Category: Education

For goodness sake, parents, be nice to your teachers, OK?

Posted on by Suki

My life in the last several weeks included multiple surgeries for family members then sending our youngest kid off to college. County up in flames, 901 of our neighbors have lost their homes, many more have been evacuated from their homes for who knows how long, and the air quality was rated the worst in the world many days running.

Also, we are going into the most contentious, nasty election season ever.

Oh, and there’s that little thing we call a pandemic.

Oh, and classes started. And I’m a teacher.

It’s important to be empathetic

That teacherly side of me knows that parents are under a lot of stress. They are navigating tons of new territory, from (as one mom I interviewed said) “getting to know my kid again,” to learning how to do their job online, to waiting to find out how their kids’ schools are going to deliver education, to figuring out how to fill out myriad mystifying government forms.

This world is a big, fat mess. That much we can agree on.

I forgive each and every one of you who is in over your head and says things you (probably) wouldn’t have said in more relaxed times. I realize that when parents contact me about their students, they are often reacting to stress unrelated to my classes.

Remember it’s not [all] your teacher’s fault

I’ll start by admitting I’m not a perfect teacher, and I’m not the best teacher for every kid. One of the reasons I believe so deeply in homeschooling is that it offers kids the opportunity to learn in a variety of ways with a variety of teachers. Who doesn’t love a smorgasbord?

But please understand: I am an online teacher, and I can solve exactly one of your child’s problems: I can deliver a high-quality course in the subject that I am teaching. That’s all.

Don’t play the blame game

The #1 best parenting advice I can give you is not to protect your mistakes from your kids. If you messed up and signed up for a class late, admit it. If you messed up and didn’t read the instructions, admit it. If you messed up and didn’t test the software ahead of time, admit it.

Your acceptance of your imperfections will make your kid a stronger person, I promise!

And then suck it up and get the job done

  1. Define the problem. Don’t shoot off an email or make a phone call before you have figured out what the problem actually is.
  2. If you screwed up, all you have to do for your teacher is explain and apologize. Their job is not to fix your mistakes.
  3. If you need help, figure out who can help you. Hint: It’s not necessarily your teacher.
  4. RTFM! Yes, there are way too many instructions for accessing online education. That’s why you should start early and make sure you understand as much as you can before you ask questions.

If you screw up, be gracious

Your teachers are under a huge amount of stress just because of their job. You have no idea what else is happening behind that sunny face on the screen or voice over the slides. Our job more closely resembles improv theater than you might imagine.

A simple apology goes a long way.

If you:

  • Blame a teacher for your own mistake
  • Get angry at a teacher for software they have no control over
  • Tell a teacher that you expected more when the teacher is giving all they can give
  • Mess up some aspect of your kid’s education and then try to pin the blame on the the teacher…

Say you’re sorry, give them the benefit of the doubt, and…

Then move on

Because that’s what we teachers are doing, too. Through pandemic, fires, hurricanes, family troubles, financial trouble, and toxic politics, we are there every day, our smiling faces or voices welcoming your children to a little chunk of sanity.

This is hard. Join us in figuring out our way through it.

Calling homeschool pods fundamentally racist won’t help education equality

Posted on by Suki

I’m sure you’ve noticed all the scary articles about how so-called “homeschool pods” are going to undo all the small amount of racial equity that our public schools have been able to put in place.

Need a refresher? Here, here, and here are the top three hits I got.

This argument rests on three premises that I dispute:

  1. Only white parents will set up pods for their kids’ learning
  2. Only affluent parents can afford to have a teacher or other educated person supervise the learning
  3. These pods have to function separately from the public school structure

The assumptions behind these premises are really quite awful when you think about it:

  1. Non-white parents are submissive to authority, have no personal networks, and are not fit to guide their children’s learning
  2. Parents who make less money are by definition less fit to guide their children’s learning, and are not creative thinkers who can pull together resources available in their communities
  3. The public schools are screwed. Run!

Learning “pods” are not new

Homeschoolers form pods by design or by choice. This was a group from our homeschool program learning about recycling.

First, let’s do away with this idea that by creating a hip new word for it, affluent white parents fleeing the public schools have come across a brilliant idea all on their own.

Sorry, learning “pods” are just a pandemic-era iteration of something that teachers, parents, and students have been doing for ages. It’s always been the case that people learn better in smaller groups. When that’s not possible, such as in a large public school, good teachers create learning pods within their classrooms. Involved parents create learning pods of their own children (if they have enough) or with families they know. Teens instinctively create study groups that, yes, have a social function, too.

(Aside: Please forget what the bean counters tell you: social interaction has always been an intrinsic part of a good learning environment. Without the R in recreation, no one would bother to learn the other three R’s.)

Pods aren’t new to homeschooling, either. I created learning pods when I was homeschooling my kids. We called them “clubs.” Other parents did, too. And I will point out that non-white, non-affluent parents have always done this. Creativity in learning is not an exclusive club.

