What if Quarantine Homeschooling is Better For Black Children?
It’s hard to say where the research on this would be but I had a sobering thought yesterday: what kind of love and care are our children getting at home through schooling from their parents that they’ve rarely seen in schools?
What are Black children experiencing right now?
And how could we capture that and share it with school systems?
A friend is homeschooling her children and NOT using the curriculum sent home. Why? Because she wants her children to see themselves in their work. In studies. In history. In literature.
The patience she has with them as she delivers lessons with love & care have the power to turn kids around. The ones who hate school, who have been told on repeat that they aren’t wanted, necessary or represented. School systems do that to children all the time. We have that data
But what if children are receiving lessons and liking them much better because their parents, the ones who love them, are offering it up differently? Parents that are more patient with their own child than the teacher ever has been?
What if we did some ethnographic research?
What if those families were researched to find out what was working and how the change occurred? I have no doubt that some kids are learning TONS more right now and not because of what the schools are sending home but because adults are doing it with real kindness.
There are lots of jokes flying around about how tired parents are already, how teachers are salty because they do this daily with 30+ kids, how prayer and swatting have returned.
But there are kids who are LOVING this experience. Children who aren’t just Black.
Children from Asian households who are really grateful not to be bullied in school systems right now because 45 can’t shut his mouth long enough not to joke or dismiss real panic and concern because he has to rile up his base to ensure people have an Other to blame.
Children with Arab parents who have seen on repeat how they’re dismissed & ignored or even made fun of because, if they’re also Muslim, they’ve asked for a prayer room during the day to fulfill their prayers. Jewish children. Latinx children. Indigenous children.
All kinds of families. DIVERSE ones.
Who, right now, are offering their children lessons laden with care and love. They’re guiding their children through learning that centers *them* in the narrative, makes them the heroes/heroines, and teaches them *their* history and not just the old white, Eurocentric one.
That’s the research & data I want. The people who are grateful for this time with their kids to show them another way & not the status quo way that American schools struggle to change.
This isn’t out of left field. I’m hearing from them.
What will we do with the findings?
