An Open Letter to My Grandchildren’s Teachers
We’re Here to Help Make Learning Happen
By Vicki Roth, Retired Educator
Dear Teachers Everywhere,
While America works hard to protect grandparents and others, please know that we are ready to return the favor. Think of us as a voluntary force eager to lend its know-how to your efforts. We want to help your students — our grandchildren — keep learning during this uncharted time.
Some of us, and I’m one of them, are educators, but even those from other walks of life have a special expertise: we know our grandchildren well. Whether we live under the same roof or at distance, we’ve been absorbed by their every developmental step. Just ask us for proof; we can show you hundreds (thousands?) of photos of these steps from birth onwards on our phones.
So please call on us to help you and our grandchildren’s frazzled parents. We know that we are not in the midst of true homeschooling, with its planned-in-advance curricula, trips to museums, and organized play dates. We understand that teachers have had next-to-no time to put online instruction together, and that many parents have faced the same abrupt demand to learn how to work from home and how to provide homeschooling at the same time. Frankly, things everywhere are a bit of a mess. That’s just where we are right now.
There are so many ways grandparents can pitch in to help with this. Before I jump into them, though, let’s kick one particular idea to the curb, i.e., that people of my generation don’t know enough technology to make a difference.
Most of us have been Facetiming and Skyping with our grandchildren for years. We use the internet all the time, and we got the hang of various basic applications, like Word, years ago. So consider us good to go.
All right, here are a few specific ideas:
Both big and little kids can’t learn very well when they are sad, angry, or scared. But we can help them start their homeschooling day by listening to what they have to say. And for the kids who don’t quite feel like talking, we can help boost their spirits by singing goofy songs with the littler ones, and swapping silly memes, telling jokes, and the like with the big kids. We can do warm-up exercise videos with them, too, like the one I did with my eight-year-old grandson the other day. (Full disclosure: I may have been faking some of those jumping jacks. Don’t tell him.)
Once they are engaged with their schoolwork, we can provide on-the-spot content support, or at least encouragement, when they get stuck. At our age, we’ve learned quite a bit. But if it’s been a while since we’ve, say, thought about derivatives, we’ll help our grandchildren figure how to connect with calculus resources. If we no longer have the finer points about Julius Caesar at our fingertips, we can connect them with someone who does. That source, often enough, will be you, so we will coax them to ask you questions. As a retired educator, I know well that students can hang back from seeking support when they most need it. So we promise to nudge, but not nag, in this direction.
Also, we can offer enrichment to your instruction.
Just tell us what your goals are, and we’ll find ways to back you up.
For instance, grandparents have been providing kitchen chemistry and math instruction for generations by teaching kids how to cook. So just tell us what concepts you want reinforced, and we’ll work it gently into our online cooking instruction.
Are you teaching American history? Many of us are into genealogy, so we might be able to personalize your history lesson by sharing stories and photographs of our family members from the past.
Do you have an art course? We can support this, too, by admiring what our grandchildren have created for you that day (we’ve been doing so for years), sharing links for our favorite art, and devising online treasure hunts to find out more about a particular artist or time period.
Finally, you probably know some students who, for one reason or another, don’t have a connection to a grandparent. Many of us would be happy to be adoptive grandparents for these students during this hard time; they don’t need to be left out of support from my generation.
It true that making all of these linkages will take some work and that you are already so very strapped for time. But once you tell us what you want us to do, there are millions of grandparents in the country who want to see their grandchildren continue to shine. You can count on us.
Signed,
A grandmother to five charming grandsons
P.S. We know how hard you are working on behalf of our grandchildren, and we don’t take it for granted for a minute.
Vicki Roth founded the Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning at the University of Rochester and served as its assistant dean and executive director. In this role, she was a co-PI on a series of National Science Foundation projects that designed and widely disseminated an online homework system for STEM courses. She retired in 2018.
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K-12 Product Support for Remote Learning:
Our Support for Remote Learning page provides a collection of resources that will help you navigate yourself with our digital products.
Program support for Out-of-School Learning:
Program support for Community & Parents:
State-by-State Map of School-Building Closures & Updates:
