Reality Check
When you look at the clock, what time do you think it is? At first glance it looks like it is a few minutes before 7, but if you look closer, you realize that it is backwards! It is really a few minutes after 5! I took this picture in the mirror because it brought home a couple of lessons to me that I think bears talking about.
This week I was talking with our music teacher and asking him how it was going trying to teach middle school kids music online. He shook his head and gave me a great example. He was showing kids how to hold a guitar properly, but this one kid had his guitar backwards because that is the way he saw it on his screen…just like the clock. It looked right…but it was wrong!
Much of life is like looking in a mirror, it seems. If you don’t do a reality check, you might be looking at something totally wrong! It is just another example of why in person teaching trumps online learning for a lot of kids.
I know that there are some kids who actually thrive with online learning because they have parents who are making sure they are on task and they work best with fewer distractions, but that is not the case for a lot of kids, and as my teacher friend pointed out…if a parent is not monitoring what the kids are doing, they tend to log on to the class and then play video games or play on their phones! My friend busted one of the kids this week during class. He called the parent of one kid who was not engaged and asked her to check on her son to make sure he was doing what he was supposed to be doing. Sure enough, she walked in and found him happily play his favorite video game! Busted! The teacher let everyone in the class know that if they were off task he would be calling the parents to check on them. You do what you have to do to get the job done!
The lesson here is that if we expect to raise emotionally healthy kids, parents HAVE to be involved in teaching the kids too. After all, they are the first teachers in their lives! If they don’t do their part…particularly with online learning, the child is the one who will suffer for it. Let’s each do our part and not expect someone else to do it for us. Future generations depend on it and need us to do the right thing for them…not just what is convenient at the moment for us.
Shalom!
Daniel Skognes