I found it really hard to engage my students and families over lockdown. I had an average attendance of around 50%, Mondays were usually lower. I tried calling and many numbers were disconnected and had not been updated by families on the school management system.
One parent confided that she knew that her boy stayed up all night and played online games, but that meant he normally slept most of the day and only woke up around the time she got back from work. This worked for her because this meant he was safe and not up and about.
I tried various ways to contact families to get their tamariki online. Some avenues trialled:
- Asking the students who were present to contact their friends who were not in class.
- Using Skool Loop.
- Once Level 3 was introduced, dropped off home learning packs for students who had damaged their devices and had no way of accessing online learning.
- Calling and doing welfare checks.
- Texting/ calling
I decided to suspend my enquiry during lockdown as I did not want to add to my stress and that of our families and we just continued lessons with the students who came online.
