The Role of Parents in the New Normal in Education
What to do and prepare for your student during distance learning
What adjustment needs to cope up with the new normal classroom
Learning Environment for School Year 2020-2021
Tips for Parents of Students Doing Blended Distance Learning
The Role of Parents in the New Normal in Education. Preparing the parents’ transition to become learning facilitators. Parents and teachers will work with one another more often to address the students’ remote learning requirements. They need to adapt to online communication and other learning platforms. Communicate with respect and discipline in order to have a successful collaboration.
Despite the challenges presented by Covid-19 pandemic, many educators and students have the ability to take their learning temporarily online. DepEd has set up its classroom experience through the Google Suite platform utilizing the Google Meet and Google Classroom, and other video conferencing portals and online communication channels.
How to become a learning facilitators?
Guides for learning facilitators
Parents are concerned about how they can manage. Parents should address and understand the lingering fears that they think of remote learning and their roles in implementing distance learning.
“Several parents raised concerns that young children could not be expected to do 5¾ hours of remote learning a day, and asked whether it was realistic to expect that parents could instruct or guide their children while they were working full time…”
“ Another parent posed the question this way, “Is it feasible to assume a parent can work from home full-time nine to five and passively oversee their children for basic safety while the child is actively and self-sufficiently engaged in school activities for several hours? Or will they likely need pretty involved parent engagement and help, which means working parents will have to either hire help, reduce hours, fall behind at work, or help their child outside of work hours, or find a nice person who will help their child free, or have their young kids figuring it out.” (Gavin, L. 2020.)
In the Philippines, most concerns rise from low-income families whose socio-economic problem involves how to feed their family on a daily basis and other basic necessities, and yet these groups need to meet the demands of distance learning in order for their children to continue schooling. DEpEd School Division Office- Quezon City held a “2020 SDO Quezon City Parents-Teachers Association (PTA) Forum via Facebook Live stream last July 30, 2020, discussing the Local Government Unit (LGU) collective efforts to assist the educators, parents and students needs for this school year. It aims to provide an avenue for the presentation of the Division Learning Continuity Plan, to discuss the challenges and opportunities related to the “new normal” in education, and to identify areas on how to build an effective collaboration between the school and the parents.
Moreover, the forum gave essential tips for parents on how to manage the children’s emotional and physical well-being. Another immediate concern that the forum announced was the plan to distribute tablets and internet allowance to all high school students in public schools. “The Quezon City government will be providing all junior high school and senior high school students with tablets to be used for digital and online learning. The Division has completed the supplementary learning resources and modules to be used across all grade levels and will be uploaded in the LRM google site.” (SDO-QC, 2020). The tablets will replace the textbooks that are borrowed and returned when the academic year ends. According to SDO-QC, the tablet will be pre-loaded with lessons per quarter. Only the parents or guardians are allowed to pick-up and return the tablet from the school premises. If the plan pushes through, this project will give a resounding relief for those who are in need of this kind of assistance.
Major concerns of parents
I don’t know if I can be able to teach my kid.
I’m afraid I my kid fail because of me.
I lack patience, I cannot do it.
How can I teach my kid when I’m also clueless about the lessons
We (parents) need to clarify our expectations to avoid getting into stress.
Are we going to make a lesson. No.
Do we need to become a subject expert. No
Are we into homeschooling? No, homeschooling is different from distance learning.
What are the roles of parents as learning facilitator?
- As a learning facilitator, parents will pick-up the learning packets from school premises.
- Assist your student in preparing their school needs in terms of routines and consistency.
- Assist the teacher to discipline our kids
- Guide our children to become responsible
It does not mean it’s not easy to do it, it means it can be done. These things are probable when there is a systematic approach.
Tips for Parents of Students Doing Blended Distance Learning
What to do and prepare for your student during distance learning
Learn-from-Home Checklist
- Is there adequate lighting in the study area?
- Are school materials (pens, papers, worksheets) on hand?
- Is the study area free from distractions? (Far from the bed; TV, tablet, or any gaming devices must be turned off.)
- Is there water to keep your child hydrated during the synchronous and asynchronous sessions?
Be mindful of the school rules. Get to know the school schedule and its guidelines. Help your child establish and stick to a routine. Even though face-to-face school meetings has gone to an online learning format, treat school days just like you would if your child was attending school as usual. This includes having them get up at the same time everyday, get properly dressed, and eat a healthy breakfast.
Reminders how to discipline your student. Communication is important when it comes to implementing discipline at home. The method to discipline the youth is in the hands of both parents and the teachers.
- When children misbehave – redirect and use consequences. Catch bad behavior early and redirect your kid’s attention from a bad to a good behavior. Consequences help teach out children responsibility for what they do and allow discipline that is controlled.
