Challenges of home education
According to a recent Angus Reid study, more than half of Canadian children ages 10-17 years old say what they miss most during the shutdown is their friends. They may be at the lowest risk statistically for COVID-19, but they have been especially vulnerable as the world copes with this new ‘norm’. My own 17-year-old told me that the Pandemic has taken everything good from him. His girlfriend. His close group of friends. His part-time job. School. Graduation. Prom. All gone and making for a pretty grim final year of high school for him and so many others.
Adding to all this upheaval, classes have gone virtual. Everything is being conducted online and like most students, he is struggling. And that’s a common thing with all age groups. Imagine how tough this is on little ones just starting out or on University and College students having to adjust to classes being taught remotely? Melissa Robertson-Bye of Hamilton says the biggest challenge for her fouryear old daughter Lilly, is not being able to interact with other kids and getting her to want to do her schoolwork at all! Married and self-employed, Robertson-Bye says she has had to get ‘creative’ finding the time to fit in working from home and helping Lilly who is just in JK adjust to now being home schooled. “It’s been hard. She’s an only child. She misses the interaction of the kids at school.”
Lindsay Falconer says she and her fiancé Josh are facing similar struggles. The couple have two daughters – 11-year-old Maddison and 17-monthold Abigail. Some of their biggest challenges are balancing working full time and entertaining/teaching two children with completely different ages and levels of education.
“It’s been hard to give Maddison the guidance she needs. The e-learning is not the easiest thing to navigate. We had many issues with not being able to log on to reading apps. They aren’t grading the work, so in my daughter’s eyes ‘what’s the point?’” she says.
And let’s face it some parents feel the same way. Teaching isn’t something most are prepared to take on. But at least educators are empathetic because they too have had to adapt to a whole new way of doing things.
Tanya Saraiva, an early childhood educator in the Waterloo Region District School board says she has had to change the way she does everything. She works with children ages three to six and any activity or small group learning that she would normally do has had to either be scrapped or rejigged entirely. Little ones can’t read yet, so anything that is posted must be done with parents in mind.
Certified medical lab technician Debbie Mayers is an instructor at the Hamilton campus of Anderson College. She teaches the LMA/T program and while it was initially challenging, she and her students have adapted. “As far as practical learning, I’ve tried to incorporate videos pertaining to what my students would be learning in the laboratory setting, so when we get back to school they will have a general idea of how things are done in the lab. We’ve been using tools such as Microsoft Teams program and that has been quite interactive and helpful.”