The Hijinks and Lowdown on Virtual Kindergarten
My daughter began kindergarten virtually this fall, along with several million other children who live in areas deemed too risky for in-person instruction. She has a kindergarten teacher who meets with a class of 11 in no more than hour segments throughout the day. It’s new on so many fronts: a new audience of parents observing and feeding children answers, a background cast of unscripted pets, siblings, and unmuted parents wandering into webcam view, and a new urgency to master the ever-important mute button. In fact, “Can you mute yourself?” is the phrase I most often overhear while playing the part of silent sentinel, ready to swoop in when MS Teams packs up and boots us out of random meetings or my child accidentally mutes her teacher. (I think there’s a strong possibility some opportunist will come out with, “Mute Thyself!” on a sticky note.). I subscribe to a Facebook group of online kindergarten teachers called “The Kindergarten Smorgasbord,” which has been lit up with the sorts of shenanigans I’ve seen in my child’s online classroom. Comparing notes, the common theme is it’s getting nutty out there.
Now that parents are an audience, virtual kindergarten is ripe for even more randomness than ever. A younger sister in the middle of commando potty training wandered through her older sister’s frame last week, utterly al fresco. Her mother was apologetic — she didn’t realize she was on camera. And that’s a problem for the five-year-olds in front of the camera as well. Let me tell you: there’s a whole lot of nose picking (and sometimes sampling) going on.
Parental oblivion is live and well, also. I’m sympathetic to the fact that parents who have to work or look after younger siblings may not be able to give their child 100% of their attention while in group meetings. It is a period of adjustment, but how does that explain the dad who walked behind his child’s live camera, hand plunged down pants while personally readjusting? Parents on a hot mike are letting the expletives fly. No wonder one little boy in my child’s class with an “expressive” dad told our class his mom had a “no cursing” rule at home. One mom sits on camera but allows a toddler sibling to wander up, raise her shirt, and commence a milk break. I’m all for normalizing breastfeeding, but there’s an argument that watching someone else’s mom open the dairy bar is distracting for a five-year-old.
Speaking of distraction, pets continue to crash virtual kindergarten in mostly delightful ways. A full-on indoor alleycat fight was an exception. But there have been multiple reports of pony-sized hounds wandering through, irresistible to the pint-sized owner who must immediately get out of their school chair and saddle up. The occasional avian visitor flutters into one little girl’s frame and repeats everything she says. They say repetition is key to mastery.
Some exuberant mini-extroverts out there are fully aware of their new audience, but in kindergarten, the filter has always been off. One father came into the room just before his daughter’s class was due to start to find her standing on her chair, mooning the camera. Large thuds usually mean someone has fallen out of their chair, reason unknown. Some small friends feel the need to unmute themselves and spice up the learning day with random fart noises. One classmate mused to his class that the sudden absence of another student was “probably because he had to poop.” There have been live online dance parties with kindergarteners and enthusiastic family members breaking it down to the kindergarten classic, “Chicka Chicka, Boom Boom.” One student totally rocked an impromptu solo performance of “Rock You Like a Hurricane.” And in groupie mode with an overwhelming urge to share, a little girl took off her underpants and held them up for everyone to see the Minnie Mouse logo.
Teachers understandably are drawing at straws for interactive virtual activities, but one cringeworthy riff on this theme is the scavenger hunt, where children are asked to produce an item from their home. When asked to bring back something that smelled good, one girl proudly held up a large bottle of Malibu rum for the camera. Another earnest young man responded to the request for something pink by holding up a little pillow that, upon closer webcam examination, was a uterus and ovaries his mother had received as a gift post-hysterectomy.
I’m sure that teacher couldn’t shake the thought of rum for the rest of the day. Or the school year.