Learning pods are not exclusive of school

All of the examples I gave above come from families who were attached to public schools in one way or another. We don’t have to run screaming from the public schools because they can’t offer us everything we desire in a learning environment.

In all the years we homeschooled our kids, we were always attached to a public school program. We had a 100% free teacher to advise us. We had some financial support for resources, and a 100% free resource center where we could access materials, make photocopies, and get support. None of that has changed.

Public schools should encourage pods, not assume they’re racist

While kids are not in the classroom, teachers shouldn’t resist pods—they should help parents organize them. Teachers can continue their mission of equity in education by working extra hard to include the kids who might fall through the cracks. In our county, that’s not only kids of color, but also English language learners and rural kids who need a 30-minute ride from a parent to take part in physical activities.

If you are homeschooling and forming a pod, draw on your basic decency

If you have just left the public school system—for whatever reason—and you are an affluent, educated, and/or white family, you can do your small part just by being decent. Or if you are staying in the public school but forming a pod to support your own kids, again, be decent.

By that I mean simply look around you and see who is not being included. Just as a decent host would do at a party, scanning a room to see if anyone looks uncomfortable or lonely, look around your school community and reach out. Offer a spot in your pod to a kid whose parents work too hard to help their kids with homework. Offer your expertise to help other families form pods. Talk to your child’s teacher and principal about encouraging pods within classes to offer extra support.

We are facing lots of hard problems

We’re in the middle of a pandemic. Our country has failed at a national level to lead a reasonable, consistent public health response. Our weakened public school system is teetering on the edge of collapse. Our communities are in anguish over the growing understanding of racial inequity built into our systems at the lowest level. We may be facing economic distress that dwarfs the Great Depression.

Really, learning pods are not the problem.

Learning pods are a very small part of the solution.

5 things to do TODAY to help your kids settle in to online classes

Posted on by Suki

Yup, it’s the first week of classes just ended at Athena’s Advanced Academy, and it was a wild and wooly one! We have lots of new students, some of whom have never taken online courses besides the Zoom sessions that their teachers whipped up as crisis teaching last spring. This is my eighth year of teaching online, so I guess I’ve learned a few things. Here they are!

Get comfortable before the first day

Online learning environments have lots of similarities, but it’s the differences that will make your child’s first day of class frustrating and less than productive. Log into the system as soon as you can. It’s very likely that there are activities they can do ahead of time.

At Athena’s, we use Moodle classrooms and Blackboard webinar rooms. Each has its quirks and fun nooks and crannies. Our students can log in as soon as they get credentials and play around in our Social Forums.

Iron out technical problems

I can’t tell you how many kids admit that they and their parents knew about technical problems before the first day. Online teachers simply can’t help. So when we have a frustrated kid with a broken mouse or earbuds that only work sometimes, there is nothing we can do.

We also can’t help if you didn’t use our webinar configuration room to set up your child’s system. We really want to help, but we can’t. You are your kid’s tech support. I know you didn’t sign up for this, but just like cleaning dirty diapers, it comes with the fun parts!

Read the instructions

Sorry there are so many. You won’t remember them all. Neither do I! But please ask the teacher only once you’re sure its answer is not easily accessible. “Search” is available on every page of our site.

Special needs? Contact your teacher!

Online teachers can’t read your children’s faces or body language. It’s not the same as IRL classes. If you contact your child’s teacher ahead of time, they might be able to head of issues before they happen. If your child has had problems in classes before, you are doing them no favors by sending them into an online course without warning. Avoid TMI (too much information). Send a simple note alerting the teacher to an issue that the student might have and you might head off problems.

Be positive!

So many of my students are coming in anxious and concerned because of all the negative stuff they’ve been hearing. They think online learning isn’t as good as their IRL classes. They think their parents expect that they won’t do well. They know that people are arguing about education more than ever.

Help your child adjust by putting on a positive face when you talk about their online classes. Grouse to your spouse, gripe to your friend, express frustration to other parents—but convey confidence and an expectation of fun to your student.

Happy first week of classes, everyone!

6 ways to structure online learning for physical and mental well-being

Posted on by Suki

The other day I went for a “physical distance, social closeness” walk with a friend at the beach. She teaches adults at a law school, and was wondering how to do her online courses in a way that would mirror how she teaches in person.

In the past, she had observed that her students, adults with day jobs, were tired in the evenings, so she arranged things so that they would get up and move about the room for various different activities. How was she going to do this online?

Yes, we were both wearing masks, just not for the picture.

We brainstormed some ideas for her, and while we were doing that, I mused about how my own students are no longer doing all the things they were doing before the pandemic. Most of them are probably doing online courses for much of the day now, even for physical education. Lots of them have working parents who can’t fill in the holes.

