‘Most of the kids not learning one thing’
Teachers lament double work, deteriorating eyesight amid online class struggles
A NUMBER of teachers have been finding it taxing to deliver online lessons while fulfilling other duties and manage their personal lives as they find themselves, like parents and students, wishing for a return to the classroom.
It has been tough navigating the online space as they juggle manoeuvring the platforms while constantly trying to ensure students are logged in and attentive even while they battle disruptions.
Karen Ramsey, a grade one teacher at the Allman Town Primary School in Kingston, told The Gleaner that online delivery of lessons has been more demanding with many teachers being driven to the brink of mental breakdowns with an increasing workload.
“Sometimes, to deal with it, I just burst out and cry because I feel so overwhelmed,” Ramsey admitted as she laid bare the emotional toll trying to cope with the lingering COVID-19 pandemic which has caused a suspension of face-to-face classes.
According to the educator, in the midst of discussions regarding online school and students, no one remembers the teachers, especially as they try to handle disruptive students from a distance and deliver their lessons.
“It takes a mental toll on us as teachers and I don’t think anyone is really considering that. They just want us to do this online thing and behave like it’s something normal ... . It’s not only the kids feeling the effect of the pandemic and teachers have families,” said Ramsey, noting the added pressure to create files for online classes while still preparing lesson plans.
“I have done my lesson plan and they want us to do PowerPoints, so it’s like we doing the same thing over. Twice! It’s timeconsuming and it’s unfair,” she lamented. “Teachers have families, too ... . Teachers want alone time.”
Her proposal that the “double work” needs to stop and just the PowerPoint presentations prepared for lessons was supported by Monica Ogle, another teacher, noting that this was easier and more effective.
“That’s two plans for each lesson, for each day,” Ogle said of the current arrangement. “Who has the time?”
And with her electricity bill mounting due to online teaching, Ramsey abandoned the idea of working from home and headed back to making use of the power supply and Internet service.
This, however, was not the only reason for her physical return to the classroom. Due to numerous distractions such as environmental noise from neighbours, she embraced the return to a setting that was more familiar, the classroom, a place many students have not been since March last year when the deadly coronavirus was first detected locally.
The increased screen time has also raised other concerns for the teachers.
“I could read anything before COVID. I only needed the glasses to go on the computer, and I didn’t spend many hours on it, but now I’m on it constantly for class, on it for lesson plan ... it’s horrible,” Ramsey said.
“Right now, I wasn’t wearing glasses but, online mash up my eyes totally, so I hate the online very much ... . Now I can’t see anything,” she added.
With a waning spirit and being physically and mentally tired, colleague teacher Ogle is also feeling the impact on her eyes.
“I can attest to that because my glasses have to be changed,” she said, adding that she has been issued with a stronger prescription as even her ophthalmologist questioned the rapid deterioration of her eyesight.
Describing online schooling as “a waste of time” as “most of the kids not learning one thing”, Ramsey told The Gleaner that she has witnessed a notable drop in some students’ grades, and like seven-year-old Tashayne Johnson, the teacher is wishing for face-to-face classes to resume soon.
Tashayne told The Gleaner that she misses the traditional classroom arrangement as “people to come to school more”.
Learning about the heart on Wednesday, the student said that she missed the physical interaction with her teachers and peers.
Her mother, Tasha Golding, who has an infant son and is now the guardian for her two younger brothers due to their mother’s passing, has become a single parent of four.
With no one to leave her little girl with, she has found great relief in teachers like Ramsey and Ogle, who have taken in a handful of students as their parents have to go to work and cannot leave them unattended. Others are without an Internet connection.
Golding said that it has not been easy helping her daughter to review lessons, exclaiming that she left school many years ago.
She expressed concern that her daughter had also expected that she would be at a higher reading level than where she is currently, and believes she might be falling behind as she struggles to understand lessons in the online space.
“She hear, but she not listening. It nuh register to say what was happening,” Golding said. “If I don’t reinforce it, it goes to waste, so the teacher will teach all day, but it makes no sense if I don’t come back and say, ‘Come’.”
The single parent said that having to come in from work and look after dinner then find the time to help the children with their homework have been taxing on her as well. She finds herself staying up many nights at late hours assisting the children with assignments.
“Is like you have all the information, but not applying them to nothing ... . I’m sure it’s because them not sitting face to face,” she said, expressing that they would have been learning more in the physical classrooms.
The Government has not yet given the all-clear for students to return to the classroom, with vaccination targets and an easing of the devastating third wave of the local COVID-19 outbreak among factors being considered before such a directive is given.