Even though I rationally know it’s the right thing to do, I’m terrified about my daughter’s school closing and her and other students severely falling behind academically. I can work from home and watch her, but my spouse and I are not AT ALL equipped to home school her for a lengthy period of time. She is not a good self-learner and already struggles in some areas.
How should we be preparing for that? How are other people doing it who have to keep their children home and away from educational resources and teachers?
Edit: I’m getting mixed reactions to this. I’m not at all saying academics are more important than slowing the spread of the virus. But I see many comments calling for a complete shutdown of schools and very few saying that for many parents this is a legitimate source of hardship and anxiety, even if it’s the right thing to do.
> I’m terrified about my daughter’s school closing and her and other students severely falling behind academically
I wouldn't worry too much. The evidence from prior natural experiments show that unexpected interrupted school years[1] has no persistent effects into adulthood.
I don't mean to be glib, but isn't this a good opportunity for her to learn those skills? I wasn't a good self-learner until I was in AP Bio and the teacher was very incompetent and I had to just face down the book. That groundwork helped me so much as a freshman in college where there were lots of kids who had always had awesome, attentive teachers. Especially if you are there with her!
I love Khan Academy, and the cool thing about youtube is there are so many content creators that there will be someone your daughter thinks has a nice voice or is easy to understand or funny.
YouTube videos are great for some resources, but they aren't a substitute for a competent teacher.
Fun thing to think about: there are videos that measurably improve students' performance on a task, but students rate those videos as "confusing" and "not helpful". The videos that students do like? They have zero effect.
> but isn't this a good opportunity for her to learn those skills?
I think that’s a fair question, and I’d love to be optimistic about her ability to hunker down and build those skills. But, she has some behavioral challenges and just getting her to do homework is a nightly struggle consisting of meltdowns and arguments, so I’m not as hopeful that she’ll be able to do it. She’s a bright kid, but definitely one who -needs- the structure of a classroom to be successful.
We home-schooled from preschool through high-school. Today I am trying to figure out how to help (from the opposite coast) my MIT senior deal with getting kicked out of their dorm in a few days. Home-schooling can work just fine. Chill.
1. Remember that of things that can be measured, the thing most highly correlated with academic success is parental involvement. So no matter how wonky your pedagogy, you will be involved. Hopefully that factoid helps you chill.
2. My first piece of advice to all new home-schooling parents is: Don't try to do everything at once. Get one subject working well, when you have established momentum and routine on that, add another. Cook until done.
3. There are many great online resources now. But I suspect your school is going to be providing curriculum information so you may have a usable starter kit.
4. As to the "self-learner" issues, all that does is help you find your happy place on the home schooling spectrum. At one end you have "school at home" -- trying to replicate the school environment in your dining room. There is also "unschooling" -- completely self-directed learning. This may not work for you. This may be a good chance to help your child develop some self-learning instincts.
(unschooling in my definition is: "You can work on what you want, but you MUST work on something." Which is NOT what I call "raised by wolves" -- a home schooling philosophy that I have seen occasionally, but doesn't often yield a good result.)
I hope my kids school closes, and I'm happy to make a commitment to spending a lot of extra time helping them make up the lost progress.
My plan is to let them enjoy the time off, for the most part, and then spend the next n months on reduced entertainment in favor of extra studying.
Seems a small price to pay given how many lives will be saved by closing schools.
Edit: one concern I heard is that health care workers need schools to take care of their children. Why not start by letting anyone that can take their child home, take their child home. This would reduce the risk for the children that stay in school by a lot, which will help health care workers not get sick.
Because currently I'd risk punishment for taking my child out of school "unexcused". Which seems like some seriously backwards bs.
"falling behind academically" makes sense only if she alone is taking a leave. If whole school is closed then she is keeping with the school. In a 70 year lifetime, taking at worse 3 months of holidays won't affect anyone in life. She'll have a more severe scar if she infects anyone who struggles for life.
With internet and access to online courses find something that helps her self study and improve upon the existing knowledge/skills. Follow the instructions from school.
I'm not a parent, but I had a period of time, about a month, when my Mom had to teach me, because I couldn't attend school. What worked well for us was structuring and scheduling time. What didn't work well was her winging it with the curriculum.
I think if we went through that time again and I was in her shoes, I would take advantage of Khan Academy. Especially for Math, it's incredibly well structured and forces you to convince it that you've truly learned the content with built-in quizzes. It doesn't hold you back if you've got a handle on the lessons and makes sure that if you're having issues that you practice until you've really got it down.
I think the most work for you will be setting her up properly, making sure she's comfortable with the system, and being available if she's got questions that it's not quickly answering.
This is what I'm working on now, I'm trying to set up 'classes' for my second grader with math, reading, writing, typing, and programing. She has music and art at school and I can't really teach that but I may look into a little more. I'm not too worried about her falling behind, but I do want to make sure it's not just idle time, I assume I'll have to do some WFH though I don't really expect to hit full time with it.
