Weekend Argus (Saturday Edition)
View from behind the teacher’s desk
Educators share the challenges of learning new skills and juggling online lessons with family life, writes
TEACHERS are returning to the classroom next week, but the lessons never stopped during the lockdown.
The virtual classroom has become the norm for some teachers, pupils and parents during the stay-at-home period.
Pupils with access to the internet and the means to log into a virtual classroom have been receiving lessons, presentations and homework from their teachers.
Ibrahim Saidi, of Walmer Estate, juggled teaching his subjects remotely and helping his daughter, who is in Grade 7, with her school work.
“We were also getting online activities for our 3-year-old, and we needed to strike a balance. And then our daughter in Grade 7 needed to do her work so we supervised her and made sure she did everything she needed to,” said Saidi.
Saidi and his wife are primary school teachers, but there had been more challenges, with children not having access to data and the internet where his wife works.
He said lockdown had had and downs.
“The first two weeks was kind of okay, but after the extension it became bad, generally people were growing impatient and it was rather taxing as well to do online teaching.”
Saidi said he was hopeful that the children would return to the classroom
its ups
Joey Jacobs next week and that they wouldn’t need much revision of the work they were taught during lockdown.
For Marilyn Kayster, a Grade 7 teacher at a primary school in Kalk Bay, dealing with her pupils in the virtual space wasn’t a breeze. She teaches maths and natural sciences.
“The teaching from home was okay, but some children didn’t have their own personal phone and the mommy took her phone to work, so they had to wait till the evening to do school work.”
Kayster is hopeful that the revised annual teaching plan released by the education department would assist them further when they returned to the classroom.
“There is no guarantee that they all did it (their work),” said Kayster.
She added that even if children did not return to the classroom, her responsibility remained the same and she would need to continue teaching remotely and sending pupils at home their work.
Kayster said the lockdown was also an opportunity for her to do a few online courses so she balanced her time between teaching and learning new skills.
“From the department, they offer online courses for teachers, so I did that and it was great for my personal development,” said Kayster.
Teacher and tutor Joey Jacobs also learnt many new skills during the lockdown. The Lotus River resident is a fulltime maths tutor and has been tutoring children at his home since 2012.
In his home classroom, Jacobs said he kept his classes small – a maximum of five children – so that they got individual attention. Then he had to start online tutoring.
“When I had to reinvent myself I also had to shift from being a tutor to a teacher. Normally, when you tutor you do topics that they’ve already covered… during lockdown, I had to teach the topic because they’d never encountered it before.”
Tutoring or teaching, these educators agree that even though the lockdown hasn’t been an easy time, they are hopeful that the children have been able to stay focused on their school work.
Nathan Adams
I had to reinvent myself… to shift from being a tutor to a teacher