A teacher

Canada 🇨🇦 "It’s difficult to be away from them for so long. I think for them it’s difficult too, because students want routine, they need a schedule. Right now we’re unsure, everything is unknown. Since the kids are at home, no work is mandatory, and as teachers we cannot evaluate anything until school reopens. You can’t expect a parent to host school at home. I’m a math teacher, I only teach one subject at the moment. I decided to offer weekly math exercises online for my students on a platform called Zoom. Everything I am doing online is review material, it’s what we’ve learned throughout the year so far. Every week I get more than half of the class to join for the online lesson. Sometimes students who don’t join one week attend the following week. I miss my students so much. When I see them show up on Zoom, I have to hold it together. Otherwise, I’m going to cry.

The challenge is being worried about students whose only safe place was at school. It’s difficult in this circumstance for us teachers to make sure if kids have food in their stomachs and if they are with an adult that cares about them. That’s our main concern right now, how do we make sure those students are okay?

“I’d like to remind students that their teachers care about them and that we have hope to see each other again soon.”

We have online communication tools that we use as teachers to communicate with the parents of students. But if some parents don’t reach out, how do we know if the kids are okay? That’s what’s difficult because at school you can sit down and talk to them, but now how do we get a hold of them?

This pandemic will complicate things at every grade level. Students won’t be in school for another four weeks, if not more. Everyone is in the same boat. Teachers will have to update students when we get back to school because there is going to be a gap. When we resume classes, we’ll have to take kids from where they are in their learning and move them up from there. I’d like to remind students that their teachers care about them and that we have hope to see each other again soon. Teachers are not just sitting at home on vacation. We would rather be in our classroom teaching. I want to remind students that we think of them often, even more so right now.”

Teacher Canada