Who is the Teacher?

As a parent who has been thrown into the world of e-learning with my children one of the biggest questions that keeps coming up is who is the teacher, or rather who is responsible for providing the instruction?

Is it my child’s teacher?

Is it me?

Is it the tutorials and online lessons that are posted by the teacher?

Is it a combination?

For many of us we were all (teachers, students, and parents alike) thrown into this e-learning world for an extended time without fully understanding how this would work and without being about to clearly define our roles and responsibilities. The reality of the situation is that we all will have to work together because the role and instructional responsibilities is likely going to shift from week to week, day to day, child by child based on a multitude of variables. While this can be challenging, the good news is that there are things that we can do to make it easier and to help our children continue to be successful.

Tips for Teachers

• Finding video tutorials for students to complete are great, but when you can either go live and record it or record and post videos of yourself doing the instruction. It does not have to be perfect. Be the same person you are in your classroom. That is who your students have a connection with and that is who they want to see. And trust me, as a mom of three in elementary school they want and need to see you. These videos will also help parents understand better what you say to students, how you say it, and provides us with a model to reinforce the learning for students. Think of us parents as being an extension of that video. We can all be talking with one voice.

• When you cannot do some form of direct instruction, provide parents with some notes and/or background information that will be helpful for the upcoming lessons. For example, if there are common mistakes or misconceptions that students might have on a specific lesson outline those so that if we see those come up in their work we can address those right away.

• Explain the overarching goals and intended outcomes of the lessons. You know why you assigned a specific video, reading or writing assignment, workbook pages, etc. Let us know so that we can make sure that our kids are ‘getting it’.

Tips for Parents

• Communicate BEFORE you get frustrated. I know that is not always easy because if you are like me you may be juggling lessons for multiple kids along with your own work. One thing that I have started doing is going looking over the lessons and having a ‘meeting’ with each of my kids on Monday so that we can figure out where we have our initial questions, makes sure we can find and access all of the lesson parts, etc. If we cannot find something in the weekly plan we email right the teachers right then because we learned the hard way that to not be able to access/find something when it is needed can quickly cause our little e-learning school to crash and burn.

• Communicate when your child is struggling. If you have played the video lesson over and over, have tried your own explanation, have read and reread the passage and they just aren’t getting it, stop. Here is where communication is key and its not just the act of communicating that your child is struggling, but it is also important to try to communicate in detail what they are struggling with. If it’s a math problem, send the teacher a picture of the work. If its reading, send them a video. If its something that students are supposed to be doing send a written explanation of what exactly they did and what happened. Since the teacher cannot see nor hear what is taking place, give them enough information to be able to diagnose the problem more quickly.
• Don’t be afraid to not know. If you are trying to check your child’s work and aren’t sure if you have the answer correct, ask the teacher for the answers. If you need to see one or two examples worked out, as to see those. I had to ask for an explanation and an example of a RACE writing assignment because 1) I had no clue what RACE stood for, and 2) I had no clue what that should look like so there was no way I could help/reinforce/check my child’s work if I did not have an example. Trust me when I say that most teachers would gladly provide you with the tools that you need, they just need to know the need.

 So, with all of that being said, back to the original question, who is responsible for providing instruction? 

Some days it will be the teacher.

Some days it will be me.

Some days it will be the tutorials and online lessons provided by the teacher.

Some days it will be a combination.

And, because some days we just need a little grace all around, it is no one, and that is okay.