Battlefield of the mind

Teaching under lockdown is exhausting, says Theola Phillips, a teacher and head of department at a Mitchell’s Plain primary school.

- THEOLA PHILLIPS

As I am preparing for tomorrow’s Grade 7 lessons, I have my children trying to get my attention. I feel agitated because I know I need to attend to them; it feels like a constant battle between schoolwork and my family. Teaching under lockdown is exhausting. Many would think homeschooling is thriving in our households because we are teachers, but this could not be further from the truth. We constantly find ourselves in the position where we need to make the decision between doing preparation work or helping our children. In most cases the preparation wins, as we are taught if you are well prepared, the battle is already won.

Being at school I need to bring my A-game. Being ill-prepared is not part of the game plan, sadly at the price of our children’s education. Before COVID-19, this was already a concern because a teacher’s work always comes home. In these times, however, our work has multiplied.

Teaching under hard lockdown was fun, at first. I was excited to finally pull out all the computer skills I had acquired over the years and, especially, in recent workshops I attended at The Cape Teaching and Leadership Institute (CTLI). Migrating towards e-learning in the education sector was fairly slow before COVID-19.

When Day 1 of the lockdown started, I decided to do daily Google Docs comprehensions. These activities could only be done by eight of my learners out of a class of 48, but they were fun and I could get some useful insights from some of my learners. As the effects of the hard lockdown increased, the number of learners participating decreased. Parents informed me that they were struggling to keep abreast and that buying data was not a priority. At this point my heart broke because my learners were exposed to hunger.