Question: The school expects from us that we will suddenly, without ever learning this, without subscribing to distance learning at home, take on a significant part of the responsibilities for teaching children in these conditions. Huge anxiety about homeschooling. Anger at the school, teachers, educational authorities, the country. How to cope?
Answer: Of course, all the technical issues of providing distance education are definitely not for a psychologist! Here I will only give a recommendation from the group of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation: “Please note that homeschooling is only a temporary forced measure taken in the current epidemiological situation. The website of the Russian Ministry of Education has published a list of resources recommended for use during homeschooling. The developers are improving the functioning of the platforms, but for your convenience, we recommend choosing a site that functions most efficiently in your region and suits you. Any resources can be used to help ensure the educational process, including social networks and instant messengers, as well as familiar learning from textbooks using mobile communications. All recommendations of the Ministry of Education , taking into account all the technical capabilities of students, are published on the website.
Today I came across a teacher’s blog, where, among other things, she shares her experiences, discoveries and hopes about the complexities of this process. There are points on what works, what doesn’t, and how it can be fixed. I agree with the author of the blog that both parents and teachers have many technical problems, as well as ethical and psychological ones. And I can already think about psychological ones. I will quote one quote from the teacher’s blog: “… I was unpleasantly surprised by the behavior of my parents. Many were not able to install an elementary application on their phone. But they immediately began to write complaints, where to send a complaint – for some reason they find it faster. That is, older teachers turned out to be much more mobile and learned to work with new applications faster than young parents.”
I personally am not at all inclined to blame parents for something, many are simply confused and having other problems (work, finances, stress from the general situation), they find a kind of outlet in the outpouring of anger at the situation with learning in conditions of self-isolation. Here, at least, there is someone to express it (to the school, teachers, educational authorities). It is more difficult for an employer to boldly express his dissatisfaction and you can’t take your anger out on him (of course, you can go crazy, but it’s fraught ….). Plus, it’s no secret that teaching a child, even under normal conditions, was quite a nervous experience for many, and when faced with technical and organizational difficulties, parental nerves stretched to the limit.
I understand, I deeply sympathize! I already wrote in previous answers to questions about how important it is for parents themselves to remain calm in relationships with children (this is basic!) In ordinary life, and even more so in crisis, stressful situations. It is close adults who provide the child with stability (in situations, other relationships, during changes, and always). Owning your emotional state is the personal responsibility of an adult.
How to do this – there are a lot of options for working on yourself, you will find in social networks, on websites and forums of psychologists. Sports, yoga, breathing practices, meditation, including gardening, reading, other quiet activities. For those who can not cope at all on their own, there is an appeal to a psychologist or psychotherapist. There are a huge number of technologies for bringing your emotions back to normal. The only difficult thing is usually to take responsibility for yourself. And if you manage to calm down, then all other problems are completely solvable. Out of calm.
And now I see a lot of useless discussions of the same topic that do not lead to any positive result. The result can be considered only inflating oneself to the limit, infecting the negative from each other. But the first thing to understand now is that this is a NON-STANDARD emergency for the whole world, not just for you personally. Everyone, one way or another, ended up in it against their will. For teachers, this is a huge stress, as it is for you. And in reality, everyone does not fully understand how to do this for different children, with different living conditions, different technical capabilities of the Internet.
YOU personally should not feel any guilt or shame for the current situation. YOU are not to blame for it, and neither are the teachers. They, like you, were not given time to prepare, there was simply no such opportunity, this situation was not planned in advance, you cannot help but understand this. Teachers also began work on transferring to home distance education during self-isolation in a panic, in suspense, rebuilding on the go.
“How am I supposed to deal with this????” Mom practically screams. No way. You can’t handle it perfectly right now. You will manage day after day. Little by little. And in the end, make sure you get it right. There is no need to compete with other parents who understand Internet technologies better than you. You don’t have to compete with yourself in a superhero marathon, squeeze all your strength out of yourself to urgently overcome what other people have been studying for years, settling on the Internet. Yes, they did. But you mean you were doing something else, more important to you at that moment. Don’t devalue yourself.
Do what you can. Everyone can do something. Learn online technology with your child. Or choose your training option, there are different options on the website of the Ministry of Education of the Russian Federation. The main thing YOU are already doing, and always have done, is that you love your child. And therefore everything will be fine with you and him in the end. You’ll get through that nasty crisis moment with his education, experience, nasty experience, and the added bonus of showing your child how to deal with situations of change and stress.