“My Child is Crying to Go Back to School”
Who ever thought we’d hear children begging—even marching in streets—to be allowed to go back to school?
Students are tired of being on screens all day. Many are experiencing eye-strain and headaches from the 5-6 hours of daily online school. Children are developing sleep issues due to the effects of screens, stress, and loneliness. It’s beginning to take its toll, and the school year is just getting started. A CBS news anchor recently told me, “my child is crying to go back to school.”
I am not here to beat up on teachers—I was one. And, I can attest to the ever-increasing-pile of responsibilities being heaped on their shoulders. While we should certainly expect teachers to provide a quality education, as a culture we have moved far beyond that—calling upon teachers to be babysitters, emotional coaches, life-trainers, preventors of domestic abuse, heroes, and entertainers. And that was before COVID; now we expect them to do all that through zoom.
No wonder students are in tears. No wonder parents are worried their children are regressing and under stress. No wonder teachers are exhausted, feeling “thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread.” Educators and parents have done their best.
But, it isn’t working.
It’s time to reevaluate our plan. Rather than struggling to duplicate a pre-covid schedule during a pandemic, perhaps it’s best to redefine a quality education.
So, what do children need holistically during COVID? They need academic maintenance, social outlets, consistency, and the same healthy lifestyle we provided them before COVID that included sleep, nutritious meals, physical activity, and limited screen time. (The American Academy of Pediatrics has suggested for years a maximum limit of two hours of screen time per day for school-aged children to support healthy neurological development. Just because screenwork is schoolwork does not make it healthier.)
Even though COVID leaves many of us feeling helpless, we still have choices.
The New School. Imagine having the authority to decide what time of day your student learns, how much time is spent on screens, and to have a small community of parents able to share duties and support. And, imagine it is affordable. Sound too good to be true? It’s not. Families of nearly all backgrounds and income levels (even single-parents) are making it work.
Imagine disenrolling your child from public school (it’s easy paperwork you can do anytime), buying a math book, and scouting out a solid reading list of historical fiction and science (many curriculum companies list theirs free online). You dedicate 2 hours or less for school at home in the morning, and then partner with four other families to host everyone’s kids from 12-6pm once a week. Here’s the upside: one day a week you will have a small group of kids playing at your house (which means your kiddo will have something to do besides video games) and the other four days you will have the house to yourself.
And while the kids are together, they can enjoy a pre-set list of fun learning possibilities, such as PE games outside, read-alouds or book discussions, hikes, board games (like taboo, which improve their public speaking skills), group science experiments, exploring their city (with adult supervision, depending on age), or working on a community service project.
To be in this sort of Podschool arrangement, families would need to agree on how to handle social distancing but would not need to agree on major curriculum choices. Most students, when given the freedom to do so, will develop math and reading skills at different speeds so it makes sense to learn these independently at home and engage in group learning on other subjects.
For parents who don’t feel qualified to teach math or reading to their children, there are a great number of options—including hiring local tutors for an hour or two a week, swapping teacher skill sets with other parents, or utilizing online curriculum. No, online curriculum is not a contradiction to my earlier point; it is one thing to offer an online math class to your student for an hour once or twice a week, and something completely different to sit in front of a screen for everyclass for 5-6 hours a day. So, chose screen time wisely and in moderation.
These same principles can be modified to high school students. In fact, many high schoolers are opting to take online classes through community colleges. Again, it is still online, but college classes historically require much less seat-time (which is now screen time): one to two days a week verses five. This option can sometimes be paid for through the school district and has the added bonus of the student earning college credits while still in high school. (And, yes, that’s a plus on a college application.)
Of the 40 million students currently remote learning from home, over 60% of their parents admit they are not very confident as teachers. And, some families don’t want to homeschool—I get it.
The challenge is, nearly all of us with school-aged children are schooling from home in some capacity—whether we are teaching content, managing the school day, or both. Let’s use this season to think creatively about how to “do school” and what it means to build whole, healthy children during this season.