I see you, parents. My siblings with kids. My friends with kids. Strangers with kids. I see you all and I hear you all.
Trying to manage work, home, and your children’s education all at once at home looks impossible. Frankly, it is impossible. I laugh so hard at your funny memes and your Instagram Stories where you are tearing your hair out and necking the chardonnay bottle.
I think that would be how I would try to cope as well. Humour and rage in equal doses. I can’t imagine the mental, physical and emotional energy required for what you have been asked to do. I know so many of you are giving it more than you’ve got right now, and in Australia, we’ve only just begun.
But at the other end of this unbelievably difficult situation are teachers. And we too are really struggling. I have never felt so stressed and anxious in all my working life.
On No Filter, ex-teacher Gabbie Stroud joins Mia Freedman to talk about what she wishes parents knew. Post continues below.
Here’s the issue. We can’t magically make remote learning work for everyone. There is absolutely no way we can meet all of your needs. And here’s why:
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Funny how country kids have been do 'remote learning' for years and I don't know why teachers keep harping that education had to change, considering the standards have dropped dramatically.
Well maybe a consideration should be made on the amount of work you are giving children to do. I am working from home which means five days a week I have to work 8 hours a day. These hours must be worked during regular office hours. I have three primary school children. Twins in prep and a child in grade two. The prep work is pretty easy, videos to watch their teacher sets a basic activity to do each day and each week they get a maths activity, a Mandarin activity a science activity an art activity and a PE activity. The grade two workload is ridiculous, The same amount of activities as the preps plus extra maths activities, a writing activity every day, reading, mathletics, spelling city activities, he’s already had to complete a maths assessment, wellbeing activities...in the three days since school went back we have uploaded 14 activities/work products onto the seesaw app and we still have five more that we are not going to get to (all activities would take over half an hour each). Ridiculous. I thought there would be a bit of compromise from schools. He is seven years old all he needs is some basic maths and to practice his reading and writing....missing out on a couple of months of school is hardly going to affect his whole life. If they keep overloading us with work, I am going to give up and send my kids into class. Both my husband and I are classified as essential workers so the school has to teach them. I would prefer to school them at home but so far the workload is bloody ridiculous.