- Analyze why your kid is misbehaving. Stay calm when you approach/talk to them, the kid’s ears and sense of listening tends to close once you deviate to shouting.
- Keeping it positive. Say the behavior you want to see by using positive words when telling your child what to do. It’s all in the way you deliver the message, shouting will just make you and your child more stressed and angrier.
- Let them feel that you are ready to help by means of calming words, acknowledgement with warm gestures such hugs or embracing them.
- Encourage your child to verbalize their thoughts and feelings.
- Before the start, it is important to tell your kid that what he/she did was wrong, it doesn’t mean that he/she is a bad person. The need to straighten up (such as the attitude, behavior, habits) for them to change to become a better person.
- Screen time – Set a time limit when using gadgets. Implement a simple reward or gratitude system for them to realize the importance of time management.
- Sleeping time – Right amount of sleep and body rest is what a growing child needs. This is their formative years (brain and body development). Lack of sleep affects the character of a child.
Encourage short breaks, physical activity and exercise. Your child will be sitting in front of their computer for a long duration. Encourage them to use the breaks in the day to stretch or any movement.
One-on-one time. Set aside time to spend with your child or teens. One-on-one time is free and fun and makes the child feel loved, secure and shows how important they are. Ask your child what they would like to do. Letting them choose and decide builds their self-confidence.
Keep calm and manage stress. It is important to remember that adults are role models for children on how to react to stressful situations. This situation can be an opportunity for parents to model problem solving skills, flexibility, creativity, and empathy to children.
Practical ways to develop good mental health. Connecting with relatives and friends, healthy relationships can provide an important social outlet. Be creative in discovering new activities or hobbies. Staying busy helps you focus on positive activities rather than negative feelings. And lastly, ask a trusted person for help. When problems are too much to handle alone, a trusted friend can help.
Take care of you. The stress of Covid-19 makes us angry and affects our loved ones. Take care of yourself and take a break when you feel exhausted and about to explode. If you’re not taking care of your own physical, emotional, mental, and spiritual needs, you will have less energy, space, and patience to connect with and take care of your children. Even 10-15 minutes of scheduled “me” time during the day is beneficial.
Talking about Covid-19. Be open and honest about what’s happening during this emergency crisis. Listen and be supportive of your child’s opinion.
Develop family harmony at home. When we model peaceful and loving relationships, our children feel more secure and loved. Positive language, active listening, and empathy help maintain a peaceful and happy family environment under this stressful time.
PARENTS AS LEARNING PARTNERS – Computer specifications, devices, learning tools and internet service providers: What to do and prepare for your student during distance learning
- Having a laptop or a desktop computer (PC) is a must, while mobile phones will serve as a supplementary monitoring. Most hands-on work and virtual meetings (online classroom) will be delivered best using a wide screen. Mobile phones are for monitoring schedules and checking emails. Downloading the files and organising them is the most convenient way for your learner. Both aspects are required because of simultaneous interaction.
- For multiple learners at home, sharing of gadgets is not advisable. The probability of two or more kids enrolled will likely have the same schedules and online learning materials storage (email, drives and clouds) differs per grade level. The kids will manage their files per unit (laptop), treat it as per learner’s notebook or journal.
- Strong and fast internet connection is preferred. Why? The advantage of prepaid wifi is that we can control data consumption while the disadvantage of prepaid wifi or prepaid data is that it is slow and tends to be more expensive because of reloading randomly. The ideal internet connection should be a fixed Internet Service Provider (ISP) without cap limit.
- Parents/guardians should be knowledgeable on basic Information Technology (IT) terms and approaches. Young learners will be dependent on you, you should be available at their side most of the time. For high school and college learners, they already know what to do. Get to know how to operate gadgets properly, install apps, sync files, and connect to the internet.
- If you can afford, buy or use a laptop or PC with higher specifications. An old and slow computer could affect your child’s performance too. Don’t settle with computer specs like Celeron, Dual Core, Core 2 Duo, Quad Core or equivalent. These processors are obsolete and will slow down the system, some software or apps won’t properly work. When purchasing a PC, consider the processor and memory. Your learner’s PC should have a minimum specification of at least an Intel Core i3 8th Gen or higher. We are recommending 8th Gen or higher for faster clock speed but an i3 lower Gen is also workable, though with an 8th Gen price difference, just add a few amount and you get a better updated processor. If you are considering a system upgrade (with uninterrupted system failure at the very least), settle for Intel Core i5 or i7 or AMD Ryzen/Radeon equivalent with 8GB/16GB of RAM and has at least 240GB SSD of storage. Remember, online schooling is here to stay and you will end up using them for a very long time provided you know how to properly maintain the devices.
