Home-schooling during Covid

Earlier this year in Australia, we were subjected to quite a strict lock down. The result of which was most regions of the country getting Covid under control relatively quickly. The cost of this was the strictness of the lock down and what that entailed. For those of you who are still in lock down, here are my musings about home-schooling and what can help.

As an ex-teacher who currently works as a special education researcher, I was shocked to find myself struggling during the home-schooling experience earlier this year. I thought with my experience as an educator and my tendency toward being a homebody, that I would have this absolutely sorted!

I was wrong. Actually, I was REALLY WRONG.

The reason I was wrong is this was not home-schooling, because:

• it was not done by choice and you have no choice over the delivery of an educational program
• schools were not prepared for this, and despite teachers working their butts off, they did not have appropriate materials available or the right infrastructure for delivery of online learning
• where we lived, the kids were not even allowed to go to a playground to get their wriggles out. Everything was closed, and they were confined to the house. As a result, they were freaked out and not in the space for optimal learning
• because this was not a choice, we were not set up work-wise for home-schooling. Both of us were still doing full-time hours whilst trying to ensure the children didn't ransack the place

Whilst it was nice for bonding, it was possibly the most intensely stressful period for our family. But out of this, I did learn some important lessons about 'home-schooling' during the pandemic:

• lower your standards and then lower them some more. This is temporary and the kids losing a few months of education doesn't matter as much as everyone coming through lock downs still loving each other and feeling safe.
• lose the guilt. It is humanly impossible to work full time, home school, keep a household running all to a high standard and keep your sanity in tact. So seriously, cut yourself a break if everyone is eating cereal for dinner AGAIN. It's food, they will survive.
• elementary school/middle school aged children do remarkably little academic rigour every day and most of what they will be sent home each day can be filed immediately in the bin. There is a lot of busywork in there. With one-on-one tutoring with a parent, you can cover the key concepts in 60-90 minutes max. Each morning, look at the plan given by the school and look at what the key concepts for the day are e.g. single digit addition. Just teach that particular concept - they do not need to do all the busy work such as colouring that goes with it.
• if possible, skip the Zoom classrooms for younger kids, unless you will face issues around truancy. Little kids aren't learning through this mode (in general) and teachers seem to be losing their everlasting minds trying to manage classes of up to 30 kids at a time via the internet.
• this is a great opportunity for kids to learn new skills that they will actually use in their lives. It's perfect acceptable to just throw the curriculum in the bin, focus on your relationship and teach them how to cook, grow a vegetable garden, raise chickens, check the oil in the car, craft, sew, do household maintenance, set a budget and manage investments. These are all going to be far less stressful than trying to engage them in their schoolwork when they are stressed. Plus, you can always add literacy and numeracy into these learning activities.

If all of this fails, there’s always wine.