Communication: In Relation to the Distorted Relationships of HUMSS Teachers and

Students in BNHS- SHS

The Covid -19 pandemic has affected the globe in various ways. Education, daily way of
life, commodity prices and issues that people need to worry about have all changed. It is factual
that Covid-19 has drastically changed our world and our state of living. One of the things that
have been drastically changed is education, instead of the traditional face to face learning,
students and teachers have had to adjust to a new style of learning due to the new normal, in
doing so a new style of education has emerged it is called distance learning. Distance learning
remains the only way that students can learn and interact with their teachers during this
pandemic, but the method is not without its fair amount of issues, the biggest one is the issue of
communication between student and teachers. Communication is very important to education, as
stated by Sikiti (1998:1), “Communication is a purposeful process of expressing, receiving and
understanding messages containing factual information, feelings, ideas and needs by two or more
individuals through common symbols” in order for educators and students to understand and be
in a positive learning environment with each other they must have communication within their
relationship, since just like any relationship communication is essential in order for it to blossom.
Parent- teacher relationship is very important to nurture since based on Mathletics.com blog post
about The Importance of parent teacher communication [2016] it is stated that "there's plenty of
evidence that shows private communication between parents and teachers help improve
academic performance, incidentally from this article it is safe to assume that in order for a child
to learn proper education they and they're educator must reach a basic ground of good
communication. This is where the issue of distance learning rears its ugly head since this new
method of communication causes a distorted relationship between the educators and the students
to form. This distorted relationship prevents both sides from having a healthy learning
relationship in turn causing a sense of distance for the teachers and the students, and also
prevents the learner from reaching their full potential otherwise attained from a healthy teacher
student relationship.

There are two sides of the argument regarding this topic, the first side being the one that
insists that there is a distorted relationship between students and teachers caused by distance
learning which mainly consists of us researchers and students studying in the modular learning
modality, and the second side consisting of a majority of people and students that there isn't
which claims that there is not enough data and research to back it up even though it is being
experienced by a majority of senior high school students in BNHS. Personally I think that
between the two sides of this topic, the one that states that distance learning has caused distorted
relationships between students and teachers is the most plausible one since based on our
experiences and research it is the stronger side out of the two. If information and the appropriate
research data is gathered in order to support this study then the side that insists that distorted
relationships can easily win, and the researchers should be able to find a solution for the distorted
relationships between educator and learners. This side winning will be beneficial to not only the
students but the school staff as well since it will negate them of their distorted relationships
between their students even if they don't realize it themselves.

Meagan Varga [May 2017] in her study the Effects Of teacher Student Relationships on
the academic Engagement of Students that "In fact the most powerful weapons teachers have
when trying to foster a learning environment is positive relationships with their students", but
due to the new style of learning teachers are having problems adapting to a new teaching method
since educators are having trouble translating their face-to-face learning strategies to the online
environment. Derived from an news article by Benel D. Lagua of the Manila Times "This
system requires a transformation process since what normally works in the classroom would not
necessarily work in distance learning, due to this students especially modular learners are having
trouble following teachers instructions since some of them are too complicated, plus it is
generally harder for modular students to come into contact with teachers since they are always
busy with their own responsibilities and the only place the two parties would meet would be at
the retrieval and drop-off of modules, incidentally this is one of the main reasons that distorted
relationships between educators and learners have formed since students think that the activities
are too hard to accomplish with proper academic guidance and the teachers are not able to
provide that to them due to their learning modality. Distance learning requires a lot of adaptation
from both sides of the teacher and student relationship, for example teachers are forced to take
webinar classes on time of students online classes therefore in order to compensate for that they
leave behind work for students in online classes, for example based on senior high school BNHS
teachers statements from Dane Wagan, Tin Cordero, Catherine Baldoza and Adriadne Casiano
stating that they have webinars for a couple of weeks and that they are very busy and cannot
attend online classes, it is safe to assume that due to the teachers work and responsibilities they
have busy schedules, incidentally due to them being busy when concerns or issues pop up in the
online classroom the teachers end up not being able to address or respond to them, this in turn
leaves a chance for distorted relationships to form between educators and learners. Some
students don't have the best internet connection since even if your family thinks that your internet
connection is well suited for online class there are still possibilities that internet outage or
malfunction on certain days due to internet providers having problems on their end occur,
therefore not all online students remain in the online class modality after experiencing this first
hand, one of these cases is in 12 Humss Masikap a senior high school online class in Bataan
National High School advised by Dane Wagan has students such as Sahali, Diaz and Magdalera
switching to modular learning modality and Jomar Lulu switching to E-module, these students
may have encountered animosity and difficulties passing requirements and talking to their
teachers leading them to have a distorted relationship with them. As stated by Meagan Varga
[May 2017] in her study the Effects Of Teacher Student Relationships on the Academic
Engagement of Students that "some teachers do not foster a welcoming environment, since they
hold all the power and the student don't feel a sense of belonging" this causes students to more
likely not approach educators since in a online learning environment approaching these types of
teachers is even more stressful and harder than in face to face learning, this in turn will create a
unhealthy distorted learning environment between the educator and the learners. There are
various kinds of distorted relationships between teachers and students caused by the new style of
learning, and these are just some of them, there are more cases and causes for distorted
relationships between students and teachers that are not yet discovered or known.

