Parent Engagement in Learning at Home
The role of parents to engage in learning at home
You may have seen the stories coming out of Europe and the US or UK of parents having to home school their children as much of the world is in lockdown to ward of the spread of the coronavirus pandemic.
As we are now aware, schools in Victoria are now closing to bring forward school holidays with further announcements on when schools will return still to come.
The Victorian Chief Health Officer will advise on whether the transition to flexible learning and support should commence on the first day of Term 2 (Wednesday 15th April) closer to that date. (Source: Dr David Howes, Deputy Secretary, Schools and Regional Services, DET Victoria - 23/3/2020)
In the event that schools do eventually close for longer than the normal holiday period from next week, parents may be requested to assist and support their children's learning at home.
Each individual school will be able to provide you and your family with information about the specific learning that children will be expected to complete. Therefore, it should not be on parents to actually do the work of teachers but to support the work that teachers are providing for children - to engage in learning.
So how does this change your role and how will you manage this along with your own work commitments over the coming weeks?
The following website provides an insight into how to manage this change in your family routine and how to keep things as normal as possible for your children as they adapt to the learning environment that includes both school work and learning at home.
The State government has launched a website of resources called The Learning from Home website as well as another site that includes resources on the FUSE website.
These may be used by your school to deliver learning at home so it is recommended that you support the learning plans of the school before embarking on using other resources.
Another article written by our Executive Officer, Rachel Saliba discusses the various roles we already have the capacity for when it comes to learning at home: