COVID-19: A Homeschool Diary
So, let me start by declaring that I’m not in a good mood when I write this — truth be known, it’s probably not the best time to pen a story about becoming the Principal of my own Homeschool, where my three students are also my three children, but I needed an outlet to vent, so I turned to good old pen and paper (figuratively of course!).
I’d also like to stress that I in no way think that I’m the only one currently faced with a houseful of kids who are not at school due to the current COVID-19 Pandemic. In fact, it’s precisely because my experience is so similar to many others that I felt it appropriate to share.
Enough of the disclaimers, now to the facts. Enrolled in my school is a 14-year old girl in Year 9, let’s call her A1, an 11-year old girl in Year 6, let’s call her A2 and an 8-year old (as of yesterday) boy in Year 3, let’s call him A3. They all go to the same school and today was the end of day five at home, after one of the teachers in the high school tested positive to COVID-19. I happened to be overseas in Malaysia for the first two days, which was ironic, because everyone thought I’d be the high risk person, when in fact it was a local rather than an international threat.
So, due to the sudden nature of the school closure the teachers and students were ill prepared for the online world that they would need to inhabit, and had not really made any provision for such an eventuation. Here is a run down of how the first five days unfolded.
Day 1: At 3:30am the school sent out an email informing parents and students that due to a positive case of COVID-19 the school would not open. This meant that there was no time for teachers to adjust to the information, leaving the students to have a ‘day off’. Fortunately, A1 (my 14-year old) was able to hold the fort alone while I was out of town and her mother went to work.
The day essentially descended into a day of TikToks and Netflix for A1 and A2 and a day of Lego building for A3. By the end of the day the teachers had decided to send out school work via email to keep students learning (or at least busy) while they were not at school. That resulted in eight emails for A1, two emails for A3 and surprisingly, zero emails for A2 — it seems that there really isn’t that much to learn in Year 6…
Day 2: A3 couldn’t wait to start homeschool and was up at 8am getting right into his allocated schoolwork, hoping to knock it over before morning tea. He actually finished it by 11:30am showing that there really is only three and half hours of useful work per day in Year 3. A2, having found the next Netflix series to binge on, was happy being curled up in bed for most of the day despite it being a gorgeous 25-degree day outside.
A1, trying to cope with the increased workload, didn’t get out of bed till 11am and when she did, she complained about how much and how hard it all was.
Day 3: This is the day I arrived home from Malaysia and when I walked into the house at midday, still with an online meeting to attend before the end of the day, all I saw was a very stressed out A1 — who was complaining that she was getting far more work online than they ever did in class, a Lego building A3, who had already done his homework and an A2 that had finally been assigned some work — mind you, by the time I came in she’d finished that work and was up to Series 2 of the new show.
The weekend started after day 3 and A1 had one of her school friends sleep over that night and I asked them both what was the one thing they liked and disliked about remote learning? They both disliked the lack of teacher interface and would love the opportunity to ask the teacher questions face-to-face. A1 liked the flexibility of doing the work whenever she wanted to (read: never) and her friend like the fact that there was no timetable, which meant she could do maths quickly because she was good at it and spend more time on English because she found that more difficult, rather than having 45-minutes arbitrarily allotted to both.
Day 4: This was a Monday and the school, over the weekend, had worked out that emailing homework was probably not the most effective way to disseminate tasks or engage students and so the directive came that the school would move to Microsoft Teams as a way to run virtual classes. However, being that this was new for them, they only managed to run an hour long tutorial for high schoolers, with no other work assigned.
I had a meeting in the city that morning and left for a few hours, by the time I came back it was Lord of the Flies, which was fortuitous because that’s the book A1 is studying in her English class. A2 and A3, natural adversaries were in the midst of WWIII and, as my colleague will attest to based on the noise she heard when she called, this was not something that one could ignore. Cabin fever (or cabbage fever as A3 used to call it) was well and truly in full swing while A1, having caught up on the work overload the day before, went out for lunch with her friends after the short tutorial. So much for social distancing! Mind you, she does use that as an excuse not to go anywhere near me.
Day 5: So, that brings us to today and without giving away the punchline, at lunchtime A2 said to me, “I never thought I’d say this but, I really miss school.”
The day started with A1 up bright and early at 8:15am to make sure she was ready and waiting for her first online class, English, at 9am. I’m happy to say that she was there on time, but unhappy about the fact that she left a mess in the kitchen for me to clean up…
An hour and a half later, following some technical difficulties, A3 managed to log into his Microsoft Teams tutorial, which was a nightmare — just imagine about 100 boys from Year 3–6 logged on, unable to maintain focus and constantly turning their microphones on and off. Fortunately, he was able to access Teams from his phone (and old hand-me-down iPhone 6 without a SIM card). That was followed by A2’s tutorial, much more civilised but, being that she knew how it worked already, a complete waste of time. Mind you, because we’re a device down A2 needed to use my computer to log in and participate.
Fortunately none of my students are fools and following A3’s tutorial about how to use Teams he calls one of his friends and invited him over for a playdate. Great?! Now there’s a fourth pupil in my homeschool! Again, so much for social distancing…
By now A1 was in her maths class and I could hear the printer going, printing out the instructions for the class. And then after a solid four hours of school A1 was back in bed — Netflix and chill…
Throughout all this my nerves were on edge, my temper threatening to boil over as I was tying to maintain a working day that was filled with changes, adjustments and uncertainty. Not surprisingly when I did glance at the news the story that caught my eye was a spike in Chinese couples filing for divorce as a result of the forced isolation (check it out here) — fortunately, I’m not at risk of that yet (my wife is still able to go to work), however divorcing the children, now that’s a very real possibility!
Can’t say I’m looking forward to day 6…
