Parents: What have you tried? What did you love? What did you hate?
I switched to a reduced-hours contractor status at my day job and went "full-time" on my side project so I can make my own schedule.
I do the bulk of my focused work either after my kid goes to bed or before she starts school for the day.
During the day when she's in class, it seems like every class period, there's at least one or two tech issues she needs help with. To keep that time productive for me, I do household chores, meal prep, and any easily-interruptable work-related tasks (like writing correspondence).
It's not ideal, but I feel like I can make it work for us indefinitely.
One of the ways I tried to demonstrate appreciation for their help was by actively working to structure my life and career so I could be less reliant on them in the future. I had no idea how soon I wouldn't have any choice, but my preparation for self-employment and plan to minimize outside child-care definitely made handling the COVID-forced changes easier.
Today was the first day of school and my kids are in 3rd grade.
Just like you said, there was at least four times that I needed to come over and fix tech support issues. And help them figure out how to do something.
I am trying to figure out which is better right now, with using ipad, laptop, or chromebooks.
My priorities as an educator were for the kids to be able to jump up, lay down and whisper across the room. I also wanted to make sure the devices were safe (for small ears) etc. I wanted the kids to feel as much as possible like they were in the room with me. I didn't want to create an experience where kids had to sit still at their desk or strain to see or hear.
As a teacher, I prefer when kids use a mac laptop because when they screen share or use an app their image does not disappear (which gives less of an in-person feel). I like that they can open multiple windows, so for example, I can be showing them one app, while they're working independently - and I can see their face when they're trying to work independently. Otherwise it makes me feel less like I know what's going on with them.
The big downside with the chromebook is that it doesn't support a lot of amazing apps which are so great for learning, especially at a time when giving kids a fun app they can use independently is a big support to the whole family.
As much as I like a laptop, a lot of our parents prefer the ipad, however, because kids are a bit more free to move about the house. Also, it's considerably less expensive, which makes it easier for all of us to help keep access to our group equitable. We do our best to sponsor any child who can't afford our group but wants to join and we're trying to make this as scaleable as possible so we can offer it to more families everywhere.
Ultimately, this is the winning combo we went with.
Ipad (most recent version or possible)
Wide lens (so kids can move around) https://www.amazon.com/Xenvo-iPhone-Camera-Lens-Clip
Airpod pro (by far the best for sound and most comfortable) https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro
Ipad stand (so kids aren't constantly looking down) https://www.amazon.com/Gooseneck-Tablet-Mount-Holder-Bed/dp/...
Hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any more questions about our findings:)
I have 3 kids (5,3,1). The 5 year old was supposed to start public school this year, but her pre-school opened up a private kindergarten and we opted in.
When the pandemic first broke, we pulled our kids out for 2 months and it was hard for us and them. My wife worked in the morning when I had the kids and we swapped at noon, and finished up work after we put the kids down for bed.
We tried following some sort of curriculum for the first 2 weeks, but it fell apart pretty quick and devolved into me throwing the kids in a wagon and walking around the neighborhood then going in the backyard and pushing them on a swing. Anytime I had a meeting in the morning or my wife had one in the afternoon, we'd plop them in front of the TV then struggle pulling them away from it afterwards (google wifi is great for deus-ex-machina internet outages...).
It stings having to pay an extra $15k / yr, but for our kids learning and mental health I'd happily pay double. In my humble opinion, our teachers don't make near enough for the service they provide.
I can totally relate. One day our kids will figure out that our fiber internet service is actually quite reliable, and that I've been using the ASUS router app to disconnect specific devices at needed times. My 9 year old is starting to suspect something is amiss. "Daddy, can you stop buying chromebooks? Maybe you should buy another brand. It stops working all the time but your computer never stops working."
Closing all other apps helps a bit; I guess it lacks RAM too, or is using CPU to compress RAM? Still, sometimes outbound audio gets 5-30 seconds behind. Very disjoint experience. Not meant for the Zoom era.
Austinite here w/family in Dallas. Dallas is unusual compared to Austin/Houston in that nearly anyone coming from a wealthy family living in Dallas proper goes to private schools. I'm not from Dallas but have friends who attended Hockaday, Ursuline, Jesuit, and BL. I always thought it was really odd how many of them went to private school versus my Houston-area friends, who nearly all attended public schools in the suburbs, or one of the better inner-city public schools like Memorial or Lamar. Don't know as much about Austin but from what I hear the public schools here are pretty great too.
Big money seems to go to Highland Park (public, but not Dallas despite being surrounded by it), or private (St. Marks, Jesuit, Hockaday). The fascinating part is when you look at school data, there are some stellar elementary schools in areas you wouldn't expect (lakewood), but the same area has sub-par middle-schools. I've known parents to send their kids to public elementary schools for this reason then put them in private afterwards. Then there are the magnet schools which is where my eyes start to cross and I lose interest (why is a 7 year old going to an engineering oriented school? Shouldn't they all be exposed to this?).
As a teacher, I've found that most kids either respond best to digital apps , videos or building stuff for independent learning.
