Helen Woodhead (Classroom Secrets): Balancing homeschooling and work

In this episode, Claire remotely interviews Helen Woodhead, a proofreader at Classroom Secrets and now, through her videos of home-learning activity ideas, a Facebook Live star. Alongside her two children, Gabriel (4) and Noah (7), Helen regularly presents short, accessible and easy to follow videos on Classroom Secrets’ Facebook groups. These videos showcase fun and practical tips and suggestions for parents who, with the current coronavirus restrictions, will be finding themselves teaching their children at home. Helen talks about how she always wanted to be a teacher from an early age – even arranging her own ‘teaching’ sessions where she would read to her friends and other children when playing. After qualifying as a teacher, Helen moved into working as a supply teacher, which she found to be an incredibly beneficial experience. Going into many different schools, usually not knowing what to expect of each class, and teaching a wide range of year-groups gave her a huge amount of experience in a short space of time. Following this period as a supply teacher, Helen taught Year 6 at the same school for 10 years but, ultimately, found that teaching full-time with two children at home became too demanding. Realising that either work or home-life would suffer, she made the decision to leave teaching. Currently, with the coronavirus crisis, school closures and restrictions on movement have meant that parents up and down the country – Helen and Claire included – are now trying to home-educate their children. Helen shares her experiences of this, talking about some of the challenges she has faced including how her children see her as a ‘mum’ rather than a ‘teacher’, and how having two children at quite different ages has also been difficult at times in terms of differing expectations and her children’s reactions to what they need to do. KEY TAKEAWAYS Home-schooling is very different to teaching a classAlong with the different ‘feel’ of a school environment, teachers have classes of up to thirty children and will usually have their attention divided between all the children or across several groups. However, with teaching at home, the attention is much more focused and, as it is a parent doing the teaching, children can find this more difficult to become accustomed to. Even where the parent is a qualified teacher, children will still see you, primarily, as a parent. Along with this, children’s attention spans will be much more limited. Having ‘flexible’ routines can be beneficial here and not worrying if things don’t go to plan. Vary the activities and be mindful of how much you are trying to fit inTrying to fit too much into each day can, ultimately, end up with things just not working as well as they might, or a sense of disappointment where time or attention runs out. Don’t worry about having to adjust your expectations in light of how things need to work for you.Also, not everything your children do needs to be fun and practical. While practical activities are usually the most entertaining and enjoyable for children, they can sometimes be the most time-consuming activities to organise and demanding to ‘run’. There will also need to be times where children complete quiet and focused tasks, and these are just as beneficial and important as the more physical activities. Having children at different ages can bring its own challengesAs well as having to find age-appropriate activities for each child, an additional challenge can be organising your routines around individual needs. On top of that, some children, depending on the age differences, can become envious of the more practical activities the younger children might need to do. While many children will try to be considerate of this, it could be harder for some to come to terms with. One takeaway here might be to encourage the older children to re-teach or revisit the activity the younger child has done alongside them later on. That way, they will get to take part in the activity, experience teaching and explaining something which could encourage communication and problem-solving skills, and the younger child will get an additional opportunity to put into practice what they’ve learned. You can find out where your children are in their educationAs busy parents, it can sometimes be difficult to keep fully up-to-date with where your children are in their schooling and what they can and can’t do. A positive to come out of the current situation is that, through day-to-day home-learning activities, parents can become more familiar with their school’s curriculum, the expectations for achievement and where their children are in their learning journeys. Technology can be useful for children to keep in touchAlthough, for a variety of reasons, not every family will be able to facilitate it, utilising technology in a safe way to allow children to socialise can be really beneficial. Along with adults, children will find being cut-off from friends and family quite difficult. Finding ways for them to keep in touch – perhaps through video chats, online platforms and e-mails – can help to alleviate anxieties and maintain links to the outside world. BEST MOMENTS “[Homeschooling] is very different to school. Very different to having thirty children. It’s so intense because you’ve got them all the time. When you’re teaching, you’re not just with one child. You’re stopping them and sending some off to do something. And then there’s break time. You might be on break-duty but you might not, but you’re not just with the same children all the time.” “It’s compromising with them as well. So sometimes they’ll be like ‘oh we’ve done something really fun’ – especially when we’ve filmed it – ‘oh that was really fun’. Yeah, but what we do now might not be as practical. It might be where you sit down now and you do something that’s more focused.” “The thing that bothered [Noah] the most was when I said we can’t go to Grandma and Grandad’s house. That really bothered him. But we’ve video-called and spoken on the phone. Every time the phone rings, the minute I answer, one of them will run over. ‘Is it Grandma?’” “They are coping well. They have got into the routine really well.” “[In the Easter holidays,] I don’t want to do the same stuff really. I want to do different things because it is the holidays. But they still need occupying. It’s not like we can go places like we normally would.” “They don’t need to work all the time. They need to have a break and they need to have fun.” “Every child is going to remember this period of time. I want it to be enjoyable.” “I try and do as much as possible with stuff I’ve got around the house. Because we can’t just go out and buy things and get hold of things. So I am trying to do as much as possible with what I’ve got. I keep going into my garage and I’m like, ‘oh I didn’t know I had that!’” “I think testing-wise and exams… I think that’s going to have to be looked at: how children are assessed and is more faith going to be put into teachers and their teacher assessments?” VALUABLE RESOURCES Classroom Secrets Kids: https://kids.classroomsecrets.co.uk/Coronavirus Home Learning Support for Teachers and Parents: https://www.facebook.com/groups/coronavirushomelearning/Classroom Secrets website: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/The Teachers’ Podcast: https://www.facebook.com/groups/TheTeachersPodcast/Classroom Secrets Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/ClassroomSecretsLimited/LIFE/work balance campaign: https://classroomsecrets.co.uk/lifeworkbalance-and-wellbeing-in-education-campaign-2019/ ABOUT THE HOSTClaire Riley Claire, alongside her husband Ed, is one of the directors of Classroom Secrets, a company she founded in 2013 and which provides outstanding differentiated resources for teachers, schools, parents and tutors worldwide. Having worked for a number of years as a teacher in both Primary and Secondary education, and experiencing first-hand the difficulties teachers were facing finding appropriate high-quality resources for their lessons, Claire created Classroom Secrets with the aim of helping reduce the workload for all school staff. Claire is a passionate believer in a LIFE/work balance for those who work in education citing the high percentage of teachers who leave or plan to leave their jobs each year. Since February 2019, Classroom Secrets has been running their LIFE/work balance campaign to highlight this concerning trend.  The Teachers’ Podcast is a series of interviews where Claire meets with a wide range of guests involved in the field of education. These podcasts provide exciting discussions and different perspectives and thoughts on a variety of themes which are both engaging and informative for anyone involved in education.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.