During the first quarantine, I paid special attention to my teens, many of whom are quite independent and not used to being at home with their families all day. I redesigned some of my activities with their mental and physical health in mind.

This coming year, I am planning to pay more attention to promoting healthy habits in my classes. In the spirit of sharing with other teachers, and hoping that parents will keep this in mind at home, here are some of my ideas and the reasons for them.

1. Incorporate movement when possible

Maybe this seems obvious, but kids are moving even less than they used to. At school, at least they were moving around the classroom. And during recess, they had other kids to interact with.

Movement is really not an obvious match with the courses I teach, but I hope to encourage them to move before and after class when possible. And who knows, I might figure out a way to incorporate movement specifically in my webinars…without inciting chaos!

We saw this man out making awesome bubbles when we were on our walk. Send your kid outside to make bubbles in between classes!

2. Get students away from the computer screen for specific tasks

It’s so easy for all of us to get sucked into the screen and think of it as real life. But that leads us to be less in touch with the environment around us. My classrooms (where students do self-paced learning when they are not in the live webinar room) are obviously full of videos. But I also incorporate real-world activities when possible, asking them to engage with physical objects, pets, and other people in their household.

3. Engage the senses

Obviously, my students are engaged with their eyes whenever they are involved in the class and their ears during our webinars. I try to make sure that my courses are visually and aurally stimulating. But that’s just a small part of the world.

Now that they aren’t getting as much sensory stimulation in their daily lives, I’m giving more thought to how to incorporate all senses into my webinars and my assignments. That will be an easy one in my new Yum! class about food and eating.

Even cats need to change their focal distance!

4. Get students to change the focal distance of their eyes

Our webinars are mostly around an hour long. Although I recommend that parents never schedule young students for more than an hour at a time online, many parents already did that before the pandemic. Now, most of my students will probably be online most of the day.

In normal life, our eyes change their focal distance on a regular basis. Aside from using screens, there are very, very few typical activities that we do that require us to sit with one focal distance for a long time. My plan is to try to get students to look away from the screen whenever I can, if only for a moment.

5. Keep students in tune with their physical bodies

If students are now going to be sitting in front of a computer for wall-to-wall online courses, it will be very easy for them to literally forget about their physical bodies. Breathing, focus, and periods of quiet will help them be more present in their bodies.

Teachers who have a single group of kids in an online course for hours at a time will need to find ways to keep the kids’ attention but also keep their bodies engaged. This will be a hard task for them! Since I never teach for more than an hour at a time, by design, I don’t run into this problem.

6. Keep them grounded in the physical world

All of us need to remember that the physical world is where we are. Lots of the services we use online are designed to try to make us forget. Kids are especially susceptible to becoming convinced that their online “life” is more important than the physical world around them.

Teachers can help students by making sure that their assignments and activities involve the physical world around their students. Even though we don’t necessarily connect with our students’ families the way that classroom teachers do, we can ask them to use their home life as a resource. Even though the room in which they are attending school is one that we may never set foot in, we can integrate that physical space into the world we create online.

Related:

Raising a lifelong learner

Posted on by Suki

In my last piece, How Do I Make Sure There Are No Gaps In My Child’s Learning?, I addressed the fact that, in fact, there will always be gaps. Our goal as parents and educators is to create “lifelong learners.”

But what is that, and how do you do it?

Model the behavior

Pretty much anything you expect of your kids and students comes back to you. If you aren’t polite around your children, you can’t expect them to be polite when you aren’t around.*

* expecting them to be polite to YOU is another subject altogether!

If you ignore your kids and stare at your phone when they’re in the room, they are likely to do the same.

Being a lifelong learner is yet another place where you have to lead by example. Do your students or children see you learning? Do you try always to sound like you know everything? Then you are raising them to shy away from admitting they don’t know something and finding a way to attain that knowledge.

Make a model of yourself. Talk to your kids about what you learned. Tell your students that you are struggling to relearn to play piano after 30 years.

Assess your role

An older teacher once said to me, “I’m always the dumbest person in the room.” It wasn’t a comment on his self-esteem, but rather on his teaching method.

Of course, he had many of the answers that his students were searching for, but his job was not to be the Sage on the Stage. It was to be a guide and mentor.

Some parents seem to think that if they step back from being the authority on everything, they will lose basic parental authority. But that’s simply not true. Children are more likely to respect the authority of someone trustworthy and open than someone who cuts off debate.

Join in the fun

Let’s face it: being a lifelong learner is actually fun. And your kids are more likely to blossom at this task if you’re by their side. Consider everything that you come across in daily life to be a learning opportunity:

Weird bug in the house? Look it up and identify it.

Relative states an offensive opinion at a family dinner? Go home and engage your kids in learning about the issue.

Kid is suddenly fascinated with a topic you find mind-numbingly boring? Unnumb your mind and find out more.

Resources:

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