If your kids like TV, they might respond really well to Khan Academy or some of the extraordinarily wonderful educational youtube videos out there. I myself used to be resistant to TV, but then I saw how much vocabulary and science especially our 3 year old was learning from his videos, and I started to change my opinion. I also find that if I let him watch as many shows as he wants, he'll eventually get bored and want to do something else.
If it's of interest to you I've spent the last couple months curating a list of my all-time favorite educational youtube channels for kids. The factors I used for vetting them were that they were 1) secular 2) mastery-based 3) fun and engaging for kids 4) scientifically accurate
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_x3VzF6ifPzFJARuqMulSQ/cha...?
You might be interested to know there's a whole group of homeschoolers that do their entire schooling around youtube videos and documentaries and are really happy with the results they're seeing in their kids. It's often called "documentary schooling"
In the film, class dismissed, the mom gets really frustrated because she feels like her kids are "just watching youtube" all day. Then she goes upstairs and finds out her younger daughter has taught herself sign language. I think sometimes don't give our kids enough credit for the natural curiosity and where it can take them!
Here's a few other groups focused on documentary or youtube schooling:
Homeschooling with Netflix and other secular media https://www.facebook.com/groups/267905676686095/
homeschooling with Netflix https://www.facebook.com/groups/homeschoolingwithnetflix/
Also check out "Gameschooling" if your kids like video games or board games:) https://www.facebook.com/groups/GameschoolMyLittlePoppies/
Also, I agree with you - teachers are incredible. A 15k education is well worth the price.
Mornings are spent on "Kid's Club" via https://www.modulo.app , which is a fairly new startup that provides online spaces for kids to learn together, hang out together, etc. My daughter has made a number of new friends through that and she's able to do a lot of the same stuff she was doing before (art, learning apps, etc), but in a more social way. Sometimes she gets to help other kids when they get stuck with their learning apps, and visa versa, which is fun. We're likely to expand this to some of the afternoon too, since they're adding a Spanish program.
Overall, I've noticed that her development has thrived since she's moved to a more self-paced environment. There's been no sign that using screens a lot is causing any problems. We've set up an iPad on an adjustable goose-neck stand so she can (and does) run around a lot and her friends can still see her. We also make sure there's time outside for exercise.
We've found a lot of good online resources, generally free or very cheap, such as Cosmic Kids Yoga, Draw Every Day with JJK, Mo Willems Doodles, and Khan Academy Kids. We've also discovered kids coding apps, like CodeSpark and SpriteBox, that have been a big hit. The teacher at Modulo.app does a good job of helping us find resources for stuff our daughter takes an interest in, and we share stuff we find with them too.
We're both full-time parents, and certainly we're not as productive as we were before, but for me it's a totally acceptable compromise. I get to be more involved in my child's development and I get to see her much more than I did before. One key thing is to have carefully planned schedules for everyone in the house. Kids are generally much happier when they have a schedule, and it also means as parents we know when we can arrange meetings, do live coding, and so forth.
We're very lucky to have these options. I know a lot of parents just don't have the ability to work from home, or to reduce their working hours to spend more time with their children.
In response, we teamed up with five other families of first graders in our area, and have contracted with a tutor to handle the other three-and-two-half days of the week. We may switch to the remote learning option, since it seems like 75% of their class will do that, which would the benefit of in-person social experiences, but simplify logistics. When not in school, the five kids will be in a basement apartment at one of the families' houses with the tutor, working on their distance learning.
We still have a zillion and a half things to iron out, but it's both progress and ridiculous.
Do all 5 families have some kind of agreement about safety and rules about exposing yourself? Or is it some friends that you trust? I'm always curious about the dynamics there.
We had a number of conversations before deciding to "pod up," and certainly before contracting with a teacher/tutor, so we have a sense of each person's risk tolerance. We agreed we were close enough to take this first step, and we'd iron out the rest later.
We were lucky enough to get an au pair right before the lockdowns started in our area (literally picked him up the night before local lockdowns went into effect). We've had really positive experiences with the au pair program in the past, and our current one has been great, so we've treated him really well. Because of that he's agreed to extend until next summer, and that application went through before visas were locked down. This means that there's a dedicated person here for the kids for 45 hours per week, or about 9 hours per weekday.
We have a decent sized house, but it's hard to get any real focus time because even with the au pair and school the kids don't really respect boundaries. So the kids do most of their schoolwork in their rooms or at the dining table. They work in blocks of about 2 hours, and I schedule breaks to coincide with theirs. During the breaks we try to go for a short walk or something to get the wiggles out, and then it's back to work. Tuesdays (and sometimes Thursdays) I go to my spouse's office where I can isolate and get some real work done until late. We trade that time for Fridays, when I stop work a couple hours early so the au pair can leave if he wants to. If I need to be able to really focus I leave the house and go to a park where I can tether and crank out some real work. This is difficult though, as I need 2 laptops and a phone to get work done.
This wasn't a traditional au pair experience, so we plan on some really nice thank you gifts for our au pair at the end of his contract, and hopefully we'll be back in school next fall and can go back to something a little more normal.
