Long distance learning has been part of our lives for a while, but it has never been the main type of teaching. Going to school with desks and chairs is still the most common way… and then came Covid and things changed.
It’s 2020, a year that will be remembered by the year when our lives changed collectively and the things we knew one way, got a new significance. Going to the office became walking two steps and sitting on the corner of the living room and, for families with children, home and a computer screen became school.
Parents in some parts of the world are dealing with virtual schools, which is a new challenge for them and also for teachers and school institutions. Simple things have now a new meaning and a new way to be done.
In Bahrain, a country in the Middle East, the Ministry of Education requested that schools should offer two options for families, a fully online system and a face-to-face arrangement (with an array of rules) from September onwards. The idea was to respect individuals’ personal feelings regarding this Covi-19 situation.
A private international school in Bahrain, that follows the British curriculum, created different arrangements to please their community. In the early years, children got separated in classes of only virtual students and in regular classes with children physically going to the school grounds. In senior years there are cameras in the classrooms, so the kids that are sitting at home attend classes ‘just’ like the ones going to school. It is far from being an ideal scenario, but it’s the one they thought would work best and serve most of families’ necessities. And if the parents decide to send their children to school, there is a long list of things to be done to reinforce everyone’s safety.
New Outcome
Most of working parents are happy to have the option of sending their children to school. Parents who can spare time and also don’t feel comfortable having their child physically there are guiding their education. Virtual schools are a new experience to them and there are mixed feelings about it with positive aspects to be pointed out, but also not so good ones. Daniela Fornieri is a mom with two children, one in year 3 and the other in year 5, both are doing online school and she is very happy with it. “I noticed that kids are learning things that they wouldn’t be able to learn if they were in school, such as how to manage their time, how to use technology better and how to type faster. They became more independent and responsible as well,” states Fornieri. “What I find positive about virtual school is that parents know exactly what their children are learning and can reinforce the things learned during the classes throughout the day in moments like playtime or lunch,” mentions Marilia La Marca, a mom of two children, one in Reception and the other in year 3. The first one is doing virtual classes, while the other is going to school. While there they have their temperatures checked before and at school, they have to wear masks all the time and to keep social distancing.
The Drawback
However, even sounding like a very good arrangement for the time being, there are downsides to it. Fornieri says that her children don’t suffer from that because they live in a development with lots of children, but not having other kids to play with might be a big challenge of virtual school. Mainly in the early years when children education is based on playing, a child can miss the interaction with others.
Another important issue is the lack of space between parents and kiddos. Because they spend 24h together, there is no break and lots of unnecessary friction might happen. Also, parents are protective beings, which means that children are hardly dealing with situations that the would have to if going to school. They might not be picked to speak during class, (even though they are putting their hands up) and they have to do the activities by themselves without the parents’ help and that’s not exactly the case at home. “Having to adapt to the children’s morning schedule is frustrating! I can’t have things done on my timing anymore, the meetings with the teachers are the priority and with a small child, parents have to be fully hands on,” adds La Marca.
The Educator
We may forget, but there are other important people in virtual schools, the teachers!
Karin Sanches teaches grade 5 pupils in São Paulo, Brazil, and she believes that one of the hardest things of teaching virtually is to keep students engaged “Students get easily distracted with the environment surrounding them and sometimes they aren’t at home, but at the beach house or their country home,” says Sanches, and this affects their performance.Another important issue is to keep track of students’ progress. While in the classroom, teachers are able to constantly get students’ feedback on every matter. When doing it online, the result unfortunately is not the same and some little details might be missed. We have to remember that nor students or educators were prepared for the new situation and both sides are doing what they can to keep education going.
However, we all evolve whenever exposed to new circumstances and Sanches sums up by saying, “I believe that technology has come to stay and that it might bring teachers closer to students, in the sense that technology is the students’ “natural habitat” and it will become a tool for teachers and not a threaten.”
The truth is that this whole pandemic took us by surprise and each country dealt with it the way they thought was the most appropriate, schools had to follow their Ministry of Education regulations and so on. The beginning of October was marked by the comeback of pupils in many institutions around the world and a series of other new things were again there to be followed. It seems that 2020 will end and we will still be learning how to learn again!