- For those on a tight budget, a lower Gen of i3 or AMD Ryzen/Radeon equivalent with 4GB up of RAM will do. Do consider an 8GB RAM if you want to open multiple windows, browsers or apps.
- Webcam, headphone with mic is a must. There’s a built-in camera and mic available in laptops. For old PC units with these accessories, you can buy generic brands at a lower price.
- Practice muting your mic if you’re not the speaker. It is quite difficult for everyone who is doing virtual meetings with a chaotic sound background.
- To families who don’t have the means to buy these necessary devices. Opt for modular learning. the school will provide printed or hard-copy per quarter.
- You as an IT companion of your child will be using online tools such as: Zoom, Google Suite for education (cloud computing, productivity and collaboration tools, software and products), Google products (meet, classroom, google drive, google docs, google form. google sheet, google slides, youtube, etc), email, chat messenger apps, mentimeter, survey monkey, and among others. Have a back-up (install) apps of these tools on your mobile phones in case anything happens you have an alternative method of connecting to your child’s virtual activities. Organize them in a cluster and label it as productivity or education or your preferred name folder. With other devices like PC or laptop, create a folder as an online classroom, have it labeled as your learner’s level and section. Then create sub-folders labeled as per subjects. This way your child can access the lesson conveniently and at the same time they will learn how to work systematically. The rule of the thumb is to keep it simple and clean. Declutter your desktop from tons of files, segregate them to its proper folders. Too many files on the desktop will slow down your computer system. A very important rule is to use your drive: D when storing your files. Avoid saving files in your drive:C if you want your system to run crisp and fast. Keep the drive:C for your program files alone.
The tips mentioned are recommended for people who will be under distance learning. The specifications are based on the basic platform to be used by learners. On our end, we personally used system specs with: 1.6 GHz Intel Core i5 (processor), 8GB 1867 Mhz DDR3 (memory), and Intel HD Graphics 6000 1536 MB (graphics) on a 21.5” monitor. This current unit was bought in 2017.
If your PC can handle the school’s requirement, use the available resources you have, Different schools will use different learning platforms. When it is not required, stick to what you have,
The 5 P’s of Learning Facilitation (in Filipino)
Panahon
Pagtatanong
Pag-kakayanin
Pagtaya
Pakikiramdam
Panahon. What if there is no time? The role of a parent as learning facilitator is to find/create a system to have the time for distance learning. Try to find time. Your kid requires parental guidance to make adjustments during this period. This year may neither be helpful or worsen the development of your kid.
Strategies of “tracking”
- Drive through – walk through the study room slowly without interrupting your student, let them feel that you are with them.
- No touch check-in – Show hand gesture like thumbs up or hand wave, and even smile at them
- Read through –Drop by for a minute or two to ask your student about the progress of the lesson, review the lessons and suggest comments
Resist the urge to sit in on classes with your child. While it may certainly be tempting to “pop in” on your child’s classes, please respect their privacy and that of other students. Connect with teachers through email or other communication channels before or after school hours.
Pagtatanong. What if I can’t answer all the questions? You are not obligated to give answers like how the subject experts can. Parents’ role as learning facilitator is to encourage your student to develop how to formulate questions, how to be curious.
Pag-kakayanin. How will I know if my kid can handle the lesson? Parents’ role as learning facilitator is to give the student a chance to handle things on their own phase. You are there to guide them.
Prepare for mistakes
- If you are into “tutoring,” create a culture of positive reaction when mistakes occur.
- Encourage to ask teacher how to
- Analyze the mistakes made by your student and prepare for those mistakes
- Your student should practice tracking their school works
- Don’t tell the answer right away
Pagtaya. How can we be sure that these things will work out despite the number of those who are not sure? Parents’ role as learning facilitators is to give it a 100% shot, to yourself as a parent, to your teacher, and your child. Let’s support the concern of people who take the risks to implement the new normal in education.
Ano and Siguro and Sigurado
(in Filipino)
Siguro. Hindi talaga ok ang distance learning bilang isang paraan kung paano mauto an gating anak.
Sigurado. Susubukan ng teacher ang lahat ng kaniyang makakaya upang mapabuti ang pag-aaral ng iyong anak.
Siguro. Magiging magulo ang sistema sa pasukan.
Sigurado. Magkakaroon ng maraming pagbabago sa mga susunod na buwan habang inaayos ng eskwelahan ang sistema nila.
Siguro. Hindi mo ito magagawa nang mabuti dahil wala kang oras, pasensiya, o training.
Sigurado. Magkakaroon ng maraming tao at mga pagkakataon na matulungan ka.