- Nearpod
- Classdojo
- Raz Kids
- BetterChinese
- Zearn
Probably others too.
The cost and contractual obligations are easy. Agency fees are usually around $9000 for a year for a brand new au pair (it's cheaper if you extend). That covers them overseeing all aspects of the program, like background checks, facilitating contact, and organizing events for the au pairs. You pay the au pair $200 / week. I'd say our total costs are in the area of $21k / year. You also need to provide a private room for them. A real room. They can work up to 45 hours per week, 10 hours per day, no overnights and they need 36 consecutive hours where they are off per week (where "off" means they can walk out the door and be gone for those 36 hours). The contract is usually for a full year, but can be extended for an additional 6 to 12 months.
Usually our au pairs are responsible for getting the kids to school, picking them up, taking them to activities, and making sure homework gets done. This year will be...... different.
You can set up family rules. You should provide these before you match so there are no surprises (surprises are usually bad for both parties). Our rules are pretty simple; no drugs, no drunk driving, ask before you use the car, be well rested and ready to work, when you leave give us a vague idea of where you'll be and when you'll be back so we know when and which ditches to start looking in if you don't return. I'm happy to supply a redacted copy of our rules if you're that interested.
You don't need to supply things like a car or phone, but getting the best au pairs is competitive (I understand right now it's extremely competitive because nobody wants to, or can, come to the US). So we put together a kind of offer packet to make ourselves more appealing. We have a car dedicated for the au pair, but if they want to go more than 100 miles they need to pay for a service appointment. We provide a phone and a service plan. There's a community pool. And we pay for various memberships to amusement parks and museums so they have stuff to do (both with the kids and during their off time).
If things are going really bad you can go into rematch. Either the family or the au pair can trigger it, but once that's triggered the au pair has 2-3 weeks to find a new family or they are sent back. You as the family can take as long as you need, but you'll be without an au pair until you get someone. It usually takes at least 6 weeks to get a new person from out of country. It's hard for au pairs to find a rematch if they cause the rematch, especially given the short timeframe, so often they have to take a less desirable position.
We've gone into rematch twice. The first was with our very first au pair. She was really uninterested in the job because she was preoccupied with boy issues back home. The final straw with her was lying about causing a couple thousand dollars in damage to our car. The second one was at the beginning of this year. We got our first au pair from China and when she got here her English was significantly worse than when we interviewed her. The kids had a lot of trouble connecting with her, but we finally triggered rematch because she took a car she wasn't insured on out for coffee when nobody else was around. It was the third time she had done it, and after each of the first two we had someone who was a native Mandarin speaker explain to her that she couldn't take it. So in both cases the real issue was about trusting them.
We thought about going into rematch a third time. We had an au pair that was really good with the kids, but she was shockingly racist, bigoted, and fascist (she outright said people of certain races and certain religions should be executed, and when we compared it to the Spanish Inquisition she had never heard of it and then claimed that that was fake history and had never happened). It warranted a lot of discussion between us (the parents) and we decided to occasionally ask the kids if they heard her say anything like that to them. As long as she kept those opinions to herself around them it wasn't a problem, and it led to a lot of interesting discussions. Ultimately I think we softened her views.
We also had one au pair who ended our contract early. Our son has ADHD and he was just being diagnosed, so she had a really hard time with him. She decided she just didn't want to work with kids. She gave us a couple months notice which made it easy to get a replacement for her.
All in all it's been a very positive experience for us. The kids have had a wide variety of experiences with other cultures. Most of our au pairs have been European, so they've had Spanish, German, Austrian, French, and Polish influences. Our current one is our first male au pair (most agencies won't accept men), and he's been fantastic. He's from Brazil, so it's been an interesting new experience for the kids. My best friend married one of our au pairs (they were about 2 years apart in age) and moved to Austria with her. We stay in contact with most of them (even the rematches; our last rematch texted me last week asking for a couple of my recipes). We've also set up little vacation "franchises" around the world, and have traveled to Europe with the kids to visit ex-au pairs a couple times.
Happy to answer any more specific questions.
This is day one, but here's what I'm going to try this week: 1). Get up earlier. I'm going to try to be in front of my computer with coffee by 5:30am. I'm hoping I can log a couple solid hours of work before I have to punch in for school. 2). Long lunch for the kids. Their school schedule only gives them 50 minutes, but the school is going to have to deal with it. I'm going to do 90 minutes so I can try to focus on work while inhaling a sandwich or something. 3) Bourbon when the kids are sleep.
I really hope we can get a rhythm and my kids can pick up some study skills where we don't have to be so hands-on.
You're going to have to let something slide. Choose one priority and then fit what you can into the time that's left, and accept that it doesn't all fit. I hope you choose your child as your priority, but you'll find your own way. Good luck.
The other is 16 and will be attending in person every other day for half a day (1/4 of the time) and doing synchronous, online the rest of the time. She is attending an online summer school course this month to get the hang of things.
