Quarantine Education

I wish I was a homeschooler right now.  

The district kindly sent home chrome books for all of the k-12 students so they can do online education. 

Truth be told, I hate it so much. I wish I was homeschooling. I wish I was coming up with our own curriculum. My kids are SLAMMED with schoolwork.  Completely underwater in assignments.  

I received 32 emails from teachers and the district yesterday. Passwords and logins and QR codes.  

Can’t they just read a book?   I wish I was the mom posting videos of kids doing yoga or go noodle for pe time or reading charlottes web together, or playing an online  model UN or mock presidential election designed to teach civics to children. Nope. 

Reese spent 9 hours doing assignments yesterday. 

Yesterday was the day “off” to prepare for the week.  Instead, we watched their little google classroom workload pile up with an eternal checklist. and more work arrived today. Soren in first grade and has been going strong for 2.5 hours. He has to submit video answers to conversations, photos of assignments, and comments on group discussions. 

I’m busy keeping the 3 little ones engaged in one room away from the front guest room where Aaron is working from home, and bouncing between children who all have assignments to “show this presentation to a parent” or “do this creative activity with a parent” or “have your parents watch this video and answer questions with you.” I finally just stepped away long enough to record my feelings on this cuz I’m already over it. And there are 2 kids at my door asking for me. 

I love teaching. But I feel zero control over the education my children are getting right now. That’s all good and fine enough when I’m not the teacher. 

But if I’m going to be “home” schooling I would love to legit homeschool and come up with our own schedule and learning agenda.  Everyone keeps losing free websites and resources for at home learning. Ummmm there’s seriously no time for that. They’re slammed with assignments and the sound of my email notification causes a visceral reaction because it’s another teacher assigning more assignments to “keep the kids busy”.  

We don’t want to be busy. We want to bake cookies and prepare dinner together. We want to read books and plant the garden and have all the “freedom” that homeschoolers brag about. There’s no time for anything because we are spending hours on accountability.  It’s over scheduled and way over managed. Like PE. Can’t they just go outside and play?  Nooooo they had to create an exercise log and document that they’re doing an approved fitness activity for 60 minutes. Normally PE is like 20 minutes long. I’m an educator at heart and a homeschooling mother at heart. Why not research this illness or the benefits of social distancing since that is why they are quarantined. Have them learn about shh stores are out of products and the economical effects of pandemic flu. Learn about vaccines for crying out loud. If we are going to “drastically change our learning” let’s actually do that for the better.  

This isn’t better. It’s horrible. 1st graders having to check in with video commentary every 15 minutes is not ok. Or maybe it’s ok for some people but it an education I choose. 

Give the children time to play. They will learn. I’m not saying do nothing all day or to treat home learning like a snow day/vacation. I’m just saying that the kids are 100% focused and not even 1/4 of the way through their work loads and we are approaching 1/2 way through the school day. No one has taken a break yet. And poor Reese still has a pile up packed on from yesterday to catch up on because I forced her to stop and eat dinner and eventually just made her go to bed. 

We are on day 2 and I went into this with so much hope and excitement to see my children more and be a  part of their learning.  Wind in my sails is gone. I hate this. It feels like busy work. Full time busy work. Except for the math and one if Corbin’s writing prompts....the rest is just vomiting back information into quizzes to check a box that they did their work. It’s not learning. 

I’m already hating this so much I’m giving it 2 weeks to work out the kinks and then pulling at least my younger two from public schools the rest of the year because this is not sustainable. I have an entire spreadsheet just for logins and passwords for the 40+ programs we have to navigate. Nope. 

Gotta go.