Merimbula author and former teacher Gabbie Stroud has appeared on ABC's Q&A program to provide some timely advice for parents assisting their children's learning during the COVID-19 pandemic.
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When Q&A's host Hamish Macdonald asked Ms Stroud how parents could balance delivering homeschooling while also working at home, she said she had to clarify the situation the country was in right now was not actually homeschooling.
"What we're seeing right now are students learning from home, just like adults are working from home, so no-one's actually expecting parents to teach their child as a teacher would in a classroom," she said.
"Teachers are working very, very hard to deliver curriculum online and remotely in many varied forms so that their students can still access it.
"But I totally understand as a parent at home with my girls at the moment the challenge that this poses when we're trying to get our own work done as well."
She said a common question on Monday's program was "what works?", but it needed to shift to the question of "what matters?".
"[Teachers] know mistakes are going to be made, we know kids are going to miss out on essential learning that should have been covered this year, we know that there's going to be a disruption to learning," Ms Stroud said.
"We just can't do it all, no matter how hard teachers work and with what integrity parents go at this learning from home with their own children.
"We need to start asking 'what matters', 'what matters right now'. And what matters right now is that our families feel harmonious and safe.
"Children can't learn unless they feel safe and there's high anxiety in the air around them all the time at the moment, especially related to this pandemic that we face."
She believed what teachers wanted to say to parents at the moment was to relax and take a breath as they knew parents were doing the best that they could.
She advised parents to look for opportunities around the home where they can educate their child and "just be with them at this time, help them get through this".
"What our kids are actually learning right now is how we deal with a crisis," she said, which she described as a "massive life skill".
Ms Stroud, appearing on Q&A over webcam from Merimbula, said the question of how to motivate students was one faced by teachers every day and it was not easy to keep students on task or engaged in learning.
She advised parents to ask their children's schools for hints and tips, and that their children's teachers would also be willing to provide direct encouragement, either through email or their school's online learning platform.
She also said "if there's anything good to come out of this pandemic it's the scrapping of NAPLAN [National Assessment Program - Literacy and Numeracy]".
"I'm really hoping that when we look at our education system post-pandemic we find ourselves in a world where NAPLAN is just a distant memory," she said.
Ms Stroud also appeared on Q&A in 2018, where she called for policy makers to pay more attention to teachers when making decisions on education.