Thinking about yesterday’s post about e-learning — I didn’t say this in the original post, but on sleeping on it all and considering the comments in the various parent groups I also posted in, I’ll also note that I suspect many of us (if not all of us) are also dealing with unresolved trauma from pandemic e-learning, especially those folks with littles who were just starting school in 2020-2021. I’m sure it was horrid.
I teach college, and my kids were in 5th and 8th grade in 2020, so we had a very different experience than those with little kids. I honestly don’t know what the best solution is for ages 5-8 — I suspect maybe some combination of Zoom class and an asynchronous option for each class, for those who are going to have trouble sitting still on screens. Hopefully we’ll evolve towards that, or something even better.
I honestly think that as teachers, most of us are now much better at this than we were in 2020!
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Am I dreaming when I think workplaces should just accept that when parents of little kids have school switch to e-learning, those parents will not be putting in a full day of work? That we should build that in, the way we build in the reality of maternity leave?
Of course, this is where I start daydreaming about Sweden, which I believe has two full years of parental leave (for any gender parent). It feels unreal, but when I talk to Europeans, they often can’t believe how little we get.