I received this question recently, which explicitly gave me consent to use it for content, so I am!
This person’s child is in a class where videos are being shown during lunch time. The family doesn’t like this particular use of screens, but conversations haven’t gone well so far. What do we do in these moments where our values or approaches conflict with other parts of our kids’ lives?
Often times, when screens are being used, it's easy to assume from the outside view that it’s an indication of a failure or weakness of the person using them. But in many cases, there is an aspect of a *barrier* that a screen is helping to manage.
I don’t know this school’s situation, but the first question that comes to mind for me is “what barrier is the screen trying to address?”
If I am a parent of a child in this classroom, if I ask myself what barrier the screen is trying to address, then it helps me focus on how I can connect with the teacher and try to alleviate this barrier.
An example from my own teaching was a hands-on version of a lesson I wanted to teach that involved making hundreds of small, printed out images for students to physically manipulate. If I wanted that set to last for more than a day or two, it needed to be laminated, which doubled the amount of time it took.
For me, that was a barrier. Thankfully, a parent volunteer helped to alleviate that barrier by laminating and cutting out the images, and the set lasted me years. But if I hadn’t had that help, I likely would have used a screen because of the barrier of a lack of time or help.
Approaching these situations with curiosity and the end goal of better understanding the situation to hopefully help alleviate the pain point is not only going to help address the problem, but create a better long term relationship with the school.
