Scrambled Life: Education of High School Children During a Pandemic

Are students really remote and being home schooled? Education of High School Children during a Pandemic.

We need to address claims, statements and words being used by the media and politicians with regard to schooling during the COVID-19 Pandemic.

Why should I have an opinion, a say or a voice?

The most obvious reason would be that I am passionate about education and the quality delivery of education. I have four degrees and none were obtained in the ‘traditional’ lecture hall method of delivery. The four degrees are from three different institutions, all well recognised as leaders in their fields. They were either completely online or offered with a mix of online and on-campus lectures. The last ten years have been spent completing education online (please see table at end of Blog).

To enter the first degree I completed two subjects through Open Learning (now known as Open Universities Australia). I finished school in 1982 and entered the workforce. I did not attend university or TAFE. I was 45 years old when I was accepted to University of New England and it was nearly thirty years since I had completed any formal education.

At University of New England I felt very connected to other students and lecturers even though all material was delivered online. Part way through my degree I decided to attend a History intensive and it was wonderful to walk on campus, stay in a college and meet some of my peers. But I was eternally grateful of the opportunity to gain an education whilst meeting the needs of a family and working. Online learning was a very steep learning curve for a person that did not grow up surrounded and immersed in technology.

Currently the media insists on using terms such as remote learning and home schooling and Scott Morrison’s mantra is that the students must return to the classroom. I would like to argue all these points. As a student of online learning myself I find the term ‘remote’ offensive. There is nothing remote about what students are being offered. Teachers work hard to make students feel connected to their community and the word remote conjures ideas of being on a desert island or stuck in Antarctica. I personally feel very connected to my own university peers and the connections made through learning are lasting long beyond the degrees. I know that some students and schools have issues with access to computers and Wi-Fi but this is an equity issue that should have been obvious and dealt with before a pandemic. For most school communities there has been a huge amount of work done to ensure that students feel connected, supported and part of their school community even if lessons are home-based.

At my school we use CANVAS with Google Meets embedded. The attendance rates are the best they have been all year. There is nothing remotely related to Home Schooling in the models offered to students. Lessons are all prepared by professionals with differentiation to meet all student’s needs (this is not to demean the amazing work many home school families do). Maybe it is time to use the term home-based learning. There is a major difference between home-based learning and home schooling. According to NSW Education Standards Authority (NESA)

The Education Act 1990 allows parents to choose to educate their children at home. To be home schooled, a child of compulsory schooling age must be registered by NESA.

Under the NSW Education Act 1990 (‘the Act’), the education of a child is primarily the responsibility of the child’s parents.

The Act recognises that a parent may choose home schooling. (NESA, 2018).

Home Schooling involves choice by parents, by families. This is a pandemic. The children are staying enrolled in their current school and being provided with necessary learning materials. They are just home based to protect them and the community when social distancing has been proven as an effective method of controlling COVID-19.

Finally the current catch cry - getting students back to the class room. Firstly to do that teachers also need to return to the staff room. Has Scott Morrison been in one of these? I am not sure how it would be possible to manage social distancing in a teaching staff room. They are very crowded and teacher’s desks are very close. In my pod I literally need to squeeze past someone to get into my desk. They are great for collegial chatter but not great for social distancing. Then we move to classrooms, we would have to get rid of timetables – at the change of periods you have over 1000 students jammed into corridors trying to move to their next class. Also I am not sure how children cannot currently see their grandparents but many teachers are grandparents who would be in a class with 28 children. The big one – children cannot gather together in parks, cannot use park equipment and cannot even sit on a park bench – are they going to eat their lunch standing on the playground spaced at even intervals! Actually the students never left the classrooms there was a continuum of lessons in many forms, the argument that students would miss a year of schooling doesn’t make any sense. If students were to really miss some time off school there are many studies that show it will not detrimentally affect them in the long term. Most recently studies out of Christchurch following the earthquake but long term looking at the success of Holocaust child survivors. What is more important than a return to a physical classroom is the focus on well-being (Ormandy, 2014, Hemreich, 2017).

As a teacher I am passionate about the students I teach. It is important to me to get back to the physical classroom as soon as it is safe. Outside the classroom it is important to start back with the extra-curricular activities that make schools an amazing place such as Tournament of Minds and Social Justice. In the mean-time I will continue to work hard preparing engaging, differentiated lessons that will keep my students connected to their continuum of learning and meeting them in a virtual space. The return to the classroom will involve changes by the students, in our virtual classroom we have visits by pets, food is casually nibbled, and siblings pop in with an occasional parent also checking things out. It is important that through all this there is a safe place for vulnerable children and those of workers who have no choices – this can be done safely without putting a whole community at risk.