Comments on: Virtual learning, three months in

By: Laura Vanderkam

Laura Vanderkam — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 14:07:11 +0000

In reply to ARC.

@ARC – I’m not sure we made it work well, but we’ve survived. We shall see how this next year goes, though. I figured three months was no big deal. If we don’t have normal school going in the fall I will have to make some more fundamental changes to the kids’ schooling.

By: ARC

ARC — Thu, 25 Jun 2020 03:57:53 +0000

Our schools in AZ are opening as usual the first week of August despite us currently having the highest number of COVID-19 cases per day in the US 🙁 Our school district is not doing anything differently for in-person school but is also offering a “virtual academy” for parents who don’t want to send their kids. I just reluctantly pulled my two kids out of public school because I’m not comfortable sending them and I don’t think a school can come up with a reasonable online program in just a couple of months. Distance learning with public school for my 2nd grader was a hot mess with 2 working parents. A million different things to log into, print out, scan and upload, tracking multiple Zoom and Google Meet meetings a week (in addition to my own work meetings), ugh. I’ve enrolled my rising 3rd grader in an actual online school (Connections Academy) and my older kid is going to continue “outsourced homeschooling” with 5 online classes (each meets once a week and assigns homework). Fingers crossed we can make this work. I don’t know how larger families cope with the craziness so hats off to you Laura 🙂

By: Caroline at Costa Rica FIRE

Caroline at Costa Rica FIRE — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 22:34:36 +0000

Our kids are a rising college sophomore and a recent college grad. The abrupt move to school/ work at home has been jarring for both, but they have been champs. For the college student, we are all glad that college is planning for live instruction come fall — it’s a $70,000+ per year private college, and that seems ridiculous without the residential component. For the recent grad, she’s luckily a self-starter and trying to pivot her very in-person wellness business to something online. She’s been consuming business-building videos on YouTube, so still studying albeit unstructured.

By: Grateful Kae

Grateful Kae — Sat, 13 Jun 2020 14:58:23 +0000

I am hoping and praying school will reopen in the fall, but I agree that many things were still learned. This was a nice summary! It’s such an interesting subject. I actually wrote a whole post on some of this too back in May, which I titled “Online School, Flexibility and Life Lessons”. 🙂

The big ones I came up with for us, personally, were: 1. improved typing skills! 2. increased comfort maneuvering online platforms (zoom, google classrooms, etc.) 3. practice crafting emails in proper format & independently communicating with their teachers (an important skill when it doesn’t require just walking up to the teacher in the classroom!) 4. self-regulating/ directing their own schedules many days/ learning to prioritize tasks 5. learning to be more flexible in general and finally, 6. learning to stay focused/ on task when no one is watching you!

By: Gillian

Gillian — Thu, 11 Jun 2020 13:30:50 +0000

Thanks for the update. I would say your experience mirrored ours (with similarly aged kids) with the exception of the mom with a flexible job. As a physician I have still been physically in the office. Luckily we have an au pair who has taken the lead on schooling at home for our kids. My older children worked fairly independently (though my 6th grader needed check-ins to be sure all the work he was doing actually got turned in). My au pair sat with my first grader all morning every weekday to make sure he was staying engaged. My 4 year old is a wiz at Zoom now. That means all he does during his nursery school circle time is turn the camera and microphone off and on. All in all I am really hoping my younger children are back in school in September (we are in NY) and they hope so too.