Teaching online isn’t ideal, but we adapt and thrive | Emma Kay

Teachers and school staff have had to become technician tacticians in a multi-layered labyrinth of learning.
A young boy homeschooling during the pandemic. Photo by Getty Images.A young boy homeschooling during the pandemic. Photo by Getty Images.
A young boy homeschooling during the pandemic. Photo by Getty Images.

Adapting just as much as parents have, if not more, we need to applaud their efforts. For the wavering internet connections, the interactive PowerPoints and embedded video disasters. For their determination and passion that despite all the problems, education must prevail and the show must go on.

The pandemic is a chance to rethink and reform the way we access learning.

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In Woop Woop (Australian slang for middle of nowhere), children have been learning remotely since 1951. Initially using a two way radio, but now with a satellite link, they log on each day for group lessons. The 125 pupils, covering an area the size of Texas, email their completed schoolwork to teachers living hundreds of miles away, to be marked.

Creativity is their key to deal with the remoteness.

There will always be some who will be critical or complain that schools have had to adapt and change with the pandemic, just as the rest of us have. Love or loathe online learning, everyone has an opinion on it, but they rarely ask what it is like for those of us who are actually in the spotlight behind the school walls and trying to keep everything running as.

The trials and tribulations of online learning come with many frustrations and laughter.

Learning has become a ladder of lost connections and laborious checks to see if everyone is present for seniors and an impromptu house tour of cuddly toys and wide eyed pets for primary staff.

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From my own experience of being in a virtual classroom there have been many experiences which provide much needed entertainment. From pupils taking screenshots of their pets just because they thought the image of their dog would cheer us all up (it did), to pupils posting and sharing better and more descriptive online science videos to aid with the lesson.

Being in these lessons also offers a certain measure of anonymity for all of the wallflowers who would usually wilt at the prospect of raising their hand in class. Education online is a safe shield without classroom distractions enabling participation in the chatbox without the worry of what your peers will say.

Classrooms may look temporarily different but we still all have a job to do. Whether you are a teacher or a pupil, you are still here. The show must go on.

A fish called Mogg

Strange and baffling words were uttered in the House of Commons last Friday by Jacob Rees-Mogg who claimed that fish have been delayed for export because of the introduction of the post-Brexit fishing regime and that the fish are now ‘better and happier’ because they are British.

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Meanwhile, desperate fishermen are losing their livelihoods. Boats confined to harbour, lorry loads of seafood destroyed and the industry losing £1m a day. They are drowning in a sea of blood-coloured tape and this man couldn’t care less for their plight. Or does not care to understand. These smug and flippant remarks are a real indication of how out of touch politicians are with real people.

He may be making these remarks as a ‘joke’ but they come as spiteful, callous and unprofessional and dripping with a Victorian mind-set in a modern world.

It seems our British waters hold no colder fish than Mogg himself.

Low income families come last for consideration

The complaints have been pouring in thick and fast over the quality and quantity of food in the free school meal hampers delivered to parents.

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The food hamper is supposed to feed one child for several days.

The images online of a woefully inadequate free school meal parcel, is, quite frankly disgraceful. The estimated cost of the parcels is around five pounds, a far cry from the £30 they are supposed to be worth. The money for this seems to be vanishing in a black vortex and people want answers.

Is this the message we want to broadcast over Britain? Of children clutching a carrot as a nutritious government offering? Are our ministers still determined to punish those without the funds to feed their children?

The free school meals fiasco last year was bad enough.

This is sending a clear message that low income families are low on the ladder of consideration.

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