An attitude of the pedagogical college of the "Waldorf school Borysfen" on online study

All of us - parents and teachers - have a long-term quarantine. We have to be more concerned about our safety, our health and that of our family. And also, about the minimum required income.

It evokes a lot of feelings and states that we are experiencing intensively.
Our basic and mental needs are now very limited. The needs have not disappeared, but often we do not have the tools to implement them.

Teachers ask themselves, "Is a long-term, rhythmic distance online learning is such a tool for children that can meet their learning and developmental needs?"
Our answer is "no" and it has several levels.

All teachers are not purely teachers they are also a tutor who live daily life with children: they solving conflicts with classmates, embrace, sympathize, suggest how to be in a situation. Teachers accompany plenty of children's processes. This gives us the moral right to teach them. The child's soul exactly knows why this teacher is now standing in the classroom and teaching him\her something. This is appropriate for the child. Now you take care of your children most of the time and children will gladly learn from you all you wanted to give – but had no time for this.

Teachers never have a completed lesson plan. This is a co-creation that takes place in the classroom between the teacher and the children. And it is unique - it never happens somewhere again. This is exactly what we call "here and now". That's live learning from person to person. Without intermediaries. This is a type of work that the teacher can then analyze: what was successful and what was not. Live learning makes us sensitive and intuitive.

You have chosen a school for children not a distance online study. School provides all children with the same condition for studying. In the morning, the teacher sets the children up for work that resembles the work of an integral organism. Kids know that they are all in equal conditions, thus each of them can learn at their own pace. Teachers know the peculiarities of each child and take them into account when teaching.

In addition to academic subjects, our children have arts and crafts that contribute to the harmonious retention of academic material. This allows teachers not to overextend Kids with a one-sided intellectual job.

Kids don't just go to school purely for the Study itself. They are glad to be there because they have friends. And the older the children get, the more they want to go to school because of friends.

One can imagine that all of the above mentioned is a cream with which we apply on the dry cakes of pure education, and thus a delicious cake can be formed. In that form, children are ready to perceive new knowledge and skills, to indwell the educational process.

"Borysfen" is a school for families who have chosen space for their children without gadgets at home and school (up to a certain age). With the sudden quarantine, nothing has changed in that matter. We cannot solve one problem with another problem.

Online learning is difficult for children's perception and comprehension and unhygienic for the eyesight.

Not all children have access to computers, not all have good internet connections because many families are in the villages now.

There is no effective way to check up that all the knowledge that is given is also qualitatively acquired. When kids return to school, after this kind of online study, the process will show a big gap in how children in the same class have grasped the learning content. The teacher will have to return to this content again.

Many parents are working during the quarantine (at work or home) and cannot track the intensive online learning of their child. And at home, all responsibility for the level and quality of the process falls on the parents. When families choose online-study, they have to do so by assessing their human and time resources.

We do not want our children to regularly glance at the screen that displays their teacher. This will give the rudiments of dependence, which will then be difficult to deal with.

Taking all this into consideration, we don't see any expediency in online study.

At the same time, our children now have home-based offline learning: children receive assignments (which the teacher sends to parents) and complete them within a set timeframe, but in no hurry and at a much smaller scale than they would have had at school. Teachers keep in touch with parents: parents share what their children do at home. There is a connection over the phone when needed.

We wish everyone mental and physical health!