The 2020-2021 school year has begun, for better and for worse. Students are headed back to school via virtual classes, homeschooling, in-person classes, and every combination of those. It’s a crazy time, and everyone’s looking to do it right – or just survive.
Online school poses a whole host of challenges that most of us – and most of our schools – simply are not well positioned to address. Most of us are just doing damage control. But it doesn’t have to be that way. We can use this challenging time as an opportunity.
In my discussion with Brandi Davis of Your Parenting Partner, the first in her School Your Way podcast series, I outlined the most important of those challenges and offered some ideas about how we can all address them.
Here’s a quick list of topics we discussed:
-
How and why has COVID-era virtual school been failing?
-
How and why has e-learning in general fallen short of our expectations?
-
What lessons can we learn from those failures?
-
How can we make up for what our children are missing, and how can we help students who are struggling?
-
What does successful online education look like, and what are the factors in that success?
-
What roles do cognitive workload, discipline, social interaction, routine, and resilience play?
-
How can we go beyond damage control and turn this challenging time into an opportunity?
-
What should parents do to support their children?
What do you think? Join the conversation on Facebook!