(context: Canadian, kids go to public school in Toronto)
That said I personally don't schools will stay open until even Christmas and don't know what our next step will be. We've investigated private school as the class sizes are much smaller and they have far more flexibility and motivation to make in person learning work.
Context: western Canada with big public school classes and very few cases, the majority impacting very old and those with previous health concerns
(No offense intended) I keep hearing this and wonder what proof we have of this? I have two kids, one introvert, one extrovert and neither seem to have been impacted. Sure they'd like to hang out with friends, but they're basically the same personality/kids/temperament they had pre-pandemic.
I don't know if there's evidence, but if this were to go on for years I could see kids missing milestones. Having gone to school with kids who were homeschooled without proper socialization for too long, I can comfortably say social skills need to be learned. It may not seem like much, but not knowing how to interact with peers comfortably is a serious problem, especially as you start to enter situations like interviewing for a job or trying to make friends in a new city.
More to your question, how would you study something like that? Previously home schooled students who had limited social interactions?
I would not stop there when considering the topic. Socialization is a process, and its goal is growth, not stagnation.
That being said, it's also gradual, making it difficult to measure over a few months.
Lack of socialization - for a few months - is as serious as a disease that's killing people by the hundreds of thousands?
Even if the kids themselves are at lower risk, they can transmit the disease to parents as well as teachers, who are much more vulnerable.
We don't know why yet.
-small online clubs -daily scheduled facetime with friends -focusing on developing/nurturing healthy relationships with siblings and parents (this goes along way in building healthy attachments later in life) -socially distanced hikes with friends wearing masks -make friends with one other family who is also socially distancing.
I already worked from home so that wasn't a change. One thing that did change right at the beginning of lockdown was that I got diagnosed with a chronic illness that requires treatment that makes me immunocompromised, so that played a role in the decision.
1) Print out the daily/weekly schedule for the student, and put it up on the wall somewhere. This is one less tab they have to keep open and refer to constantly. Also, a second copy helps parents keep on top of the kids schedule. A color printer here is a huge benefit. We have an HP Color LaserJet Pro M255dw, and it’s amazing.
2) Get a headset with a microphone; aim for comfort more than style. Something over-ear with a cushioned headband. They’re going to be wearing it all day, and earbuds can fall out of small ears. My 7yo daughter looks like an airline pilot with hers on. They’re huge, but she loves them.
3) Encourage your child not to panic when something goes wrong. Adults are much better equipped to handle meeting malfunction than kids. They won’t get an unexcused absence or other demerit because of a computer malfunction. The kids extend grace to the teacher when they see it, and they’ll be treated in kind.
This year we had the option of a similar remote program for the first semester or in-person, with the commitment lasting until the grading period is over. We're very fortunate to have one parent who can easily dedicate time during the day and a program conducive to remote learning. I can only imagine the sleepless schedules that would be involved in a less structured online program or with both parents working.
The major reason for not moving to home schooling this year is to guarantee our place at the private school for 6th/7th/8th grade without a significant donation to get back in. It is sorta unfortunate to pay extra to home school our kid, but we enjoy the community in-person when that was available. We're lucky we're in a position to be able to choose this.
We are going to home-school with a private teacher.
We also found a couple of other families that we'll consider play-dates or select group lessons with.
Clever, since they’re then part of your family bubble. Must be expensive though!
She's been working for our family for a bit over a year. We originally hired her as a full-time nanny when wife decided to do a dev bootcamp.
She has a bachelors in early childhood education/development and is personally interested in crafting positive developmental experiences for kids. Our girls really appreciate her and get a lot of value (and education) from the time they spend together. We'll supplement her efforts with more structure in the form of a curriculum.
It is very expensive (relative to our income). We live cheaply and don't do many luxuries. It made sense for us to invest in high-quality childcare for our girls.
We had multiple teachers in our social group reach out to us to set this up, actually and with the cost spread evenly amongst the participating families it wouldn't have been terribly expensive.
During the summer we enrolled the five year old in weekly art camp (all over Zoom). She had fun doing art and it kept her busy for a good chunk of the day. The camp was only an hour but then she'd spend a bunch of hours afterwards finish the project. She's enrolled in their after school program now which starts in a couple weeks.
She was supposed to start Kindergarten this year, but since we're in California, that's all remote over Google Meet. Right now she has a 1 hour Meet in the morning, and that's it. Starting next week there will be three meets throughout the day, once with the whole class and then two small groups with the teacher or a parent.
So far it's working out. The kinder teacher is embracing online learning and has good activities that work over Meet, and she's totally cool with younger siblings joining in (because apparently 1/2 the class has a younger sibling).
Beyond that, the kids just play with each other all day, and sometimes I take a break to play with them. My wife gets to work on her own projects but has to take frequent breaks to mediate their playtime or help them transition activities.
We have a rule in the house of no electronics when the sun is up. Sometimes we let them break the rule to play educational games, especially right now during the heat wave when they can't even go in the yard. But the rule is a good fallback when they want to use electronics: "Sorry, sun's still up!".