This isn't unusual for schools. Last year my kid had so many days off school for bad weather that he had to go an extra week at the end of the year. Maybe your July plans will be messed up because your kid is still in school, but otherwise the school will give your kid enough school.
There is some worry if your kid is hospitalized for a month while the rest of the school goes on (presumably this means containment worked well except for your kid), but even here schools have to deal with kids who are out for months for medical reasons and they provide extra tutoring to catch those kids up. (I'm familiar with this because my cousin missed a month of school his senior year - he still graduated with his class even though he had to go back the next year to finish some classes)
She will probably benefit more from a few weeks of being a child, and being worry-free. School was the most stressful time of my life. Tests and exams always hang over your head. Pop quizzes, mid-terms, finals. There is literally NEVER a peace of mind.
Different people experience differently. Tests were always less stressful for me than non-test days. On a non-test day, there would be a non-zero chance I forgot/didn't know to do homework that was due. But homework was never due when there was a test.
Most school districts may start doing things like video instruction or give parents a curriculum to work on, I'm not worried about that aspect. It may become an entirely remote education for the rest of this school year across the world.
I'm considering taking leave of absence and teaching him the curriculum. The problem is I'm not a good teacher, I know this about myself.
It's impossible to WFH and take care of a child. So your productivity will suffer, hopefully your company understands this, but then again everyone will be in the same boat once the school districts start closing things down.
rather than becoming immobilized, panicked, and/or irrational, fear should be a trigger for a learn-plan-do cycle, which you've apparently started (learning what's possible to do about the situation).
however, it's important not to spread irrational fear, which words like "terrified" tend to do, particularly when overblown. the state of being "terrified" leads to immobilization, panic, and irrationality, so it should literally be avoided like the plague.
on the other hand, being concerned and worried, and acknowledging (unhelpful) anxiety, is reasonable. asking for help and information, like you did, is reasonable. discerning and acknowledging the appropriate level of risk (probably worse than a regular flu but not nearly as bad as the 1918 flu) is reasonable.
with that said, children are constantly learning whether you teach them or not. it's ok if learning is not entirely linear. the world is not linear, and our brains are not either. what's needed will get in there eventually, and we're resilient enough to compensate for nearly any kind of deficiency anyways.
(the same case can be made for overly worrying about "getting into good school districts", something worth considering a little bit, but not a lot, and a commonly-cited driver of localized real estate bubbles)
> however, it's important not to spread irrational fear, which words like "terrified" tend to do, particularly when overblown. the state of being "terrified" leads to immobilization, panic, and irrationality, so it should literally be avoided like the plague.
Very good point. Thank you for calling it out. I am not at all intending to spread irrational fear and realize I should have chosen my word there a bit more carefully. I am definitely anxious about it, but that anxiety is driving a desire to figure out a plan and not causing paralysis on my part, which I agree is what the word "terrified" implies.
This is so culturally unhealthy IMO and it's why America and similar academic oriented countries work work work until they die. It's like 1 year of being off course people act like their lives are going to end.
If she's not in high school I wouldn't worry too much. I essentially missed half of third grade, all of 4th and 5th grade and half of 6th grade, and by 8th-90th grade I was pretty much caught up completely without even a real catch up program. A lot of the stuff your learn at that age simply becomes trivial or at least much much easier just from getting older. In that case, I'd just give her some puzzles to solve or something.
If she is in high school the only answer is probably a bunch of "homework", good books on the subject, and there are also hundreds of video courses online.
It actually might not be the right thing to do for the reason you mentioned but also, for the families that can't work from home, it becomes a huge economic burden to have their kids not in school. It's obviously a necessary step to contain a deadly pandemic but I think, in this particular case, children are actually in the lowest risk pool. Kids seem to survive the virus at near the highest rate but also contract the virus near the lowest rate so closing schools might be an unnecessary burden on working parents with marginal effect on containment.
I don't have kids but there's lots of Khan academy and legit youtube stuff (3blue1brown) that can be used to learn things, even if they don't get credit for the classes.
I don't know how to turn non-self-learners into self-learners though. And admittedly if I was a kid during this, I'd be playing as much video games as possible.
Hopefully most teachers have a clue and will realize this was some pretty serious circumstances and not be as harsh and do more review.
As a parent, if you have the energy & time, a good approach can be to:
* Boast how easy school is these days.
* Wait to get told you're wrong.
* Propose a competition. Your child can pick any subject that neither of you have studied yet, and then have a race over 24 hours, 1 week, etc. to learn the material and do a multi-choice test you both agree on first.
Your child will obviously pick a subject they're good at, and you'll probably loose. But you still made them choose to study really hard.
"Falling behind" what? Even if she and her peers have to repeat a school year because classes don't happen for a long time, which would be quite extreme, what would be the issue with that?
Homeschooling is not rocket science. I've done it for years and I barely know what I'm doing. Just make resources available, sign up for a couple out school classes, and be willing to help them pursue stuff when they're interested in it. You can do it!
I expect your school will have prepared materials for such an eventuality.
Your daughter should be given long youtube playlists of online lessons, homework assignments, scheduled interactive video lessons, etc.
