This past week my school was shut down by the Department of Health and the Department of Education in South Korea. Why? H1N1 is the answer, Swine Flu, in all of its glory slammed into my school like a ton of bricks.
There was a period of testing staff and students. Then there was rapid fire communication with staff, students, and parents. We were asked to go home but keep teaching from our homes if possible. We all went home to prepare our online materials.
Fortunately for me I am somewhat web savvy. I use Moodle to deliver my courses, and even though it is only the second week of the school year, my students are already used to using Moodle. The content is there. The instructions are there. The ability to dialogue and discuss topics is possible too. Pretty cool stuff.
What I have found interesting with this school shutdown is that only 1/3 of my students are maintaining participation online. Yes, some of them have the flu. Some may not have their computers with them. But attendance should basically be the same online as it is normally in class right? That does not appear to be the case with my 9th and 10th graders. I will push on and then review back at school with my students as needed when it opens again. This is an educational experience to have as a teacher.
The other side of the coin is that my wife , a teacher, and I are also parents of students at the same school that we teach at. We have two sons 8 and 10. The boys are high energy and do not like to sit still for very long. It has been challenging to try and keep teaching and parent at the same time. I can tell you teaching online while parenting is messy. The meals and snacks, quickly prepared between key strokes on the computer, end up all over the place because we find it hard to parent and keep our kids at the table due to maintaining our professional duties.
That seems bad, but what is worse is that we are also supposed to be homeschooling our children too. They need to keep up with the reading, writing and math they have been assigned. We love our children. We want them to learn and grow but they are inevitably short changed by the turn of events brought on by H1N1 Swine Flu. We can not take on all three roles very gracefully. Our kids will have to do their learning later.
If swine flu is on the move now it will end up getting worse as we move into the colder months in the northern hemisphere. We will likely have more school closure and miss more days in the class with students. With the technology available to the teacher though it is possible to keep teaching. But I am curious to see how well it will work out for teacher, student or school.
I personally am feeling rather tiered after 48 hours under the expectation to keep teaching and parenting and homeschooling. I might need a vacation when I get back to school. Or it just might feel like a vacation when I get back...whenever that is.
No comments:
Post a Comment