Also we're super lax about cleaning up toys, so I can't walk in a straight line in my house anymore. There are toys everywhere. But it's a small price to pay to avoid the daily clean up arguments!
We have loved: teachers who are technically adept.
Suggestions: Can you get a mobile wifi take one kid out at a time to do school outside? (This assume you are also in an area you can be outside in a safe way, between COVID and heat)
Can you and your partner talk to your companies and change your work hours? Are your employers on board with "this is not working from home, this is being at home during a pandemic, attempting to work"?
Have you found a way to prioritize some personal time daily/weekly so you two do not burn out to a crisp?
What we hate: the complete disruption. We are not great at teaching our kids, not because of lousy skill (we both taught college), but lousy patience teaching a young age group. We have done a lot of "learning on the go" this summer--for example: taking kids into a river, talking about currents, water sources, why stones in rivers are round, ecosystems, etc. Or playing with Gravitrax to explore gravity, friction, the topography of our 100 yr old house's living room (and why /how construction settles). But it is hard and it is not "curricular & organized"
We are also in a socioeconomic group that can afford a nanny, and have professions that have allowed for flexibility. We have had it "easy".
There is no way to overstate the sheer hellish hell of choices this all can be, and YMMV with anything I wrote here.
I spent time teaching my daughter different topics and used workbooks over the summer. She is in good shape for the start of school.
Right now the school is bringing kids back in, but giving them the option to do remote learning. I am going for the in person learning. Each kid is getting their own workspace, and they have to wear masks when they are not at their workspace.
If they were not considering in-person learning, I would probably opt to get some families together to create one of those learning pods.
First three weeks are remote for all students in my district, but we'll have some hard choices ahead balancing health and education needs. Seems so much these days is choosing between options that are all far, far from ideal.
Oh, and we live in Texas where 7,500 new cases/day are still being reported.
What curriculum or learning apps have you tried so far? Some are better suited to different types of educational needs than others. I'd be happy to recommend some resources that might be helpful and also can connect you to specialists and tutors who are volunteering for free to help kids with special needs during the crisis.
Please let me know if I can be of support in any way I can.
I have a kid in middle school. While it's less than perfect, it wasn't that bad even in peak lockdown. We have a big house with a big backyard and there are lots of big parks in town. If there is any possibility (even on a rental basis) to go to the middle of the country, you might look into that. (Don't worry, nobody's ever died of boredom from being more than 50 miles from the coast, in spite of what some might have told you.)
I'm going to homeschool the eldest myself for the first time. I actually know a lot about homeschooling because of circumstances I won't explain here, but I've never done it before and my wife and I were both educated at public and private schools from K through university.
Down here, I work about 4 solid and productive hours a day with only very occasional Zoom meetings, most of my team interaction is done over email, Discord, or Slack. I have a degree in the humanities so I've been spending the past few weeks designing a curriculum. It will revolve heavily around reading real books (no textbooks) and we'll be using Khan Academy for Math, I will handle the Science and Biology. Most of the books I will be using I've found for free on archive.org and follow the contours (but not the letter) of the Charlotte Mason curriculum book recommendations.
Doing this schedule isn't as hard as it is for some families because of the time differential: we're UTC +8, 12 hours ahead of EST. So I plan to do homeschool in the morning, while it's evening hours in the US, and be finished by lunchtime here, then work most of the afternoon when it's overnight in the States, and send all the status emails at the end of my day when they'll be only a few hours old when EST wakes up. It works great for me so far.
We're hoping to fill in some of the issues that COVID has created. We're providing a free education app for kids aged 5-10. Our curated content that we've filmed and gamified surrounds intriguing concepts! hopefully we can buy back some of your time!
It would be great if anyone with kids aged 5-10 sign up for our BETA and help us build an amazing platform for both Parents and Kids alike! (Link: https://beta.thinkstation.io/exclusive/)
Also -- If anyone knows where else to post, let us know :)
Feedback always helps!
We are home schooling them full time and pulled them out of private school. We are right now going through the process of figuring out their schedule, but we have also hired a home school consultant who is simply invaluable. We are trying to come up with a schedule for the school year as we speak.
Our son is profoundly gifted with behavior issues so he has special needs that frankly make it easier when he's home schooled, but the pandemic is making his social isolation worse, so we need to figure that out. This year will probably be messed up for everyone so experimenting this year won't be that much worse even if we mess up home schooling.
We also have resources available through Davidson and John Hopkins' CTY, so they will be taking courses through that. We'll try our best but we also know that this is a once in a decade situation that everyone is suffering from, so we're not putting too much pressure on ourselves to get it perfect. Most notably is the social isolation, so figuring that out is important for us.
With regards to social isolation, if you're interested, we run a digital learning pod to help kids stay connected and develop social-emotional skills online. We meet twice a week and activities are designed to keep all members participating actively and engaging with each other and the facilitator. Kids facetime and skype outside the group and meet up for interest-based groups as well. It's working so well that some kid who had no friends at school when they were meeting kids in person now have developed wonderful friends with kids in the group.
