It sure has been a long year—since, you know, March.
While our household has felt the stress of sheltering-at-home,
it didn’t upend our entire school year. If you’re a parent whose children came
home from school, however, everything is new and confusing. School-at-home is
neither traditional classroom, nor the relaxed and flexible approach of
homeschooling. If it feels harder than you expected, that’s probably because it
is.
As I’ve browsed Facebook, I’ve seen a few recurring comments
among my friends. So here are a few observations from a veteran homeschooler to
reassure you that you’re probably doing okay.
“I’m working. I don’t have
time to teach my child.” This is a real challenge, and probably not one
you’ll really solve before school is done for the year. But the good news is
that home education takes a fraction of the time that traditional classroom
education does. An hour-long lesson in a classroom can be distilled to fifteen
minutes at home. After all, you aren’t having to build in time for
transitioning between subjects, classroom management, or making sure twenty
students are (literally) on the same page. A whole day’s work for a high
schooler can be finished in two or three hours. If you’re spending two hours on
school with your third-grader, you’re probably doing too much at one time. School-at-home
is simply more efficient (and comfortable).
“How can we cover everything
we need to?” I’m a very big believer in small, frequent lessons rather than
long, involved ones. We focus on mastery, not quantity. There’s no point in
working fifteen math problems if your student breezes through five. History and
science lessons rarely take longer than ten minutes, maybe fifteen if we get
interested in a concept and want to google it. Not only is it easier to fit
small lessons into the day, but we accomplish the learning part before boredom
sets in.
“They eat all the time.” Yeah,
my sympathies. We’ve gone through phases of snack rules, including declaring
the kitchen “closed” after a certain time.
“How do I motivate my child?” When
you find that magic answer, you can sell it and get rich. Even for kids who are
used to Mom or Dad being the teacher, schoolwork is drudgery and they avoid it
if possible. I find that it helps to keep lessons short. For a child who feels
overwhelmed by the day’s work, I’ll divide the subjects as “easy” or “less
easy.” Four subjects in the “easy” column, and only two “less easy” ones, can
make the workload look more manageable. I also offer plenty of rewards, such as
skipping the rest of the math problems if they get three in a row right, or
offering to do a worksheet orally so they don’t have to write out all the
answers.
“My kid melts down.” Oh,
yours too? So glad it’s not just mine. It’s okay to stop a lesson if it’s just
not working and come back to it another day. It’s even okay to rearrange your
entire school morning and go for a walk instead of doing math. Separating
siblings usually becomes necessary at some point. (We highly prize earbuds and
separate electronics to give us space from each other.) A meltdown doesn’t mean
you’re doing things wrong. It usually indicates stress, frustration, or the
need for a different approach.
And a last observation…
When you get to the end, stop.
Make a definite separation between school life and home life. When my kids
are done with their assignments, that’s it, they’re done. I don’t try to seize
extra learning time during supper or break up their screen time with more
school reading. Darren does evening lessons with the kids; but that’s after
supper and chores, and he always gives them a fifteen-minute warning to let
them shift gears back to school. For kids who are used to going away for school
and coming home to relax, this separation is especially important.
And you might try snuggling up under a quilt with your son or daughter when they need help with their reading. These times are stressful. Might as well weather them as comfortably as possible.
—Sara
Photo credit: iStock.