From Taguatinga-DF, Brazil.
Monday. August 10, 2020.
The day begins very early in the family dynamics. My parents assume their roles, my brothers follow their instructions, and I prepare for classes. After all, this is my last year of high school and I want to finish my studies and take the next step in my life.
I believe, with me, that the most important thing at this time as an “online” student is to be able to understand past issues in the midst of the current Coronavirus pandemic and adapt to this new reality of the educational and teaching process, at a distance.
On Mondays, in general, many teachers do not attend classes, to be taught by Google Meet, the remote platform used by the school. Of three subjects, I had one class and the other two were through online questionnaires and videos to learn the other contents.
At 8 am, the coordination will pass the information on how the second quarter will develop. I look forward to some anxiety. The other notices are passed in groups with the representatives of each room. These representatives are responsible for sending all notices to their respective classes.
It is time for classes, but in fact, time goes by and by, and at the end of the shift, the only class that was taught was Mathematics. To remedy a bit, I am happy that there were no lighting or sound-related issues in the class broadcast. However, many students do not open the microphone on their equipment (cell phone, computer, etc.) and only the teachers are mainly open.
The only class today is going well. Fortunately, the teacher did very well. In addition, months have passed since she used this virtual system and the first difficulties were disseminated and solved almost entirely by some teachers.
I finish class and I feel like I have to race against time. Teaching leaves many gaps and I need to prepare for the final exams. I know that all teaching must be supplemented by students with an interest in preparing for the job market and for life, but the gaps that secondary school continues to leave must also be credited to some poorly performing education and teaching professionals your role.
I don’t know if they think only of the salary they earn, I don’t know if they are burdened by personal, school, educational or government problems. What I do know is that if there are students who do not fulfill their role, there are teaching professionals who do not fulfill theirs either. This balance must be balanced. I register it in my JOURNAL, not knowing what will change. I am finishing high school knowing that the next mandatory step is to enter the job market. How will I respond to this with so many gaps in those years of teaching / learning? Today I have no answer to these questions. I will carry on. I still have a lot to finish my day …
Tuesday. August 11, 2020.
I almost always remember the physical building of the school, the known and unknown voices in the classroom and on the playground. That reality never returns! At least for me, I am graduating from this pandemic year.
Yesterday the teachers were absent. Today I did not take classes through Google Meet – a video communication service developed by Google – a platform that we are using as our virtual classrooms. It happened that in the subjects of sociology, arts and geography, following my school schedule, we had some dead ends, involving human and technological issues.
As for some teachers, the didactics to use in virtual classes is still a bit complicated, many choose to put activities on the platform. That is, they publish videos of other people and not videos that they created themselves, even if they refer to topics related to their disciplines.
These same teachers, on occasions, schedule a day for the virtual meeting in order to clear up the respective doubts left by the videos. However, eventually, there is not a commitment from all regarding the elimination of doubts, thus remaining only in theory and not in practice. In addition, there is a constant dissemination of methodological videos from different teachers. I wonder why these methodological videos from other teachers. Do you want us students to learn to learn or is it a technique to transfer the responsibility of teaching? I believe, with me, that this technique saves time for some teachers, but it dooms the future of some students …
Again, I will keep looking for a complement. I am tired and a little overwhelmed this graduation year. There are many thoughts. My day is far from over. I still have French classes, which I also do. I know I have to move on and I will. I hope there are classes tomorrow and that they are beneficial …
Wednesday. August 12, 2020.
I wake up around 6:30 am. The previous two days had been a bit disappointing. The middle of the week arrived. The subjects scheduled for today are geography, physical education, and mathematics. Let’s see what happens …
Class time. I enter the virtual classroom and keep waiting for it to begin. I understand that today we will only have an online meeting and a geography class.
The online meeting presents the potential to create the different classes, distribute the assignments to the students, generate grades for the assignments and tests, and also to create an application with scope to solve all these problems. Again, we are focused on problems that have nothing to do with the learning content we need to get into college or the job market …
For the rest of the subjects, the exercises were carried out in the “Classroom”, another virtual platform where classes are organized and managed.
There was only a Geography class. Those who do not live this day to day in schools imagine or do not imagine anything, but the truth is that reality is a bit confusing. In the Geography class, there was no problem, neither with the sound, the teacher’s ingenuity, the lighting, since the teacher uses the slide and explains the content of the day very well.
However, time is an obstacle to pass all the material, since there was a remodeling of the schedule, covering a large part of the schools, determining forty-five minutes, at most one hour, for each school subject.
In geography, the teacher always makes presentations through “slides”, not different from how she was in person, but over time the class ends up not being so useful, considering that the Google Meet meeting is only once a week.
Three work-days of classes have done. I keep questioning the quality of each of them, and waiting for tomorrow to be better!
To be continued…