Siguro. Hindi talaga maiintindihan ng anak ko kaya kapag medyo nahihirapan siya, sasabihin ko na lang ang sagot.
Sigurado. Tumanggap lang ng “100% na sagot,” para maenganyo ang anak na mag-isip at maghanap ng mas mabuting paraan.
Learning Environment for School Year 2020-2021
Blended Distance Learning Modalities are consist of modular (printed or hardcopy) and virtual (Google Meet, Google Classroom, Zoom, and email) methods. This refers to a learning delivery that combines face-to-face with any or a mix of online distance learning, modular distance learning, and TV/Radio-based Instruction. Blended learning will enable the schools to limit face-to-face learning, ensure social distancing, and decrease the volume of people outside the home at any given time.
Critical for implementation will be the production of the needed teacher’s and learner’s learning materials (LR Portal and DepEd Commons will be maximized), as well as the support of media institutions like TV and radio stations.
What type of assessments should our children expect this school year? There will be an Online Assessment Strategies which includes the following: learning journals, portfolios, independent projects, self- assessment, peer assessment, and online discussions. Standardized tests and more performance will be given. Learning types that will improve students’ skills and understanding – create, discuss, and practice.
What will be your guide in doing the performance tasks? The basic guides will come from teacher instructions, rubrics, and feedback from teacher and classmates. During the new normal approach, there will be a handful of performance tasks and quizzes. Likewise, students have more control in the learning process and they are accountable for their grades.
Class schedules are divided into two categories
Synchronous. Students learn at the same time.
- Communication happens in real time.
- Possibly more engaging and effective.
- Allow for instant feedback and clarification.
- Examples: video conferencing, live chat, live stream videos.
Asynchronous. Students learn at different time.
- Communication is not live.
- Possibly more convenient and flexible.
- Allow students to work at their own pace.
- Examples: email, screencasts, flipgrid videos, blog posts/comments.
“DepEd schools with its remote teaching and learning modalities should continuously be the breeding ground students through the distance learning and inspiring delivery of services given its strength on collaboration with parents, capacitated teachers and students.” (QCSHS, 2020)
For parents, in these trying times you should find ways to stay connected with your school, your workplace, or your local community. Stay in touch and check in with your support network from your family, friends, and colleagues. It’s more important to share daily grind, worries, advice, mentorship, and the unexpected joys of living life under today’s circumstances.
Frequently Asked Questions on DepEd Learning Modalities for School Year 2020-2021
What is Distance Learning?
This refers to a learning delivery modality where learning takes place between the teacher and the learners who are geographically remote from each other during instruction.
What is Modular Distance Learning?
Learning is in the form of individualized instruction that allows learners to use self-learning modules (SLMs) in print or digital format/electronic copy, whichever is applicable in the context of the learner and other learning resources like Learner’s Materials, textbooks, activity sheets, study guides and other study materials.
What is Online Distance Learning?
It features the teacher facilitating learning and engaging learners’ active participation using various technologies accessed through the internet while they are geographically remote from each other during instruction.
What is Home Schooling?
It is an alternative delivery mode (ADM) that aims to provide learners with equal access to quality basic education through a home-based environment to be facilitated by qualified parents, guardians or tutors who have undergone relevant training.
What is Blended Learning?
This refers to a learning modality that allows for a combination of face to face and online distance learning (ODL), face-to-face and modular distance learning (MDL), face-to-face and TV/Radio-based Instruction (RBI), and face-to-face learning and a combination with two or more types of distance learning.
What is Traditional Face-to-Face Learning?
This refers to a learning delivery modality where the students and the teacher are both physically present in the classroom, and there are opportunities for active engagement, immediate feedback, and socio-emotional development of learners.
What is Alternative Delivery Modes (ADM)?
Alternative Delivery Modes (ADM) are tried and tested alternative modalities of education delivery within the confines of the formal system that allow schools to deliver quality education to marginalized students and those at risk of dropping out in order to help them overcome personal, social and economic constraints in their schooling.
Reference:
Department of Education: www.deped.gov.ph
DEpEd School Division Office- Quezon City: http://www.depedqc.ph
UNICEF 2020: https://www.unicef.org/
Quezon City Science High School
AHA Learning Center: www.ahalearningcenter.com
D’Ambra, L. ARetrieved August 4, 2020, from Penguin Hall at: https://penguinhall.org/5-tips-for-parents-distance-learning/
Gavin, L. (2020, August 1). Retrieved August 4, 2020, from Evans Round Table: https://evanstonroundtable.com/Content/Schools/Schools/Article/What-Will-Remote-Learning-Look-Like-in-the-2020-2021-School-Year-/16/27/18346
#LearningModalities
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