distance education

[Progster]

I'm a teacher who has been doing online private tuition for years. I hear a lot of complaints from my students regarding the shift to online schooling, some of them being:

-noisy kids all talking over the top of each other.
-not able to concentrate and learn
-bad quality of materials and teaching
-shortened lessons
-technical problems interfering with quality of lessons
-teachers not experienced with online teaching and not able to cope or make a smooth transition
-some students not taking the lessons seriously
-lack of support
-problems due to the varying quality of hardware
-not covering the curriculum
-simply not learning.

I don't teach groups, apart from brothers and sisters of the same family, twins or triplets. I have two sets of twins who have their lessons together, side by side using the same computer. That's ok, I keep them engaged and it's not a problem. I also teach triplets, and although they are from the same family in the same house, they each sit in separate rooms, each with his/her own device, because otherwise they distract each other/fight or can't concentrate. This is a problem. I have to try to monitor/pay attention to 3 different kids at once, find it hard to track who is speaking, they tend to talk over each other, I have stuff going on from many different sources - the video, the chat, the speaking and also background things going on, and this can cause me sensory overload. I really struggle with this aspect, and that's just with 3 students together, I really can't imagine what it must be like to try to hold a class with 30 or so students. Very difficult for both students and
teachers, whether neurodiverse or not.

 

[Dadamen]

noisy kids all talking over the top of each other.

Turn their microphones off and they won't be noisy anymore.

 

[Progster]

Turn their microphones off and they won't be noisy anymore.

That's ok for students who don't want to hear their classmates. But the teacher needs to be able to hear them.

 

[Dadamen]

That's ok for students who don't want to hear their classmates. But the teacher needs to be able to hear them.

When we have a lesson we all turn microphones off and turn them on only when we need to talk. In my class teachers often have problem with disciplines in school, but we're always quite online. P.S. Which subject are you teaching?

 

[Progster]

Which subject are you teaching?

I teach languages.

 

[Dadamen]

I teach languages.

Great! Do students know that you're on spectrum?

 

[Progster]

Great! Do students know that you're on spectrum?

No, they don't.

 

[Dadamen]

No, they don't.

Good decision not to say them becuase they would surely make fun from it.

 

[Progster]

Good decision not to say them becuase they would surely make fun from it.

Yes, telling them would not be a good idea. I'd very quickly lose students. There is little awareness of what autism is, that it's a spectrum and not all people with autism are like Rain Man.