Everything Keeps Changing

I’m not making my kids do their school work. My best friend is following her kids’ school’s quarantine education plans. I think everyone I personally know who has kids is checking all the boxes their respective schools lay out for them. So, I feel a little bit like a bad parent for saying I’m not going to do it. But I won’t.

This whole new virtual schooling system came crashing down on us like The Iron Giant: both because some well-meaning, innocent, but lumbering technological outsider crushed our world a little bit and because that movie was a huge flop that people didn’t realize they were going to look back on fondly.

One of my biggest reasons to resist participating is we’ve got this under control. We were on spring break when we were told the schools weren’t going to be open again when we got back. So, we started to plan for the worst. We’ve homeschooled before, so we knew what it would take. I did some research into what they should be learning and surveyed the kids to find out where they actually were in their respective classes. Then, I built a lesson chart and found resources for teaching them. We got started on the day that class should have been back in session (if not for the pandemic), and everything has been running smoothly.

A week later, my middle schoolers were expected to start participating in online lessons which mostly consisted of slide shows and math quizzes. A week after that, the elementary kids’ school finally rolled out a virtual education plan that was disappointing in a whole different way. They (ages 7 and 10) are supposed to be using a half-dozen different apps for different school-related activities and also meeting with their teacher and all of their classmates via google classroom video chat. We tried that once, and will not be doing it again. It was stressful, confusing chaos that my seven-year-old was doing everything he could to avoid.

My kids are actively reading (A LOT), writing, doing math, learning science, history, and culture, and doing art, each for at least a couple of hours per week. The teenagers are also getting virtual violin and piano lessons from a friend of ours. Bonus: we’re usually done by lunch time, and then they spend two hours outside during the warmest part of the day! But the best part is continuity. We’ve been doing this since the end of their normal spring break, so they haven’t had to change tracks, figure out a new system, and be the guinea pigs for something their teachers have never done before either.

Let me be clear: love my kids’ teachers! They’re all working very hard to make this happen and I know it’s difficult. Actually, difficult is probably not even the right word. They’re being asked to damn-near work miracles, and they’ve produced something mostly workable from basically nothing on a completely unreasonable deadline. For my family, though, the patchwork system is more trouble than it’s worth.

It’s only a few months of work for us. I’m not in school until August, and I have all the time in the world. I homeschooled them before because I love it and I know I’m better positioned to meet them where they are, so I don’t mind. One of my kids is behind in math, and we can work on that together in this time. One of my kids resists handwriting like pencils are porcupines, and I have the time (and sometimes even the patience) to coax a little scrawl out of them. We get to bake, clean, and do science together. Today, with my seven-year-old, I learned that the Anglo-Saxons all drank beer… even the kids, and probably didn’t bathe. With my ten-year-old, I looked at pictures of wasps and discussed important, identifying features to compare to a dead one she found in the yard.

So, we’re not doing the school work. We have at least one teacher still asking if we are going to, even though we’ve emailed everyone to let them know we aren’t. We’re not participating in the google classroom chats. But we’re doing our own thing and doggedly trying to make progress in spite of the times… and it’s fine.

We just want to stay safe and sane and positive. Education is important and we hold it in high regard in this house, but according to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs… lets just say the pandemic has us focusing a little more on foundations right now.