If Remote Learning is Too Hard, Speak Up
Parents: let’s be honest about remote learning. Parents of school-aged children have been placed in an impossible situation since March 2020. Their role of parent has been stretched and pushed to the limits, overwhelming other roles that each parent assumes in their own personal and professional lives. To be a parent of a young child who is engaged in remote or hybrid learning means that you must assume the role of teacher, manager, and technology expert.
In the role of teacher, parents must ask for accommodations from their own jobs (if that’s possible) to physically be present to support their children’s online learning experience. When being physically present is possible, parents must remain at least within earshot of their children while they engage online with their actual teacher, help them with schoolwork far beyond typical homework assignments, and teach skills that parents may not know themselves. This is in the luckier cases. In many cases, parents cannot be physically present. In these circumstances, parents must try to lean on others for childcare and to take on the new massive responsibilities. If there are no “others”, the parents often just give up. Understandably so.
In the role of manager, parents must not only organize their own lives, but also organize the school lives of their school-aged children. This includes organizing physical spaces such their children’s workspaces (if they are able to create one), as well as staying on top of communications from school about constant changes to protocols, video meetings, logistics that include quarantining family members if needed, etc. Sounds like a lot? As parents know, we aren’t done…
Parents have also needed to take a crash course in technology. This includes downloading a multitude of apps for their children’s schools onto their personal cell phones, learning to navigate various online learning platforms and video meeting programs, and learning to operate Chromebooks and other devices that can be complicated even to the young children using them who tend to be more technological than their adult parents.
Does this sound all too familiar and overwhelming? Surely it does! With all that being said, your children’s school can work with you to ease the burden. Remote learning is here to stay for the foreseeable future; and at this point, educators have already found ways to work with parents on an individual basis to simplify things bit by bit. That said, your child’s school needs to know what the issues are that you are facing. Children do need to participate in some capacity for their attendance to be counted (yes, it is sad that this is what this academic year has come to…), but administrators have found creative ways to be flexible with attendance when the parents attempt to work with the school to determine ways to get their children involved.
Reach out to your child’s school. Let them know what is going well and what is not regarding remote learning. Ask for help. Teachers, school staff and other support professionals are there to help ease the burden. When you advocate for your child and your family by being honest about struggles, the school can consider how best they can modify work or online participation. They can also arrange for personal 1:1 interaction between students and teachers to build relationships. Most of all, people from school can be a listening ear. At the Child Connection Center, we spend many hours speaking with parents about issues they are having, successes their families are achieving, and work with them and their children’s schools to help increase those successes and reduce the hurdles. We are just one example. Reach out and see what your child’s school can do for you!
