The Clare Champion Clare news, sport, entertainment and local notes
REMOTE teaching and learning is still a challenge for everyone involved, but St Patrick’s Comprehensive principal Mary Costello said that a lot of lessons were learned in 2020, which are making things that bit easier right now.
She says that there was much more notice this time, compared to when a sudden decision came from Government last March. “Literally we found out at lunchtime on the 12th that we were closing and moving to remote learning. We had done a little bit of preparatory work in terms of resources being printed out, but we thought we were going to close for two weeks. This time, when we came back in September, we had an eye the whole time on the potential for local or national closures.”
Classes are longer nowadays, because the turnarounds were proving difficult for everyone. “We have 40 minute classes but it was very difficult for students and staff to be changing classes every 40 minutes online. You might be spending 15 minutes of a 40 minute class getting everybody in and sorting out the mics, and the class was going. Teachers were bolting to the next class, so were students, people were coming late and it was just a nightmare. We completely redid our timetable over Christmas and shifted to one hour classes. It has worked really well, it has eliminated an awful lot of that.”
The tweaking of the timetable also sought to take a little bit of pressure off everyone. “We did surveys with students and staff at the end of May, and they were both talking about being overwhelmed and never being able to switch off. There was a constant stream of communication, day and night, from both sides. With the new contingency, the teacher might be online for 20 minutes and give work, but the teacher is still there, still available if anyone is having difficulty. Students have an opportunity to get the work done in that class time. We also include independent work time on their timetable, so people should be able to switch off at 4pm.
“With our Leaving Certs, we scheduled them so they were finishing around 2pm with classes. Then they would get a block of time for homework and the evening time can shift to study. It is making it more manageable and it seems to be working very well.”
It is undoubtedly a very hard time to be facing into the Leaving Cert, that great Irish rite of passage. “I feel very, very sorry for them. I don’t envy the Minister or the Department, because for every solution there’s a host of problems. But I do feel it has been extraordinarily difficult for the Leaving Certs. They’re working on shifting sands. We’re doing our best to give them clarity, we’ve postponed the Mocks to the 22nd to give them some bit of clarity, but whether they’ll go ahead or not is still unclear. How viable they are and the loss of teaching time, all of that has to be taken into consideration. As I say for every solution there’s a host of problems. There’s no one fix, it’s extremely difficult and you’d feel very sorry for them.”
Teacher Jacquie Murphy agrees that things are going better in this lockdown, and she also feels that teaching remotely needs to be quite different. “You have to have them working in groups, have break out rooms or video content or you’d have presentations and them inputting, they’d work together or work with you, you might have them writing for a while, come in with questions and pop back out again. You really do have to vary it and change it around, it’s definitely not the same as being in a classroom where you can go around and check on them.”
She also feels the Leaving Certs need some certainty. “Students are looking for answers and they need to get those answers.”
Owen Ryan
Owen Ryan
Owen Ryan has been a journalist with the Clare Champion since 2007, having previously worked for a number of other regional titles in Limerick, Galway and Cork.
