As the coronavirus continues to spread across the United States (and the world) education has shifted to a virtual classroom environment through online learning – protecting the lives of students, teachers and both their families.
While many colleges today already utilize online learning as an option for course credits throughout any given semester, grades K-12 still rely on face-to-face engagement for effective learning.
After all, those formative years are when children and adolescents build their interpersonal skills, strengthen memory and learning development and find motivation from others to challenge themselves to work harder and go further.
Still, online learning helps to keep students engaged during this pandemic – reinforcing concepts and techniques, while providing some the routine they sadly miss.
If K-12’s recent migration to online learning has perhaps taught our society anything it should be that teachers deserve our thanks and praise more often than we provide.
Parents are now seeing first-hand how challenging it is to be a teacher despite all the criticisms and assumptions which are regularly made about the profession.
During a recent conversation with a vendor I regularly deal with, she admitted to me that she doesn’t know how teachers do it day in and day out – and she only has two children to deal with at home, not an entire classroom.
I hope parents realize that even in times of normalcy, learning should never stop once a student steps outside the classroom. The gift of learning must be routinely shared, reviewed and encouraged by children’s very first and most influential teachers – you.
Jacques Barzun once said, “Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.”
Online learning is not a perfect system, and neither are the parents who now find themselves “in charge” of their child’s education. But that’s okay because everything is temporary and someday soon, we’ll all return to normalcy. Here’s hoping when we do, our perception and appreciation for teachers will have changed.
