In the shadow of the current uncertainty, some parents continue to work and are forced to leave small children at home, who are supposed to study on their own • The big concern is harm to the students' mental needs • Principals are meanwhile forced to solve zoom problems • Remote control education system
The task of being a parent to children in the education system seems to have become almost impossible.
In the shadow of the current uncertainty, some parents continue to work and are forced to leave small children at home, who are supposed to learn by distance learning.
Alongside them are also older siblings, in middle and high schools, who are almost impossible to supervise.
Photo: Yoni Rickner, Moshe Ben Simhon, Paz Bar, Newsenders
Odelia Schindorf from Raanana, a mother of two, says that "this is a lost year of the education system. There is despair from distance learning, it is ineffective, but the main story is loneliness. Parents report bad feelings. These are words heard in every home with a high school student."
Schindorf, who serves as chairman of the parents' leadership in Raanana, adds: "It is clear to me that the data show that high schools are the focus of infection.
On the other hand, there is no need to babysit them - so they will come back last.
Only that the "reports forgot to take into account the long-term damage, the children's mental difficulty, the lack of effective learning, the feelings of despair and the unpreparedness of the system."
Eyal Lebanon, chairman of the Tel Aviv-Jaffa Parents' Committee and father of an eighth-grade student, says that "the biggest concern is the emotional and mental issue. The children have been cut off from their environment, friends, class and their belonging groups. The distance learning solution does not meet the need "Emotional. A generation is growing up here that is about to be harmed beyond pedagogy, both in emotional and mental resilience."
Lebanon concludes that "the state must understand that it is losing a generation here. It must put all the money it has or does not have and return it to learning and stay frontally in capsules."
Managers miss the personal connection
They were busy throughout the school year, caring, supporting, helping, but in an instant one of the school corridors emptied and they were given the big challenge - to run the school with the students and teachers sitting at home.
"The feelings are not simple," shares Moti Arbel, principal of Amit Y. Ashdod High School. "On the one hand, there is a great understanding that we are in an existential battle for life itself in the simplest way.
On the other hand, the physical distance from the students is not simple. "
"Our teachers were discovered in their heyday. More than 40 teachers went into solitary confinement during the holidays, and two teachers fell ill on their own as a result of being exposed to sick students, and yet it was clear to all of us that we were not giving up on the children."
Madin Weixelbaum, principal of the six-year-old Branco Weiss School in Kibbutz Sasa, says: , Is the personal connection, the face-to-face meeting.
Adolescents need a meeting with their peers and a conversation with the staff.
The teacher has the ability in a short corridor conversation, in an exchange of words at the beginning of a lesson, on the way to class or during the lesson to identify the student's emotional state. "
what can we do?
"We have put in boxes of personal conversations with students and teachers built into the system. While this is not a substitute for the real thing in life, but as long as we are far away, it will provide an answer in some way."
Students are afraid of matriculation
From the beginning of the school year, students in the upper classes learn from a distance.
According to the outline before the closure, they had to reach a minimum of two days of learning in school and the rest of the time they learned from home.
The main problem was with students who did not have end equipment at all, such as a computer or tablet, and despair was also recorded among students with learning difficulties.
"If the learning continues in zoom, there is no chance in life that we will be ready for winter matriculation," says Noa Hasson, a 12th-grade student studying in Petah Tikva. She notes that she has not yet received all the 11th-grade matriculation grades.
"We do not know whether to worry and study for winter holidays as well," she explains.
According to her, her last year in the education system was simply ruined: "I should enjoy the last moments of 12 years of schooling and instead I worry all the time."
She adds: "I would love to go back to school. From the place I saw it the schools are running properly and keeping the guidelines. But even if it is not possible, the most important thing is that they make a decision and let us know. If they decide not to return by the end of the year - let them know To prepare for a substitute for matriculation and real learning. "
Ofek Jersey (16), an 11th grade student from Ness Ziona, says: "I am supposed to attend the matriculation this year, and I do not know how it will happen and when.
Zoom classes are tough, and a school day can last more than ten full hours.
Personally, I end the days very tired. "
According to him, both the teachers and the entire educational staff at the school suffer from the same uncertainty.
"We are all in the same boat, and I very much appreciate the teachers' attempt to reduce the gaps created by the plague," Jersey concludes, "in the same breath I am sad that the decision makers do not see us."