For many of us, we have never homeschooled before. We had no plans to ever homeschool our children, or teach them at home. We wanted our children in schools with teachers. And let me tell you, your children's teachers are missing them too! Right now, what you are doing is not homeschooling, it is crisis schooling. And it can look different for everyone.
As an educator, I learned a lot about many different educational theorists during my undergraduate and graduate days in school. This saying speaks to me, especially now! Students must Maslow before they can Bloom." What does this mean? Well, Maslow believed in a hierarchy of needs that had to be met before you could advance to the next one. And he did explain later on that not everyone moves through the hierarchy in the same direction and some may move back and forth through the hierarchy (think of someone who is in the fourth level but then becomes homeless, all of the sudden, food and shelter are going to become much more important to them than esteem and self-actualization.) So what are Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and how does this pertain to our situation with the coronavirus right now? Maslow's Hierarchy of needs start at the bottom and go up starting with 1) Physiological needs-food, shelter, clothing, sleep 2) Safety needs- predictability, feeling safe and secure, having order and control over their life 3) Love and belongingness- friendships, trust, giving and receiving love and acceptance, being part of a group 4) esteem needs-esteem for oneself (mastery, achievement, independence) and desire for acceptance from others (status, prestige) 5)self-actualization needs- realization of a persons potential, self-fulfillment, personal growth https://www.simplypsychology.org/maslow.html
Right now, many of our students that may have been at step 5, or even in the Bloom stages (which I will get to next) have gone back to stages 1 and 2. They are having trouble meeting physiological needs. They may be getting 2 meals a day from the schools, but not have enough for everyone. They may be receiving food for just the kids that go to school, but the parents don't have enough to eat. They may overhear their parents talking about how they are going to make rent. They may be worrying about a relative that is sick with coronavirus, or they themselves may be sick with coronavirus. They may also be worrying about safety and security. They doun't have any sense of predictability right now. No one was given a chance to say goodbye to their friends, or teachers. Some were given no guidance on how to complete schoolwork. Parents with multiple kids in the house who may have varying degrees of disabilities are having trouble keeping all of them on tasks and this is creating chaos in the minds of the whole family. Kids of all ages (whether they want you to believe it or not) like a sense of order and control. They may tell you "stop trying to control my life!" when they are in their teen years. I'm sure you have heard that one more than enough. But, when there is no order, and things have no sense of control at all, it can cause a sense of instability that causes children to act out. It causes them to sometimes act what we would consider "younger than their age," even though this is typical behavior.
What does Bloom have to do with all of this? Blooms taxonomy has stages as well 1) Factual- knowledge of terminology and specific details 2) knowledge of classifications and categories, principally;ilizations and generalizations and knowledge and theories of models and structures. 3) Procedural) Knowledge of subject specific skills and algorithms, subject specific techniques and methods, criteria for determining when to use appropriate procedures 4) Metacognitive-strategic knowledge, knowledge about about cognitive tasks including appropriate contextual and conditional knowledge, self knowledge. https://www.celt.iastate.edu/teaching/effective-teaching-practices/revised-blooms-taxonomy/
Let me start off by saying, I think our teachers are amazing! What they are doing is a herculean feat! Trying to find work that is going to help our children learn through distance learning, being available for questions during the day, helping them with whatever they need so they can get it right. They are doing amazing jobs that they never wanted to do. They wanted to be in classes with their kids. No one signed up for this. I have to say though, that some kids are back in the 1st and 2nd stage of Maslow while being asked to do things in the 4th and 5th stage of Bloom. And this is darn near impossible. We need to give our teachers some grace, but we also need to give our families a lot of grace! This is not homeschooling! This is trauma schooling! Children may or may not have a complete understanding of what is going on, especially the younger ones and when they do not understand, they sometimes are prone to make ideas up in their head. And sometimes those ideas could be worse than the actual thing that is happening. We need to work on Maslow before we work on Bloom. This is NOT to say that we should just tell the teachers that we aren't doing any schooling at all anymore (though for some families, I will say, this may be appropriate. And this is coming from an educator). But, we need to meet families where they are. With my EI families, some of them just do not want teletherapy. At all. They don't want to chase their kids around with a phone, they'd rather I provide suggestions through weekly or biweekly calls. And that is ok. Some people want teletherapy because it is easier to copy and imitate and learn from the therapist. And thats ok. With teachers, I think it is also ok to meet the children and families where they are at as well. If a family is telling you, "I have 3 kids at 3 different ages and 3 different ability levels that I am trying to help and I am swamped and can not get this done, do you have any ideas?" Sending 3 more emails with more homework is probably not the best plan. Trying to meet them at their level by reducing the amount of homework, or making some of it hands on and having the parent take a video (if that would help the parent because that particular child will not do worksheets) of their work may help. Remember, some kids are feeling the stress of their parents right now, and they are back at Maslow's level 1 or 2. They are also missing their friends. If they don't have a phone at home, or a good wifi connection they may not be seeing their friends right now so they are also not getting the love and belongingness from their friends. They may be getting it from their families, but it is a different kind of belongingness that comes from children friendships. So, trying to find ways to let the kids talk together when you can will help too (Skype, FaceTime, googlemeets, etc). This is a marathon, not a sprint. So we want to be sure to help our kids the best we can. We want to help them go back up that ladder, not slide down it even more. Lets try helping them by also helping their families. Let's meet people where they are instead of trying to push them to where we think they should be.
No comments:
Post a Comment