Love to Hate Online Learning Classes

The below may or may not be based on real-life incidents.

Thou shalt not judge.

How to turn off an already reluctant child completely from Online learning classes:

1. Login to the wrong class, for the first 30-40 minutes. This class should ideally be meant for children of a different age group (added bonus, if the medium of instruction is a language other than the child’s first language)
2. Make sure your spouse (or parent or sibling, any condescending adult basically) sits along for this pre-class and tut-tuts more than once. There should be sniggers with a clear WTF-is-this expression that this adult has on their face for the entire duration.
3. Once you finally find the right class link, log in before the main host has initiated the session. Nothing like forcing a 5yr old to sit still and stare at a blank screen for an excruciating one hundred and eighty seconds, waiting for the teacher to log in.
4. Do not feed the child before the session. There’s a special place in zoom-heaven for forcing a hangry child to concentrate on a 2×2 screen space.
5. You must give them copious amounts of water 15-20 minutes prior to the start of the meeting. Liver cleansing breaks are an essential part of healthy online sessions.
6. Show them how virtual backgrounds work and promise to switch it on during this online session. Of course, the background will work in such a way that the pile of laundry sitting at the corner of the room becomes the focal point and everything else (including the child) is now space.
7. This is a tough one, but you can do some pre-testing rounds for your own official calls to figure it out. You need to find the spot in the house which has the patchiest wifi network. Tell your child that this class can happen anywhere other than this particular spot. Then, be the parent who is always typing “your voice is breaking” to everyone on the chat.
8. When the class starts, compare random strangers to their friends and first-time-facilitators to their teachers, who they haven’t met in 4-5months. This is a great way to turn on the mopey when-will-lock-down-end mode and take the already reluctant child to the i-want-to-meet-everyone-in-real-life-not-on-a-call zone.
9. In the middle of the class when things are getting a little settled in, show the child something exciting (like a new toy, or a new video of one of their favourite series which has been released) and say, “after this class…”
10. And the gold mine, (although you’ll realise this is more prevalent than it should be) is to find a class with a teacher who is not tech-savvy. All children attending this class will be talking simultaneously, and the teacher will not be able to hear anyone. There will be no protocol of “everyone on mute” and your child will eventually have a breakdown of “no one is listening to me”.

Once you have a combination of more than 6-7 of the above beautiful factors coming together in one shining moment, you may allow your child to turn off the video, place the call on mute, and ignore entirely what is happening on the session and play with their beloved Lego.

Because learning happens in unlikely places!