbearing in Remote Learning
“Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.”
I found myself replaying this iconic scene from The Wizard of Oz over and over this week as remote learning began. You remember it, right? The time when Dorothy and her crew finally make it to the Emerald City to see the Wizard, only to have Toto pull back the curtain and reveal that the great and mighty Oz is just an elderly gentleman with a small dashboard of mishmashed levers and widgets. Dorothy and her traveling companions feel duped and disheartened, and I find myself upset at Toto for getting in the way.
Kind of akin to the frustration I feel at COVID for putting us in this mess.
I have been struck by how the streaming of Zoom classes, and facilitation of online learning, is so similar to pulling back the emerald curtain. Suddenly, so much of the classroom environment that has been shrouded in mystery is revealed. What we, as teachers, do day-in and day-out—our lesson execution, behavior management, and student engagement—that has remained in the realm of the unknown until now, is splayed out in the open for all to see.
It’s great.
Really it is.
The problem that I have discovered in just a few days of online learning, is that Zoom lessons and SeeSaw activities and Nearpod lectures are not an adequate representation of the kinesthetic, tactile, vibrant learning that takes place when we are firing on all cylinders in the classroom. Glitter and glue, lively debates and group projects abounding with energy and enthusiasm—these dynamics don’t translate from behind-a-screen. The redirecting of distracting behaviors that occur on-the-regular in the classroom seem egregious online. The hiccups that come, even with the most thoughtfully planned and prepared lessons in school, appear to be voluminous landmines of catastrophic proportion in distance learning.
Parents everywhere seem to be concerned.
Distraught.
Worried when they hear their child’s name called out in an effort to bring their attention back to the lesson; worried that they have to be sitting next to them throughout the entire day to make sure they are on-track. Worried that if their child accidentally logs out of a Zoom meeting, inadvertently misreads their daily schedule, or forgets how to unmute themselves when called upon to answer a question, then remote learning in their household is a complete failure.
Hold the line, people—we are all okay.
No one likes it when things don’t go well. Teachers want the planning and preparation that they have spent hours upon hours designing and calculating to go off without a hitch. Parents and guardians, who have worked all summer getting their households set-up for success with distance learning, don’t want that groundwork to falter. And, believe me when I tell you, our students don’t want to let any of us down. But, the fact remains, such is life.
Picnics get rained on.
Someone gets carsick on a road trip.
Heels break and hemlines rip.
Life is messy, and imperfect, and the more we seek to control it, the more disastrous things can (and, usually do) become.
So, I want to give you all—the parents and guardians in the room—the chance to take a deep breath. You are okay. We are okay. Your kiddos are okay. My school’s theme for the year is “We are all in this together.” And I think it needs to be a motto adopted by everyone weathering 2020.
We’ve got this—together.
Here’s the hard part. In lieu of my usual “do this” and “try that” spirit, I’m going to levy for you a few “don’ts” this week. Because, even though I know that you are well-intentioned and seeking to be on-top-of-it-all, there are some lines that shouldn’t be crossed. In doing so, your best intentions are being hampered by overinvolvement and overstepping boundaries.
Ouch.
I promise, I don’t mean it harshly. Really, I don’t. Please embrace this list with the helpful, loving intention with which it is written.
1. Don’t chat with your child’s teacher on Zoom. Picture this: you’re in the next room when you hear your child’s teacher give directions for an activity. You, yourself, don’t quite understand what the teacher is asking of the class, so you head on in and ask your child to move over. You want clarification, which prompts you to open up the chat window and start an online dialogue with their teacher.
Let me start by saying that, on behalf of educators everywhere, we are so grateful for the parent partnership that has blossomed throughout school closures and online learning. We want to talk with you about it all. But not in the middle of class. Not when our attention and focus is suddenly taken away from the 30+ students we are trying to educate.
It is totally okay if you want us to clarify the parameters of an assignment, or elaborate on why we singled out your student when we did. But you need to remember that if we were in an actual classroom, you’d be at work. Or the gym. Or grocery shopping. You wouldn’t have the luxury of messaging us, in real time, every moment of the day. So please, wait until class has ended, and send us an email or a text, requesting for a time to meet. And, when the day has ended and our students have left our virtual care, we’ll get right back to you to sort things out.
2. Please give your child breathing room. When you drop your child off at school, you are giving them the opportunity to stretch the boundaries of their autonomy and independence. They are responsible for asking for help, getting out their morning snack, and transitioning from one class to the next. You aren’t there to give them the answer to an especially challenging Math question or remind them to pay attention.
The same thing has to happen in online learning.
I might seem hypocritical. Haven’t I asked you to keep an eye on your kids? To help us help them in staying on task?
Yep.
There is a distinct difference between wandering past their computer every hour or so and making sure they haven’t drifted to the alluring land of YouTube, and sitting next to them the whole time. Some kiddos are prone to distraction— if so, increase your frequency from every hour to every 30-minutes. Send their teachers an email with your concerns so that they can share with you techniques for better keeping them engaged (noise cancelling headphones, for example). You sitting next to your child all day isn’t practical, and it is detrimental to their development of coping skills for operating on their own. We’ll all be back in the classroom eventually, and we want to make that transition back to relative independence as simple as possible.
3. Don’t compare your child’s remote learning program with another. Every school is different. Every teacher generally has their own unique approach as to how to implement best practices, to best reach their students. Let’s give everyone time to settle in.
Now, if your child isn’t meeting with their teacher, live, every day for instruction in their core subjects (i.e. Reading and Math), that is concerning. But everything else? Let it go for now. Every school is striving to reach its students—I can say that with 100 percent certainty. There are many roads to success. There is not a singular pathway towards doing remote learning “right.” Give your school and its faculty time to work out the kinks and execute their program triumphantly. It’s so easy for us to give into the temptation to compare—the grass is always greener, and obviously, you want the best for your kids. But if they overhear conversations about how your school’s remote program is failing them, it will only lead them to be disengaged, and it will prevent you from unbiasedly evaluating all that your school is striving to do.
Bottom line—Dorothy, the Scarecrow, the Tin Man, and the Cowardly Lion all managed to grow into better versions of themselves, despite the trepidation they experienced when the emerald curtain was pulled away. Your children are going to experience that same development—of both their minds and hearts—in remote learning. We just need to give one another the encouragement, and the breathing room, to follow that yellow brick road together.