Several of our kids are highly gifted or have other considerations. If you'd like to try it out, we'd love to have your son in our group. It's a unique challenge helping kids feel connected using an online medium, but we've discovered, not impossible and can even increase the diversity of the group since kids can connect from all around the world.
Here's also another article I wrote on Staying Connected which might be helpful. https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/onlineconnections
I've been working fully remote for a year and a half, and homeschooling doesn't hinder my remote work in any way. I periodically have a "break-in", where one of the kids barges into the office during a meeting, but it's no more interruption than any other common interruption (e.g. someone comes in late, someone pardons themself to the restroom, etc.).
They are 8 and 10, and honestly, digital learning and communication tools were a total flop last year when they spent 8 weeks at home.
All we can do is give then love and stability to let them know it's ok not to know the answer... Not to the homework, and not to covid either.
The 12 year old is doing fully virtual/remote which was fine this spring and we expect no trouble.
The elementary schools in our state are all enforcing masks all day, no cafeteria (lunch in the classroom), avoiding all interactions with students not in your homeroom, maintain 6’, etc.
This will all add up to something untenable for our 9 year old, he’s got sensory and social issues and it’s just an impossible environment.
The virtual option this spring was also largely impossible for him due to the same issues (combined with the uninspired way the school approached it).
The upshot is that we’re homeschooling our 9,5,5 kids, the two youngest being in kindergarten this is basic stuff we’d be doing anyway, sight words and addition/subtraction.
We’re in a house in the country so when it all becomes too much being cooped up together we just throw them out in the yard and lick the doors. :-) j/k
(No seriously we sometimes actually do this for 20 minutes...)
I chose to go pod since it adds a little more socialization without nearly as much risk as a larger group.
I’ve switched to stay-at-home Dad mode and work on side projects in my spare time.
My kids are just old enough to be able to manage most of their school work on their own.
I feel pretty lucky considering some of the tough choices others are having to make rn.
I'm a single parent so have been working a full time software architect job from home while looking after the kids 3 days a week. To start with we did quite a lot of learning but it dropped off to survival half way through lockdown, they were 4 and 6 so couldn't work independently. It's been a tough year so feeling pleased we've done as well as we have. I really feel getting the kids back in some kind of social environment with some kind of education is an absolute priority for us right now. Let's see what happens!
Any contact with the grandparents is likely to be carefully controlled and they won't stay in our house. Things do seem to be improving now in Europe, but going downhill in American, good luck guys.
Quite often, my wife was working upstairs, I downstairs, my oldest son in his room, and my youngest son was mostly playing and watching TV with the occasional school-related lesson on a tablet. On Thursdays, our cleaner would come, and we all had to cram into half the house while she cleaned the other half, or we had to leave the house. Sometimes we ended up working in bed or on the balcony.
My oldest son was quite capable of doing his own schoolwork, though he's always finished way too quickly and spent the rest of the day gaming, so this made his gaming addiction a lot worse in retrospect, but at the time, he didn't need much attention. Or youngest did, though. It's hard to work when a 5-year-old wants your attention. But our regular babysitter had all her other babysitting jobs and restaurant jobs cancelled, so eventually we hired her 3 days a week to entertain and teach our youngest, and that worked very well. I still ended up shifting a lot of work to the evenings and weekends, which works fine: play with your kids during the day, work in the evening. There's not much else to do anyway.
So the isolation wasn't perfect because of outside help, but that did make it bearable. We always kept a lot of distance from our cleaner (who always wore masks and gloves), and the babysitter didn't have much else going on in her life anymore, so we figured she wasn't a big risk.
So I guess that's my advice: adopt a near-permanent babysitter. There are probably plenty who are currently our of a job, and as long as they don't do much else than babysit at your place and go back to their own home, they're not a big risk. Get someone responsible, though; not a party animal.
It seems so ideal to just hire a bunch of professional tutors or college students to have dedicated one on one time with each student for their perspective subjects each day. What's most critical and missing from remote school now is one on one feedback and help. Heck, you could even wrap comprehensive PSAT, SAT and testing prep in with the package.
Public school systems obviously don't have a good approach - IMO primary school education is more essential to get right than your college education. It's much harder to re-define fundamentals down the road.
Location: Oviedo, Spain
I'm setting up study areas in the house for the kids that are away from each other and me. I'm going to get comfortable headphones for their school-issued Chromebooks.
The plan is instructional blocks that include webinars, basically, along with some study time with the teacher available online. They can come up to my office if they have questions as well.
I built out my home office to mirror my work office this past spring, so I'm pretty well setup to be a remote employee and hopefully the quiet spaces I setup for the kids will be good for their remote learning.
Have you researched this yet? I'm having a hard time finding good headphones for children.
Net result: We will be sending him to school once it opens.
Middle kid's going in, at least until they probably shut down in a month or two. Youngest is going to grandparents whom we very much hope we don't give The COVID, but none of the rest is happening if that one's home. No way.
Have you considered any of the learning tools like Khan Academy that don't need a parent to necessarily sit down with the child and can study independently?