In face-to-face class or in distance learning, relationships between student and teacher are
so significant though we can’t deny that there are some factors that causes negative relationships
between student and teacher especially in distance learning, but the strong relationship is also
present. The common cause of the negative relationship of teacher-student is the busyness of
teachers which is understandable because teachers have some responsibility to finish both
outside and inside of school. That’s why teachers are leaving tasks for the students when they are
not be able to attend classes. There is no distorted relationship between teachers-student if they
both understand the situation of each other. Communication is the essential way to practice
especially in education in new normal. Study of Lai, Xue (2012) says that the connection
between students and the teacher should be emphasized and an emotional connection between
students and the teacher should be improve. The distance learning is a big adjustment to the
students and teachers because it is not the same as the face-to-face classes. Online had some
disadvantages such as lack of communication and ineffectiveness of supervision (Lai, Xue,
2012).It needs a lot of understanding from the students because there is a lot of reasons why the
teachers cannot be able to respond some concerns of the students quickly. For example, the
common reason is the webinars, teachers are required to attend their webinars that’s why they
cannot be able to attend their classes but surely, they will leave some activities including the
presentation of lesson of that day so the student will be able to learn but without the presence of
teacher.

Noblit, Rogers, and McCadden (1995) described caring as “the glue that binds teachers
and students together and makes life in classrooms meaningful”. Caring and understanding is the
key for the teachers and students to have a better relationship and for academic improvement of
students. We need to establish that kind of relationship especially in the new setup of education.
We can say that the reasons or causes of the distorted relationship of teacher-student during the
pandemic are superficial and understandable. Good et al. cite in studies by Aspy (1973) that
illustrate the importance of teacher's affective behavior. They found was that teachers who
showed an interest in their students by indicating they were listening to them and understood
students’ need completely and accurately, had students who obtained 16 higher scores on a
standardized test of learning. The best example is our teachers from Bataan National High
School Senior High School they will assure that their relationship on us (their students) is in the
good condition by reaching our concerns as much as possible even when they have a busy
schedule they will reply to our concerns as long as they can to maintain positive relationship
between us and them. That’s why every section whether modular or online have group chat with
their teachers on every subjects. According to Wang, R., & Yu, N. (2018) study that there is a
contributing factor on connecting with instructors in social network sites when it comes to their
professional relationship. Once the teacher and student have a connection to each other online,
had a tendency to stay closed on each other. Also teachers will never tired of reminding us
students, especially our adviser about our academic performances, activities, problems, and those
students that rarely attend classes.

In traditional face to face learning and distance learning there’s an odd of strong and bad
relationship between students and teachers. At this moment of time, we can’t deny that the
relationship of teacher and students are slowly declining/decreasing due to lack of
communication from both modular and online learning maybe because of internet and technical
problems. A critical aspect highlighted by Bettinger and Loeb (2017) is that online courses are
difficult, especially for the students who are least prepared. It’s undoubtedly difficult for our
teachers and students the New Normal learning system, especially for the student who cannot
afford to buy gadgets for online classes and ended up being a modular student. The first claim
had explicated a negative relationship between our teachers and students in modular/online
classes. It is because of course, all of our teachers have their own responsibilities and paper
works in the school, and they are required to attend their webinars, and that takes a day or a week
before they attend classes, and that was the reason why the teachers and students have a distorted
relationship. The second is clearly stated that yes teachers have their own school works and
responsibilities and sometimes cannot be able to attend classes and that is understandable but
teachers will assure that as much as possible respond to students concerns even in late time and
reschedule classes to maintain their healthy relationship between their students. Respect and
understanding to each other is the key on positive relationship because as long as they maintain
their strong relation to each other, students may improve on their academic performance as well
as the teachers

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Written by:

Azrael Rex Anacleto

Iverson Almazan