Is everyone else having the same experience that schooling at home during the school closure is a mess.
From what I saw and heard last year, in other countries kids would have online classes with their teacher, but our children’s school isn’t doing that and only giving a few 10 minute videos a day and a large amount of homework sheets which as I work, my wife has to push my son to do.
I feel they are pushing most of the teaching responsibility onto the parents. From what I understand they still have to work, but it feels like they are not doing a lot.
This is difficult as I need to work from home, my wife needs to keep our younger two kids occupied (my daughter in kindergarten doesn’t get any work from the school at all) and also teach my son all the homework posted online by the school. (as they have due dates and must be delivered to the school in person…).
I have been taking 2 - 3 days off work each week in order to help (luckily my employer has a special leave policy for caring for children during COVID-19) but I still have work to complete at work so it is up to me to balance the days off with still being productive.
Is this the same for all schools or is our school just a mess?
Pretty much the same for my daughter 7. A few youtube videos produced some place other than a school in Taiwan and lots of study in the books. Private school.
Exactly the same from our public elementary school. Parents teaching and grading in most cases . Looking at the videos . Not great. Lazy teachers. Not proactive .
I have to say in my European country of origin it was the same or worse I heard.
Same for my niece in fifth grade who currently lives with us. She has about thirty minutes of lessons per day and then they just chat. Even when they are being taught the teachers are just reading something and the kids aren’t engaged at all. It has really hurt the image of Taiwan schools in my mind.
My son is in a local public school, teacher does a couple of hours of interactive video call with the class each morning. Homework is done online. Working out well so far.
My kids all have the teachers giving lessons over the computer. There might be some videos but for the most part, my kids need to be online at specific times and they have a “class”.
My daughter is in Grade 5, and she only seems to have class from 8:00am to noon except for Fridays which are longer. My son is in Grade 7, and he’s online every day from 8:00am to 4:00pm. They do get breaks through out the day though.
I’ve been impressed from what I’ve seen thus far. Some classes are easier and better than others but core courses are being covered very well and homeroom teacher is having regular ‘class meetings’ that have everybody getting online, socializing and chatting.
It seems like it always gets pushed to the parents. Setting a shit load of homework to small kids or asking them to open and use different websites just means more work for the parents. Would be better off just having a longer summer vacation. Or Start summer now and come back earlier next year? But the parents paid money and they don’t want to return it so they do this fake work. The kids are bored and stressed. The parents are pissed.
You nailed it. It all depends on your luck of getting a good home room teacher. My son goes to a good high school, so he’s 8 hours of normal classes every day. My daughter’s junior high home room teacher teaches them five subjects every day even though he normally only teaches them one. Even on Sundays he teaches them. Some teachers are stepping up, but many are being lazy fucks.
Keep in mind teachers are in the same boat as all of us. Many have kids of their own. Day cares have also been closed. Spouses need to work and can’t always watch the kids.
There needs to be a healthy balance.
Having 8 hours of screen time replace 8 hours of school is nonsensical. Also terrible for your health.
The 50/50 approach the MOE suggests for schools makes sense.
50% of classes online, screen to screen, interacting with the teacher and classmates. The other 50% of class time studying and doing independent work / play on their own.
Teaching online also has major problems and challenges that pop up daily which would send any I.T. screaming and running away.
Parents need to step up and get involved with their child’s learning too. It’s your home, your kid, don’t be lazy.
My hat goes off to many teachers right now struggling to find a workable solution to teaching from home while taking care of their own kids without losing their sanity and health.
The problem is we are not seeing 50/50, we are seeing some 10 minute pre-recorded videos and no interaction with the teacher. No live classes interacting with teacher or classmates.
It’s play time at home with siblings in the morning (as the content appears about 11am) and my wife in his room with him most of the afternoon.
I probably wouldn’t have even posted if it was 50/50 as that wouldn’t such an issue. But it isn’t.
The lack of interaction means to ask questions is either my wife arranging to call his teacher directly on Google meet (short 1:1 call to ask questions) or posting to google classroom and waiting fo a response
As opposed to going into class and listening tothe teacher regurgitate something while the kids dont pay attention. Haha.
My daughter is getting online classes more than a half hour a day. Its not a full 6 hour or whatever day, but its probably about as efficient.
As long as this is temporary (need to work and such), i think a healthy dose of getting parents to spend time teaching their kids might be good for taiwan. And with hem at home all the time, perfect time to start getting them to pull their weight around ther house. Cleaning, maintaining, cooking etc.
I try and look at it optimistically as a way for.both parents and kids to get a bit of a forced nudge back into spending more quality time together, getting kids to accomplish tasks, kid realizing they have household responsibilities etc. Glass half full.
However if the insanity doesnt improve, maybe this is in our future
Parental expectations vary wildly. If the kids are in school this only comes up in terms of things like quantity of homework, but now you’ve got parents saying “you need to keep my child entertained for 8 hours a day” and others saying “you can’t make my child sit in front of a screen for 8 hours a day”. Some are inevitably going to be dissatisfied.
A lot of people can work remotely and the nature of their job doesn’t change - just the environment. The nature of teaching changes dramatically. When people chose to become teachers, they never envisaged that it would involve talking to children through screens. Far too much is outside the control of the teacher - the child has only been up for five minutes before their first lesson and hasn’t had any breakfast. The child has a terrible internet connection and everything is distorted or lagged. The child is spending most of their time with a chat window open talking to their peers about how funny their teacher looks.
Teaching remotely just doesn’t work. Even if your child looks busy, they probably don’t really understand what they are being taught, and even if they do, they probably won’t remember it. We ran the experiment globally over a substantial period of time, the in person classroom teacher experience cannot be replaced by technology.
Maybe your child’s teacher is a “lazy fuck”. But my advice would be to buy some maths workbooks and lots to read. Give them some structure, make sure they do something active, and limit the amount of time they spend on a screen.
I get where you’re coming from, but from a teacher’s perspective online classroom management is pretty much beyond my power. I can repeat myself. I can tell student X to do something. I can write down/record names. That’s it.
Not sure what the government’s perspective is on online learning. I work in a public elementary school, and the messages we receive from the county government are very inconsistent. Last week I was teaching the same classes, 40 minutes a class. Over the weekend I heard that we were being encouraged to only do 20 minute classes, because asking kids to sit in front of the computer for 8 hours a day was unreasonable.
I agree with that last statement, btw.
For us technology has been the biggest issue. So many kids yelling 老師 , 我聽不到 or kids trying to attend class in a room where a television is blaring. The learning curve has been steep.
Also, parents expecting for a phone to suffice for a computer. The children can’t see what the teacher wrote, can’t hear due to back ground noise and can’t focus because so much is happening around them in their home environment.
It depends on teachers’ skills. I have observed how teachers manage online classroom in these days, since I have to share a desk with my kid. It is greatly different for each teacher. Some teachers interact with kids and manage online classroom well. Some teachers just present what they prepare with almost zero interaction.
The most annoying thing for me is the school is trying to do 10min interactive classes with their normal schedule, so the classes are scattered in a whole day. I prefer they do them all at once in the morning few hours.
