Homeschooling Again

We are living in strange times. I wasn’t expecting to be writing about something like this when I made this blog. Many aisles at the grocery store are empty, many businesses are closed, others are shifting operations to help produce personal protective equipment for doctors and nurses or hand sanitizer to help us recover from a panic-induced shortage. We were being asked to limit social gatherings and stay 6 feet away from others. Then, we were being respectfully asked to choose to stay home. Now, we’re being told that we legally have to stay home.

People are losing their jobs and worrying about how they’re going to pay bills and what’s going to happen if they get sick. Essential workers are still going to work, but their kids aren’t going to school and it’s hard (if not impossible) to find child care. Some of us are saying the people and the government aren’t doing enough to control this thing. Other are saying we’re doing too much, and overreacting. But the general theme seems to be that we really don’t know exactly what’s going on, because we’re being told different stories wherever we look.

With all of this chaos around us, we also need to manage our kids’ education. I do believe it’s for the best. My dude puts his face on random things in unsavory places like the airport. He should not be mingling with twenty other small people (who probably have the same tendencies) during a pandemic. Besides, I’ve homeschooled most of my kids before. I’ve got the skills and resources to get through this. It just makes for a wild household, with my partner working from home and my kids all watching Bill Nye, exploding baking soda and vinegar on the table, listening to podcasts about history, and trying to learn algebra, javascript, and violin.

With all of the tools out there to help them, it’s not that difficult for one person to manage. Also, if you constantly remind yourself that they do not spend anywhere near seven hours actively learning at school, you’ll do fine. Public schools just aren’t as efficient as homeschool can be. My kids are averaging about 45 minutes per subject per day, and I only expect them to do three subjects. Based on my (maybe obsessive) monitoring of their progress for the past several months, and what I’ve seen so far this week, I’m pretty sure they’re learning more in a couple of hours at home than they do in seven hours at school. Plus: I LOVE IT!

I don’t have to argue with administrators about whether my kid’s shorts are too short. I’m not receiving calls from school staff to inform me that my kid said something mean to another kid or stormed out of class after someone else said something mean. I don’t have to negotiate with other adults about how to handle my kids at all! (except for my partner… we spent a lot of time in friendly deliberations about this kind of stuff, but that’s easy)

Honestly, for this one thing: thank you, novel coronavirus! But also, please stop and go away! Obviously, there are a lot of reasons I’m not a big fan. I’m downright scared of this disease and what the ramifications of this disaster are going to be. Also, as much as I’m loving having my kids home and sharing the magical world of math and science with them every day (and that’s not even sarcasm), I also want to go get my master’s degree and I really don’t know what’s going to happen with that right now. Can we please go back to normal?