Opinion by J1 reporter Quinn Findley

With schools closing down until further notice, teachers have been forced to create unique ways to teach online, but not every school has the resources that we have at Marian.

A lot of schools have students whose families are not able to give them the education that the teachers are trying to get through, especially elementary. Though the education of these children is equally important, it is not as easily achieved. For kids under the age of 10, it’s nearly impossible for them to teach themselves brand new topics. 

Now this role of a teacher transfers to the parents. For parents with multiple children, this is extremely demanding. Not only does the parent have to take care of their kids for all hours of the day and work from home, but now they have to try to teach their kids material that they haven’t covered in years. 

At some elementary schools, teachers are surpassing the schools’ requirements of assignment, thinking that they are helping out the families, but in reality, they are just overcomplicating an already difficult new learning system and stressing out the parents. 

Some families don’t even have the technological resources at home to fulfill the online curriculum given to them from their teachers. A lot of Catholic grade schools have turned to Google Classroom to provide education to their students. However, not every family has the same access to it as others. There are families that only have one computer but multiple kids needing to log onto their online accounts, leaving them struggling to give a fair balance of school time to the children. 

However, it’s understandable why the teachers are overassigning- they just want their students to be learning as close to the rate that they were at in the classroom. This is a situation that no one has experienced before. However, these kids aren’t in the classroom or academic environment anymore, they’re now at home with siblings, pets, parents, and a multitude of distractions at home. 

The teachers need to be more accommodating and understanding to the families. Even though teachers are also facing stress with this situation, it needs to be known that not every family is going to be able to accomplish the learning goals set for their children. Teachers with elementary-aged children at home should understand, considering that they have first hand experience of how stressful this extra role for parents is. 

Therefore, even though the education of young children is equally, if not more, important than those older than them, it is too much of a strain on the parents to be expected to introduce fundamental reading and math skills to the second grader who has never seen anything like it, talk through a novel with a sixth grader or explain an algebra lesson to their eighth grader who would much rather be watching Netflix.