A nightmare for children... and for stressed-out mums and dads
THE start of a new school term can always be daunting, yet rarely can those dreaded first- day nerves have so consumed parents rather than pupils. Amid the unbearable grind of lockdown, many of us have had to get used to the notion of working from home.
Now, with Covid biting back with a vengeance and the vaccine still in its infancy, we would be schooling from home again too, until at least February.
As the father of two young children, it is a prospect I have spent too much of the Christmas holidays fretting about – with good reason, as it turns out.
In houses and flats up and down the land, living rooms that had been repurposed once as offices were now rejigged as temporary classrooms.
Computers and laptops used for Zoom conferences would have to double up for Teams chats with teachers.
And parents, already splitting themselves between family and full-time work, must further sub-divide themselves and their precious work hours to become educators.
We tried our hand at that for a few unhappy weeks last summer, but many gave up long before the blessed day that schools finally reopened.
This time, we were told, things would be different. Our village primary has set out with great intentions, distributing packs of worksheets at the school gates last week linked to online teaching materials to slake the thirstiest imaginations.
The whole would be underpinned by ‘face-to-face’ contact with teachers over Microsoft Teams, one of the main online platforms being used for remote learning, assuming the technology held up. It didn’t.
SOME found the system slow and unresponsive, others simply couldn’t access it all. Some complained they were ‘locked out’ of video work because the sharer had exceeded their online sharing limit.
Glitches in the system, they said, even though Microsoft has apparently known about these ‘glitches’ since early December. No blame attached to the school, it should be said, which has been widely praised for its efforts.
But soon after the ‘school day’ began, floundering mothers, and, yes, some fathers, were in touch with each other over wellestablished WhatsApp groups to find out what they were missi ng, every text another few wasted minutes out of their busy day, when they couldn’t work and couldn’t ‘teach’ either; they could only sit and fume. Or rather, they could engage in some rudimentary crowd control to prevent their offspring from running riot completely.
For those who did access Teams, it wasn’t plain sailing. One mother with a primary school child and a pre-schooler said: ‘I got my son onto Teams for a check-in with his teacher. My four-year- old was running crazy round the [home] office and I was trying to supervise my son while checking work emails and entering invoices onto the accounts software.
‘She wouldn’t give us peace. I ended up putting her in front of the television to let my son and me work. Parenting fail and it is only day one.’
Another mother said it was difficult to spare time on the one computer in the house to allow her children to access Teams: ‘When I’m working from home I need access to a computer all the time. I’m either planning, recording or teaching.’
Even those who hoped to rely on grandparents to help out found it backfired when problems with the technology forced one grandmother to call her harassed key worker daughter back repeatedly while she was trying to work. Many parents will sympathise; convinced we are failing our children and letting ourselves down as parents, we assume everyone else is coping.
But the truth is very few of us are making this work. That destructive combination of stress and guilt is being felt by parents up and down t he country.
As one put it: ‘Juggling work commitments with trying not to feel like a terrible parent and sitting them in front of a screen is a horrible choice. But do we let down our customers or our bosses or do we allow our children’s education to take a back seat? It’s just awful.’
IAM not alone in working in an industry which lives and dies by tight deadlines. My wife runs her own freelance translation business with equally demanding clients.
Which of us should sacrifice our days to school the children? It is a dilemma facing many parents and many employers.
We had a foretaste of these testing times only last week, with the schools’ extended festive holiday break.
With most firms back to normal hours, my wife and I found ourselves spinning plates, responding to the demands of two bored youngsters, cooking, feeding, washing and clothing them, while both of us attempted to fit in working from home.
It all adds to the stress. But then, these are trying times. You just have to get on with it.
So regardless of whether Teams is f i xed soon, home schooling will likely remain the ‘new normal’ for weeks yet.
My children’s teachers have urged parents not to j udge themselves too harshly – we are not teachers, after all. We can only do our best.
Until schools can return, let’s hope our best is good enough.