Also, if you need a friendly ear, I'd be happy to help you and your partner think this through. I've been a teacher for 15 years in 3 countries, founded 3 startups to support homeschoolers, and most recently led schoolclosures.org and Modulo which are working directly to provide support to families. Happy to help in any way we can.
We're banking hard on the 1-2 hours a day of direct instruction thing being true :-)
> Have you considered any of the learning tools like Khan Academy that don't need a parent to necessarily sit down with the child and can study independently?
Absolutely, apps and youtube videos are how we're going to handle much or all of "specials" instruction (foreign language, art, music—I wouldn't have counted on it for music except we happen to already be doing that and it's going better than I could have imagined) and probably some of the science and social studies work. We're mostly focused on keeping our foot on the gas for reading and math, at which she's already far "ahead", as far as direct instruction goes—a kid who can read and is curious can cover more science and social studies on their own than they do in school, we both know from experience, so if those two core literacy subjects are going well we reckon no serious long-term harm has been done, even if we somehow fail at everything else.
> Also, if you need a friendly ear, I'd be happy to help you and your partner think this through. I've been a teacher for 15 years in 3 countries, founded 3 startups to support homeschoolers, and most recently led schoolclosures.org and Modulo which are working directly to provide support to families. Happy to help in any way we can.
Oh hey, we based a bunch of our research on a pile of modulo resources you posted on an HN thread some time back! Haha, cool, didn't realize you were you until I got to this paragraph. Thanks for the work you've done, and for your kind offer of support. At this point we don't know what we don't know and our unknowns are down to things we won't uncover until we start trying it, though, I think. Which is very soon. If our Singapore Math books we ordered 2 weeks ago ever show up, that is. :-/
Between politics being increasingly injected into public school curriculum, lack of ability to come up with a workable solution during COVID19, and just overall poor performance of the program we've had enough and have decided to opt out.
Luckily we're able to afford having my spouse be a stay at home parent, and we plan to move to get out of the high COL associated with the supposedly great schools.
I fully respect other adults' right to hold their own opinions. I am not a fan of high-jacking education of children as a way to push those views, which has unfortunately become common place from both ends of the political spectrum.
I honestly think that our area of NJ has a good a chance of making it through in-person for the long-term due to being so slammed by it at first & the pro-social reaction from most of our neighbors.
We never would have made it through this year if my paycheck disappeared. I can't imagine how everyone else is doing this.
But our youngest is a senior in high school this year. She's taking some dual-enrollment classes, but they're online-only. If she were a year older, and looking at going to college this fall... I don't know what we'd do. I guess we'd be restricted to schools that are within commuting distance, because we'd have no confidence that they wouldn't go remote-only at the drop of a hat.
It doesn't seem likely to me that schools will be able to safely reopen in the US anytime soon, so I'd encourage everyone to take a look at the emerging startups appearing in this area, like Prenda, Primer, Dexter [full disclosure, I'm an investor]
We were living in the Bay Area a few years ago, and then a couple of years in Chicago itself, I’m very thankful we happen to find ourselves in a more affordable area as this is going on, because everything would have been much trickier...
Also, I'm trying use my free time to teach the kids intellectually stimulating stuff they wouldn't learn in a classroom - like how to play poker, how to calculate flooring area from an architectural plan, how a wall is constructed, basic chemistry while cooking in the kitchen.
12-year-old: School over the internet is awesome! Takes me a quarter of the time and I'm not just waiting for the teacher and the class. Doing an online, tech-focused, home schooling program, with in-person advanced math class and drama class.
The 12-yo had been explicitly told he "could miss two weeks and not fall behind", and the teacher tried to forbid working ahead in the math book. (The in-person math class is up a grade level plus "advanced").
If the school/community manages to create a safe in-person learning environment for the next few months my son will transfer to in-person learning. I highly doubt this will happen though given the current trends.
We are going to get an Alexa or Google smart speaker to help maintain schedules and screen-allowance timers. Maintaining a set schedule is key.
We have tried white-boards, but they get messy with lots of other priorities we try to organize (shopping, garbage night, bills, etc).
If the days are staggered, it would reduce the occupancy rate of the classrooms, which seems sensible.
private 2nd, 7th - 3 weeks virtual only, then hybrid model. One week on, one week off, 10 kids in class.
I ran calculations for the probability of a serious infection and it is something like
1% prevalence * 5% transmission rate 1% hospitalization rate
.0005% chance per contact of being hospitalized
chance your child doesnt get hospitalized per extended contact .99995
with 10 children in the class plus a teacher, the probability of being hospitalized is .99995^10 or 1/20,000
I can work from home and my wife is a stay at home. I know a little about a lot of things so can teach them pretty much anything. We had a lot of fun in the spring.
I dont love the pandemic, but it has been great for us as a family.
Especially looking for California and 2nd-3rd graders..
Is there a curriculum that you follow and use books? Or is there an online Home school thing..
Looking for pointers...
We live in a small two bedroom apartment, but we rearranged the whole house to make it all work.
