Parents, Students, and Teachers Face the Challenges of Adapting to Homeschooling

Parents, teachers, and students must learn to “unlearn” during this crisis.

Due to the closure of schools, offices, and businesses because of the new coronavirus (COVID-19), many parents, teachers, and students are trying to adapt to a new “routine” and the challenges involved in online learning. Faced with this situation, parents and teachers should stay in constant communication and find the best way for their children to learn from home.

Laura K. Reynolds, Dean of the University of South Carolina’s School of Education, Human Performance and Health, advises that, although it appears that parents have taken on the role of educators, teachers should remain present and stay connected as much as possible. The dean encourages parents to be patient and avoid disciplining their children during school activities, especially if their children are used to having teachers who use positive reinforcement rather than scolding. Jacqueline Sperling, a clinical psychologist, supports this idea, explaining that we are all going through an abrupt change that can produce fear and anxiety. One of the best ways to counteract that feeling of insecurity is by being consistent; for example, if a family once had a rule of how much time children could spend watching TV, that rule should remain the same as much as possible. She also encourages parents to allow their children to make video calls to socialize with their friends to prevent them from feeling lonely, even if they are four years old, and their conversations do not make sense, she says. Both experts agree that the use of video calls can significantly benefit students in the area of socialization.

On the other hand, Reynolds insists that teachers should support parents and remind them that there are many ways in which their children learn. “That can be imaginary play, free play in the backyard, playing in a sink full of water or doodling and drawing,” Reynolds says. “When it looks like nothing is going on, students’ cognitive processes are engaged, and there’s growing and learning happening.” It is important to remember that children learn by playing. A creative way to teach fractions, for example, is through following a recipe in cooking.

Students do not need to spend eight hours in “school.”

Although maintaining a consistent routine is advisable, several factors can make this difficult, such as not having access to the required technology, busy parents working from home, sick relatives, and other varying circumstances; therefore, trying to implement a traditional school schedule virtually can be impossible. Something that both parents and students should “unlearn” at this time is that a virtual program and a traditional one are not the same. In addition, the pace of distance learning is different; the structure of a typical day is very different from one at home and even more so when there is a contingency, and all the family members have to live together 24 hours at home.

At school, students have a structured schedule that consists of recess time, time lost while walking through school hallways, talking to classmates, and other situations are things that do not happen in a virtual school program. So how much time should students spend studying at home? Psychiatrist Colette Poole-Boykin advises that to know how much time a child should spend on a task, one should multiply the child’s age by 2 to 5 minutes, and the result approximates the amount of time the child can stay focused. Using this rule, Dr. Poole-Boykin suggests that elementary school students should spend from one to two hours a day learning, high school students two to three hours, and college students three to four hours a day as a maximum.

The other side of online education

Another challenge that is not talked about much in online education is that this modality unmasks the socio-economic inequality experienced by millions of families. Unfortunately, many students do not have the technology, space, or environment for learning and to comply with their academic expectations. In addition to these barriers, fear and anguish exist because many parents are unemployed, or relatives are getting sick or dying.

María del Carmen Morillas is a mother who lives in Spain in a small apartment with her four daughters (between 11 to 15 years old) and husband. In an interview for El Confidencial, she said that there is only one computer in the household, making it difficult for her daughters to learn and do homework assignments. Luckily, they recently installed internet service and can access the lessons, she says. Also, they live in a flat just 60 square meters in size, and it does not have a designated space that is ideal for learning. Still, her daughters cope with the situation by doing most of the homework by hand and sending photographs of it over the mobile phone as proof to their teachers.

Marta Físico, a high school teacher, interviewed by the same paper said that many of her students are from low-income households, and some cannot access the classes in Google Classroom. In Spain, low-income students rely on their parents’ mobile devices to complete their homework. Noelia Otero, head of public school studies, told El Confidencial that 20 % of their students are victims of the technology gap as they do not have a computer and internet access. Another challenge Spanish educators have faced is that the emergency measures put in place in the face of the coronavirus pandemic took them all by surprise, showing that many teachers do not have the technological skills and training necessary to teach online. It has also been seen that some school administrations do not have digital platforms suitable for online teaching. Faced with these challenges, many educators have turned to tools such as Google Classroom to support each other and to achieve successful education from a distance.

Faced with all these changes that we are experiencing worldwide, we see that the constant communication and connectedness among parents, educators, administrators, and students become more crucial for knowing what challenges they are facing and how to overcome them together. Above all, parents and teachers must consider that not everything has to go perfectly, that it is okay to have bad days and ma
ke mistakes. We are all learning in this process.

What are the main challenges you have faced as a mom, dad, teacher, or student?

Paulette Delgado

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This article from Observatory of the Institute for the Future of Education may be shared under the terms of the license CC BY-NC-SA 4.0