Are you ready to go back to school?

Despite fears, many parents and children are looking forward to returning to school normality, before the outbreak of the pandemic. However, you should be aware that experiences from the distance learning period may still be useful - it is worth remembering them and drawing conclusions from them.

Stationary, remote or hybrid?

After various experiences from the last two years, we are aware that the return of children to school and full-time education does not mean that it will be the school education we remember from before the pandemic. In the opinion of both teachers and independent experts, some elements of distance learning have a great chance to stay with us for longer and be used in the future.

Mention is made of a mixed, or hybrid model - combining stationary and remote mode. In order to make it easier to prepare for different developments in the future, we present the experiences of parents during the last spring months of forced home schooling.

March revolution

The virus that touched us and locked us in our homes in mid-March 2020 changed our view of reality, shook our sense of security and showed helplessness in the face of the unknown - despite the continuous progress in science, medicine and technology. For parents of children, the closure of educational and upbringing institutions practically overnight meant the need to organize care for children at nursery and preschool age, as well as supervise and help with learning for children and school youth.

While children attending nurseries or even kindergartens do not yet have numerous obligations related to teaching, in the case of school students, from primary school upwards, it meant a challenge for which neither the schools nor us, parents were prepared.

Difficult beginnings

In many homes it was as if Librus was initially used as a communication platform, through which teachers informed the child which tasks were to be performed.

One could get the impression that during the first two weeks, not everyone approached the subject seriously - hardly anyone thought then that the schools would be closed until the summer holidays. After about 2-3 weeks, when it turned out that the children would not return to school soon, teacher-student communication fully moved to the Internet and online lessons became normal practice.

The biggest challenges

There is nothing to cheat, the teacher in the online lesson is not able to supervise the children in the same way as in the lesson conducted in the school room. It often happened that even the subjects discussed in the classroom, especially in science, had to be discussed again with the child according to their time and skills. It was not an easy task.

There were often situations when the child did not notice something, did not read the teacher's message, or was unable to send something by e-mail, via a platform or an application. Hence parental control was necessary at virtually every stepwhich, with the whole machine of family responsibilities at home and in view of my own professional duties, was not an easy task.

Language subjects, biology, geography and history are subjects that are largely based on textbooks. The situation is different with technical classes or, for example, music.

An additional the problem was the issue of extracurricular activities. In the case of language learning, the use of remote group work applications has become the norm, but especially younger students required more time than before, supervision, homework and technical assistance. After three months of such learning many parents admitted that the pace of their children's progress in learning a foreign language wasIt was slower than with the traditional model of learning, which increased the anticipation of children returning to school.

Cautious optimism

The three and a half months, during which we had to deal with remote learning, was a kind of school of life, but as time passed, many of the children understood what remote learning was about, parents could breathe a bit, and teachers got used to the new work system.

Is it possible for children to return to school for longer? Will we come back to the remote learning model?

It is likely that remote learning will be included in the future, despite the planned return of children to school. We have nothing else to do but follow the media reports and wait for what the next weeks will bring. Let's be cautious optimists - believing that the most difficult is behind us, we are richer by many experiences and even if these situations were to repeat, it should be a bit easier, because everyone has already got used to the topic of online lessons. However, the hardships of combining work with helping children at school will not disappear.

Isolation in a remote world 

And one more important topic - remote learning isolates young people from each other, from peer environments. Children see themselves only on the computer screen, contact each other via messenger messengers or in social media.

To the question whether and what impact remote education - especially if it lasts longer - can have on the physical development of children and adolescents, we answer here.