Are you ready to go back to school?
Despite concerns, many parents and children are eager to return to the normal school routine of before the pandemic. However, it's important to remember that experiences from the remote learning period can still be useful – it's 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 struck us and confined us to our homes in mid-March 2020 has changed our perspective on reality, shaken our sense of security, and revealed our helplessness in the face of the unknown – despite continuous progress in science, medicine, and technology. For parents, the closure of educational and care facilities practically overnight meant the need to organize childcare for children of nursery and preschool age, as well as provide supervision and academic support for school-aged children and 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.
Expert advises
The inability of children to return to school is associated with the need to reorganize family life, e.g. finding a place for quiet study and participation in lessons, ensuring the availability of equipment (computer, internet), maintaining the discipline of getting up, getting dressed so that the teacher does not find the child in their pajamas, etc. they are less important and you have to pay attention to them in the same way. In all of this, many parents had to find space for themselves to perform their professional duties. After all, more than one teacher who conducts online lessons is also a parent.
The biggest challenges
Let's be honest, a teacher in an online lesson can't supervise children as closely as they can in a classroom. Often, even topics discussed in class, especially science subjects, had to be revisited with their child as time and skills allowed. This wasn't an easy task.
Often, a child would miss something, fail to read a teacher's message, or be unable to send something independently via email, platform, or app. Therefore, parental supervision was necessary at virtually every step , which, given the complexities of family responsibilities at home and their own professional responsibilities, was no 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 challenge was the issue of extracurricular activities . For language learning, the use of applications enabling remote group work became the norm, but younger students, in particular, required more time than before, supervision, on-time completion of assignments, and assistance with technical issues. After three months of such learning, many parents admitted that their children's progress in learning a foreign language was slower than with traditional learning, which intensified anticipation for their children's return 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's likely that remote learning will be implemented in the future, despite the announced return of children to schools. All we can do is follow media reports and wait to see what the coming weeks bring. Let's be cautiously optimistic, believing that the hardest part is behind us, we're enriched by many experiences, and even if these situations were to repeat themselves, things should be a bit easier, as everyone has become more familiar with online lessons . However, the challenges of balancing work with supporting 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.
Expert advises
Natural attitudes in adolescence are the importance of being in a group of friends and colleagues. When this element of children's socialization is missing, there may be deficits in this area, lack of communication skills with peers, and even isolation from one another, and, consequently, a decrease in the willingness to be in friendships and a depressed mood. It is worth for parents to be vigilant about their children's attitudes, behavior and motivation to work and social contacts.
We answer the question of whether and what impact distance learning – especially if it lasts longer – may have on the physical development of children and young people here.
Author
