The pandemic has forced all of us to change our routines and adjust our roles. My intent is not to minimize the frustrations and losses of those without young children at home, but being a parent with school-age children adds a layer of stress not felt by those who don’t have children to take care of. Parents are feeling crushed under the weight of all the hats we are now wearing. Some of us are wrangling kids while wrangling our own parents; making sure everyone follows rules of social distancing feels impossible when teens and senior citizens don’t listen. Many of us are also working from home while kids are home, too, trying to keep children safe and happy(ish) while maintaining a stream of income. Some of us have lost work and are under more stress than ever while trying to put on a strong front for our kids. All of us are navigating these tense and exhausting times while also supervising distance learning. I may have been thrust into the role of teacher, but it’s not a job I want or one I pretend I am qualified to perform.
I have a third grader and twins who are in first grade. I appreciate the work that is being put in by my kids’ teachers. I can’t imagine the heartache and strain that our teachers are feeling as they try to figure out how to manage each student’s needs with the needs of their own families. Teachers are already underpaid and underappreciated, and their hands-on approach to teaching our children is now being done through screens and links to websites.
They have provided daily lesson plans and access to learning apps, and they've scheduled individual calls and check-ins with my kids. It is overwhelming at times, but I’m grateful they encourage us to do what works best for our family. We can take or leave their teaching modules.
I feel no pressure to maintain any level of schooling for my kids, and I hope you don’t, either. I can barely keep up with the emails from my kids’ teachers and our school district. I have downloaded more educational apps, riffled through more documents, and coordinated more Zoom calls for my kids in the last three weeks than I ever thought I would in a lifetime.
Our teachers have been kind and present and have provided a sense of connection to the outside world for my children. My kids miss their friends, their routines, and their educators. I don’t want to be my kids’ teacher, at least not in the academic sense, and they really don’t want me to be their teacher, either.
The pressure I do feel is to establish some sort of routine each day. We have a loose schedule because we all need it, but if any of the daily items (outside time, reading and writing, math) extend beyond the time I estimated, then we keep going if everyone is content. And if we have to cut something short, we do that too. We are not beholden to school bells, and I don’t have the patience or emotional bandwidth at the moment to power through a math lesson with an unwilling child.
We have about one to two hours of schoolwork each day, and it is guided by suggestions our amazing teachers provide. It’s also guided by what the kids are in the mood for. Some school days are spent filling Google docs with short “stories” and emojis, and others are spent drawing, practicing multiplication tables, or playing War with a deck of cards.
I use The Magic School Bus and Brainchild on Netflix to teach science. And when my kids are in a groove of playing well together, I don’t interrupt it. Other days are spent bouncing between inside and out with breaks only for snacks and meals. As the weather gets nicer, I know most of our days will be spent in the backyard and the field behind our house.
Regarding their schoolwork, I am thankful that my kids are young. Not only can I manage first- and third-grade math and reading lessons, but I know if we spend a day not doing any structured learning, my kids won’t fall behind. They are not high schoolers trying to do geometry and keep their grades up for a transcript that will be used on college applications.
They do their best learning through play and imagination and figuring out how to negotiate with their siblings. Older kids can learn this way, too, but if your kid does have a stricter curriculum to maintain, go easy on yourself. None of us have the capacity to be our kids’ teachers. We are working, cleaning up after them, making meals, trying to stay sane, and doing all of the other things that need to be done.
Our kids need us to be parents more than teachers right now. We can set boundaries and consequences if the work isn’t getting done. We can hug our kids and reassure them when this new normal becomes overwhelming. We can take a school day off in the middle of the week if that is what is best for our kids. We can let them have too much screen time. We can allow extra video and text chats with friends. We can help our kids feel secure. We can’t replace our kids’ teachers, but we can be the parents our kids count on.