We converted our bedroom into a bedroom and office for my wife, our 4 year old son's bedroom into a family room and office for me, and then we turned our entire living room into a school and play room for our son.
We then hired a nanny to tutor and play with our 4 year old son during the day while we each work in our respective offices. She is an ex-teacher who has been self-isolating since March (the same as us).
She charges $12 an hour for 6 hours a day, 5 days a week, which works out to $360 a week. This is about $100 more than keeping our son in his daycare, but now he's getting one-on-one interaction and tutoring instead of just being one kid out of twenty in a room with only two teachers.
Unless my wife's school district (or my office) is willing to provide hazmat suits and/or effective PPE, we intend to stay home until a vaccine is released.
Our productivity at home will be lower and I will have to relearn fractions, but we're going to make it work.
I am disappointed we didn't use the summer to better prepare by starting to teach the kids, but it seemed like none of us wanted to do anything related to school given what is happening.
I would be thankful. I appreciate your time.
We have a legally deaf-blind student that we feel will not be able to cope with everyone wearing a mask and having to be distant. (Under normal circumstances, he tends to get rather close in because he's trying to see you; he's got rather more European personal space sensibilities than American ones.) We also have a sneaking suspicion that "in person school" will last less than a week before someone coughs and everyone is sent home. (So to speak.) We think this is going to be a very unstable and destabilizing option.
The local virtual option was well established here before, but involves children sitting in front of computers for nearly the full 8 hours, as if they were at school. As adults, we're hardly willing to be on 8 hours of video call a day and asking for this from children is absurd. (I'm not too worried about the details of whether it's exactly 8 hours, the point is, they're clearly trying to function as a school day replacement rather than a school replacement; the two are not the same.)
I've also noticed my oldest is falling behind in math, because they're going just a touch faster than he can quite keep up with [1], and I've kind of wanted to fix that anyhow. I can see the memeplex forming where he realizes that there's no reason to put any effort in, because almost no matter what he does, the curriculum goes zooming on and gives him an OK grade. Even if we only do this for half a year or a year I'm hoping to have a chance to break in to this cycle.
At the moment I'm not focusing too hard on the "socialization" problem. Lockdown is precluding a lot of good solutions to that anyhow. We can address it more thoroughly later.
The main thing I'm having to reconsider is music. I still want to offer a music program, but now band isn't an option and/or is not a reliable option. (This is true even if we took the full-physical option anyhow.) We're doing a trial run of the home schooling this week (before our actual start date, so we can decide how we like it), and I'm considering trying to offer the kids some music programs involving instruments that are capable of functioning alone. I took enough piano that I could easily teach it; I'm also considering electric guitar as a versatile option that seems to have some passable electronic teaching options. (I feel like even on an instrument I don't play myself I can still fill in the gaps in such programs.)
[1]: A previous comment of mine on the topic: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23490872
It's not so hot at form—it tries to teach and reinforce it but of course it can't dynamically check that you aren't screwing up—but is great at most other things. Heavy focus on playing recognizable and fun music (they license tons of stuff) to keep up interest, with arrangements adjusted down as necessary. Long, segmented "curriculum" plan with some branches, free play modes on songs you've "unlocked", sheet music available and play modes that scroll the page for you. It's really nice.
It's insane that schools are asking kids to sit for 8 hours straight. What's more a lot of them are teaching on zoom the way they do in the classroom, when it's a completely different medium that has different strengths that we could be using to our advantage.
What kind of tools have you tried for math? I recently discovered Prodigy Games and Math Tango (the latter is probably too young. Kids seem to love them and need no egging on at all. Khan Academy is also great and they just launched a free tutoring program as well. Prodigy: https://www.prodigygame.com/ Khan's tutoring prorgram: https://coda.io/@schoolhouse/welcome
I think your instinct with socialization is right on. Your child needs a healthy attachment with you and your family. That will help them form healthy attachments with others later in life. Here's an article I wrote on this topic with the help of a play-based learning specialist from Bank Street. Kids absolutely do not have to be in a huge group to learn to socialize well. https://www.modulo.app/stayingconnected
For music, I'm actually working with a student in NYC who goes to Laguardia, does guitar and is interested in being in a string quartet..if you'd like to connect, maybe we could do something together?
I've heard Hoffman Academy has great classes but haven't tried them myself.
Here are some more math options: https://www.modulo.app/all-resources/the-best-math-programs-...
If you'd like to offer a music class, I'd be interested in collaborating with you. I run an early stage startup that's been offering digital learning pods to students. I think that a bunch of our families would be interested in this class.
Here are some more music resources for you. I haven't tried them all myself but I'm part of a group of thousands of homeschoolers and these seem to be the ones they like the most: https://www.slso.org/en/edu/middle-high-schools/ https://www.hoffmanacademy.com/ https://www.squiltmusic.com/ https://prodigiesmusic.com/
If you need any other help, please don't hesitate to reach out to me. I know this can be stressful and there is so much unknown - and even more so when your children have special needs that are already difficult to navigate in the "normal school system". It can be helpful to have someone to talk to and think things through. My email is manisha@modulo.app