IT has been an eye-opening week to say the least for students, parents and teachers.
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At best, remote online learning, home schooling, distance learning, QDL, whatever you want to call it, has been a massive learning curve.
At worst, it was a confusing, stressful, technological mess that probably sent many people to the liquor cabinet or nuthouse.
For me, believing I could work from home while having a grade 4 and year 8 student learning from home was another of my nonsensical contemplations.
I think I managed three to four hours each day, and that was after 3pm and when the kids had gone to bed.
While I admire what the teachers have done to ensure students are still able to have a quality education in the safety of their own homes, the delivery of it was far from seamless.
Which, of course, was to be expected.
Everything that could go wrong did.
The internet getting overloaded, education programs not working, not being able to open apps, glitchy conference calls, loss of audio and visuals during video chats, passwords not working, you name it.
Maya’s class has a conference call first thing in the morning, so her teacher can do roll call and discuss what needs doing for the day.
I certainly felt for her on the first day, as 15 nine and 10-year-olds began chattering over the top each other, while she tried to explain how it would work.
“OMG I can see everyone”, “What did you get for Easter?”, “I can’t hear anything!”, “What are we doing?”, “This so cool”, “Someone do a TikTok”, “I wish I was still in bed” and so on and so forth.
After about 10 minutes of absolute pandemonium and explaining for the 20th time to that one kid to mute himself until he's being spoken to, the roll is called (another time-consuming process as 15 kids try to figure out how to unmute themselves) and the teacher gives out the day’s instructions.
Then it’s question time and we’re back at square one again, as all the little tykes have forgotten the mute rule and throw out 100 questions at once.
If I was that teacher, I would have topped up my coffee with a strong shot of whiskey right about then. But she handled it with complete composure and patience that I, for one, could never hope to attain. I guess that’s why I’m not a teacher.
And so, the time comes to actually get into their daily activities, and the sudden silence prompts me to dive into my work.
Until the constant “what does this mean?”, “is this right?”, “it’s not saving properly”, “my tablet has frozen” starts and continues for most of the morning.
I thought I had a pretty good idea of what Maya was like at school until I watched her doing a maths lesson.
I always considered her the academic one of the family, but when she had to outline her foot on grid paper to determine its square area and proceeded to get on the table to stand on the notebook, my vision of her becoming a brain surgeon quickly flew out the window.
Mind you, she may have a stellar career in literature. Asked to use the word ‘wreak’ in a sentence, Maya wrote: “My sister’s farts wreak really bad".
I must thank the PE teachers for getting “the family” involved in the activities.
I had to take part in a relay race to the end of my block and back using a Glad Wrap holder as a baton.
To say we got some weird looks is an understatement. I am starting to feel muscles I never thought I had.
And if I thought all of those issues were the hardest things to deal with, I was wrong.
Because then came the conference calls. The never-ending conference calls.
And not the ones from her teacher.
Once Maya’s classmates found out how to do group video chats, they came thick and fast.
Within an hour, I think half the class had tried to called Maya; girls and boys.
And certain boys multiple times. In the end, Maya got so fed up, she turned her tablet on silent.
I guess she’s learning to ‘treat ’em mean, keep ’em keen’ sooner than I thought.
Surprisingly when it came to Ayla, I didn't hear a word, apart from occasional groans when the school's software crashed and when she started reading Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream.
“Who talks like this? Come on!" I heard coming from her room.
However, while Shakespeare takes a bit of getting used to, he was certainly right about one thing.
The course of true love (and remote learning) never did run smooth.