As a parent, all you really need to do is check your daughter is actually doing what the school is providing. The threat of detention doesn't work so well at home when you can just claim the internet broke and that's why you haven't showed up to an online lesson or submitted an assignment...
Honestly this is the last thing I'd be worrying about. A child can skip 6 months to a year of school and have almost no negative effects on their life outcomes. If they get sick and die, or their close family members do, they will definitely have negative effects on their outcomes.
There are tons of resources and communities for homeschooling on the internet. Happy to help point you to stuff if needed, but please prioritise health over potential educational slowdown.
> please prioritise health over potential educational slowdown
My apologies - I didn’t at all mean to make it seem like I was downplaying the public health aspect. I fully understand this is likely what’s necessary and that public health comes first. That being said, it is a source of anxiety for me as someone who values academics because, for me, it was a path to a better life.
Few weeks or even months of lost school - especially at an early age - is something that can be compensated for somewhat easily. Schools are very inefficient at teaching. You'll help her a bit, ensure she does some focused learning, and she'll be fine.
You should not worry since it is a global event and not only your child is affected but everyone is. If it was only one child or insignificant portion of being affected and education of others continued along then your worries would be well founded. As it stands studies will continue as soon as circumstances allow it, maybe your school switches to online learning for some time, or there will be effective drug found that resolves the situation.
No need to apologise at all! You sound like a responsible parent - I commented mostly for other people reading. Your child is gonna do great because they have caring parents.
I would truly love an opportunity to not work for 6 months and have my child not go to school so I could spend that time with them. I'm sure you'll be able to find ways to spend that time enriching their life. Caring is the most important step.
If you had a random six months of your education removed from your memory, how long would it take you to relearn it? If it was prior to high school, would you even bother relearning it?
How important is any particular six months of your education to your ability to do your current job?
Missing 6 months of school isn't ideal, but I think we tend to overestimate the importance of hitting every nail on the head when it comes to education.
Not to mention the fact that if most children in the US miss 6 months of school, they will have that as an excuse when they start sending out resumes in however many years.
> If you had a random six months of your education removed from your memory, how long would it take you to relearn it? If it was prior to high school, would you even bother relearning it?
Due to a mistake in the records, I skipped an entire year of math (pre-algebra, which I was supposed to take in 8th grade). My algebra teacher decided the first month was going to be review, because she didn't expect most of the students to need a refresher after summer break.
Turned out to be the best thing that could have happened to me, at least for that subject - not only did I have no issues catching up, turned out that was close to my natural pace. The topic was no longer boring and became one of my favorites after that.
Everyone's shitting on this dude but I had this exact scenario and I tie a lot of my struggles as a child student to this circumstance.
Miss 6 months of school while changing schools. Come in, I don't understand the math underlying what they're learning. I fall behind because I'm playing catchup while still trying to stay on top of new material. I have no discipline or direction from home so I don't put it any extra time or anything, I just get home and ride my bike around. This makes me hate math in general, and next year I'm still not entirely caught up or even sure of what I learned the previous year, so I'm failing harder. I don't know if there were any extra resources available or not, I was like, 13, but I was also a holy terror so I bet even if the resources existed they wouldn't have been provided to me because my poor performance was chalked up to me being a problem child in general - never mind my stellar performance in literature classes.
And so on. Throughout my entire public school career. By college I "get it" and am trying to catch up but it's already so ingrained in my personality that I'm "not a math person" that I instead pursue a useless humanities degree, then fuck around in Asia for a couple years. Then finally, at 26 years old, I genuinely get my shit together, learn what I missed 13 years prior, find out that I actually am capable of all that, and now I'm an engineer.
So, sure, do what you can to not get your kids killed, obviously, but I don't agree that it's fair to shit on this parent for worrying about what missing 6 months of school might do to their kid. I mean it sounds like they at least know more about discipline and enforcing learning on their kids than my parents did, so maybe the kid will be Just Fine, but homeschooling is no joke either, and the kid might still end up having to play catch up.
Your situation is very different and irrelevant because while you did miss classes your peers didn't and continued along, in a current situation everyone will stop as a group and continue studies as a group, which is very different from your experience.
Why not just re-do the year you half missed instead of trying to play a catch-up game that obviously isn't going to work? Starting to work 1 year later is really not a problem.
In most cases personal problems are the reason why children/young people skip school, not the result – that's why skipping school sounds problematic. But there are cases when it's entirely justified and it's entirely manageable then – surely an epidemic is one such case.
A proper justification, such as a closed school, would explain the delay in the child's education, and likely negate most (all?), negative reactions people might have about the resulting delay.
Citation may be needed in general, but here… that's sounds like a reasonable guess.
How should we be preparing for that? How are other people doing it who have to keep their children home and away from educational resources and teachers?
Edit: I’m getting mixed reactions to this. I’m not at all saying academics are more important than slowing the spread of the virus. But I see many comments calling for a complete shutdown of schools and very few saying that for many parents this is a legitimate source of hardship and anxiety, even if it’s the right thing to do.