Learning in the classroom is challenging for a host of reasons, and learning from home is challenging for many of the same reasons plus a whole other range of reasons besides. It’s tough.
Our needs at home differ from those in a brick-and-mortar classroom setting: parents need to work for someone else, work for themselves, be a responsible homeowner, and parent effectively. Students need to meet classroom and personal academic goals without continual contact with their teachers and friends/peers. Amidst all this is an age-expected challenge in terms of self-management, self-motivation, and a general need to rely on executive functioning skills. Stepping in as teacher or assistant is not easily aligned with these goals. The change in roles at home (or the realization that such a shift just isn’t possible in a given context) has caused trauma in some cases and stress in nearly all cases. There may be a concern around “lost time” that parents are hoping their students will
This part of #CaponeTeaches holds these challenges in mind as it offers suggestions to you and your student. It also serves as a point of contact for you to arrange a consultation with me. (If you’d like to do that, you can learn how to contact me at my “about me” page.)
My goals to help are as follows:
(1) Help the student find success through developing successful habits specific to that student’s needs, whatever they may be.
(2) Help the parent/guardian step back from the heavy lifting of education in or from the home environment.
(3) Help everyone involved recognize and intentionally arrange their roles at home to best suit everyone’s needs.
(4) Improve communication between household members about (1) – (3).
In short, I can in many cases provide individualized learning coaching and family educational consulting specific to but not limited to online learning environments.
Where I’m coming from, in addition to my “about me” page:
I taught my first online courses nearly a decade ago for the University of Utah (ethics, logic, human nature), and I have been teaching in a moderately blended sense since then both in the university setting and in the middle school setting (using Canvas as my main point of contact w/ students). This year, of course, all of my teaching moved online, and I was not entirely surprised when I began hearing – in newspapers, on podcasts, etc. – that parents’ and students’ biggest worries about the COVID-19 changes often were focused around school and its attendant challenges. I had my own challenges as a parent in coaching my kids through their own school habits, and we struck a good balance between parent as authority and child as authority. I’ve also got a background working with neurodiverse students and those with learning differences, and I’ve proven to be effective in an online context with my own middle level and university students during COVID in particular.
Let me know if you need help. I’m happy to consult with you at no cost.
steve capone jr., Author/Editor 