Learning outside the classroom

What does/should it entail?

Depending on which school you work in, or which school your child attends, the expectations of working from home and home learning differ enormously. In my house, we both work at different secondary schools and we both have different things expected of us while we are not at school.

One of us has to just check emails regularly and be ready to reply to any queries from students or parents as soon as is feasibly possible. No expectation to set further work beyond what was hastily prepared in anticipation of the school closures. The other of us is still expected to go into school for one day every three weeks to supervise the children who have been sent to school, whilst also checking emails, sending further resources and learning suggestions to teaching groups and trying to

And that's just two schools, about 6 miles apart. I'm trying not to look at it that one of us has a rougher deal than the other, especially when I see posts in teacher forums on social media that live lessons are taking place, marking of work is happening and feedback being provided. It would seem some are working more from home than they would at school.

And there is one reason for this: our culture of education is of a face to face nature.

We have not embraced technology in this way for our compulsory educational provision. Every school has subscriptions to various platforms that support learning, but that's just it: they support learning. They don't provide it.

Teacher training does not require us to be au fait with the workings of platforms such as Google Classrooms or Microsoft Teams. Continuing professional development (CPD) does not incorporate training for staff to become skilled in these methods of teaching. Largely due to the fact that we could never have really expected the need. So many teachers have had to rapidly skill themselves in using platforms that are otherwise obsolete in the educational structure we have in place in schools. Having some sort of system that routinely involves remote learning, perhaps for students who are absent, would highlight not only significant training needs for staff but also the need to extensively upgrade the computer networks in schools to cope with the increased demand on the system in order to provide this. Factor in to this that a proportion of students will not have access to the required devices and network connections from home, and the plan straight away has the potential to fall flat. Students that are disadvantaged by any means are more likely to miss school more often.

I've just been reading this article on TES about advice from unions on what teachers should be expected to do during this period of school closure. I saw this advice a few days ago via a post on Facebook and at the time I felt it was fair and set out clearly what teachers should be expected to do irrespective of their work setting. I honestly don't know whether to be appalled or amused by some of the comments made on that Facebook post though. Some have said this advice is completely contradictory of what we do our jobs for - we are being paid by the public purse and so should continue to provide lessons and marking and feedback for our students. Others have expressed relief that they are not wrong in thinking their school wants more from them than is reasonable.

These comments make me sad more than anything. In these times, we are not in a position for every school to be able to monitor what every child is doing at home. Each child will be living in different circumstances. For instance, they may be the de facto babysitter for several hours of the day while the parents are working at home so that they continue to be paid and can provide food to feed their children. We can't expect teachers who themselves may have children at home now to be working usual school hours in much the same way that we can't expect children to be able to study for the usual school hours. It's not possible. It's not a system that has been tried and tested in less stressful circumstances, so how can we expect it to suddenly be the answer to everything now that we are in this situation?

I've also seen some more supportive posts for the teaching from home/home schooling situation that the nation now finds itself in for the foreseeable future. And that is, learning takes place in all manner of ways in all manner of places. When I was training, one of the buzz terms was "learning beyond the classroom" and schools were forced to identify where there were opportunities for learning to be extended beyond the classroom. This was a rather obtuse function, in my opinion, because depending on the subject and also on the circumstances of the child, these opportunities wouldn't necessarily naturally lend themselves to life beyond the classroom. These days the term is "cultural capital" (which has been completely misconstrued by schools for the large part - perhaps a post on that another time when my focus is back to usual teaching) and again, the links are often as clear as mud as schools scramble to fulfil this element of the Ofsted criteria. Cultural capital, or learning beyond the classroom, whatever you want to call it, is something that should be organic. Those things that are embedded in the way we go about things that allow us to link our learning at school to the real world. When a child works this out for themselves, the look of pure pleasure in their faces is enough to know that they have learned successfully. If we are signposting this to the students, it is forced and the links are not as well formed as they are if we allow them to happen naturally.

In response to the fact that my school doesn't require me to physically be at work but needs me to work from home on various tasks that are possible to do remotely, that's exactly what I will do. I will be planning ahead, working out what I'll need to recap before I can move on to teaching new things. I will also be looking ahead to the next academic year. Where will I make up for lost time, especially with my year 10 who will be in year 11 by then? I won't immediately offer an extra lesson after school one day each week - every subject will be in the same position with regard to lost time - but it may be a short term solution for some. These are the things that require planning, first on an individual teacher level, then for discussion amongst departments and then for discussion across all the departments at school. We have to make it work for the students to reassure them that this period of disruption to their education is not the end of the world. We have to be careful not to place too much extra strain on them as soon as schools open again. We have so much to prepare and to consider in doing so.

Be kind. Stay safe.