Tsunami, 12. Bumps Along the Way.

Presencial teaching has certain pitfalls, especially when there are two students of different age. Yet, it has its advantages. You can always pick up what the student is writing on, take up a red pen, and point out their mistakes, explaining the issues. You can also take chalk and graphically try to explain a point on what passes for a blackboard. You can look at them as they write, and stop them when you can tell they're doing something wrong because they don't understand. When they speak, you can correct them while looking over their shoulder at the text.

One isn't always sitting nor standing, either, and if something comes up in the kitchen, you can always pop out of the study to check out if the cats are breaking all the kitchen glassware. Even though on the worst day, in which I stand up almost all afternoon and my back later hurts, I'm not standing absolutely still.

Online learning doesn't have those advantages. It becomes artificial, difficult, and uncontrollable. To see texts, they have to be sent by phone, which means a computer has to be set up to the program being used for the video call, to be able to see text messages, as well. Voices are distorted. The student might be wiling away the time by holding chats with friends on a tablet or another window on the computer. You have to spell out words, and might not be understood. You sometimes have to let texts go, and assume all the words are correctly spelled. You're sitting in the same chair, without moving, an entire hour; more if you don't stop the class a couple of minutes before time to stretch your legs.

On one call, the student had to get his mother's phone, because he didn't have a computer in front of him. It was a question of taking pictures, sending them through one, and then talking through the other.

At another hour, I wound up seeing the ceiling of a brother and sister's living room more than anything else. Nice ceiling. Whenever they could get the phone upright, I got a glimpse of a fireplace with dancing red flames.

Another one, and the class had to be interrupted because a call was coming in for the parent. The student, a primary school kid, was using his mother's phone. Explanations put on hold.

In one split screen call with two kids, there were so many interferences, that it sounded like squeaking and squawking electronic mice were having a fight. Needless to say, I couldn't really understand the entire conversation. I'm sure they couldn't, either.

One with older kids turned out to be smaller than usual, because some couldn't make it to the virutal class. A talk about an area of Canada is not easy to prepare among camera shots and badly heard conversation. And messages written to friends on other group chats.

On the other hand, I was able to sneak in most of this post.

Life continues.