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Some overwhelmed parents are abandoning at-home schooling

• fortran77 7y ago
  Many parents are discovering that the problem with "why johnny can't learn" wasn't the teachers or the schools.
  • aidos 7y ago
    Most parents are trying to juggle a full schedule of teaching and jobs at the moment. I don’t think it’s fair to compare that against an environment dedicated to learning (ish).
    • rrmm 7y ago
      I feel like the comment was more directed on the kids' parents having to walk a mile in the Teacher's shoes. And the ease with which it is someone else's problem to make sure your kid learns.
      • duderific 7y ago
        There is certainly some of that. Being a teacher is certainly very difficult. However, theoretically at least, they are trained to be teachers, and it is their full time job, while for most parents it is not. Additionally, being onsite at school there are fewer distractions, and just the environment of physically being on a school campus conveys that the primary focus of the day is education.
        • bsder 7y ago
          So, what you're saying is that teachers are trained professionals, and that school environments are engineered to be spaces for learning? Shocking. Perhaps teachers and schools don't suck as much as people thought ...
          • akman 7y ago
            The context of the comments matter. Just saying...
      • fortran77 7y ago
        No, my point was people's kids aren't as wonderful and smart as parents think they are.
• irrational 7y ago
  We have 5 kids in school. Every single kid has a different schedule of zoom meetings, different websites they are supposed to be doing, etc. It is a nightmare to try to organize. Hopefully this will be a wakeup call for the school district to figure out an organized way of doing this for the next time. Ideally there would be a single place we could go that would show everything for all of our kids on one page with what they should be doing that day and the links. Instead we are getting text messages from this teacher, emails from another, we've even received snail mail letters!
  • binarymax 7y ago
    Noting from the other side, my sister is a teacher with 175 students. She’s required to assign work, grade, and give personal feedback to all of her students. She was able to do this in a straightforward manner when school was on-site. Now it’s a lot of overhead to chase things down when all the students and parents have their own schedules and communication preferences.
    • duderific 7y ago
      Between your comment and the GP, it's easy to see that any "distance learning" is only a stopgap that we've been forced into, and is not scalable or desirable for any length of time.
      • binarymax 7y ago
        I'm not sure. I don't think 100% distance learning "is the future" but it can certainly be improved. With many things becoming remote, there are obstacles AND opportunities.
      • irrational 7y ago
        Whether it is scalable or desirable is debatable. But what, I think is not debatable is there will be a time in the future where self-isolation is required again. The schools need to prepare now for when that happens.
  • deleted 7y ago
• ghaff 7y ago
  A more broadly pessimistic story from The Economist with some numbers around things like Internet access: https://www.economist.com/international/2020/04/27/closing-schools-for-covid-19-does-lifelong-harm-and-widens-inequality https://www.economist.com/international/2020/04/27/closing-s...
• ilamont 7y ago
  Remote K-12 education has given me a newfound respect for parents who effectively conduct home-schooling full time. It also makes me realize how much kids are missing by not being in a classroom with their peers and a professional teacher.
  • vzidex 7y ago
    I've always wondered what the learning outcomes were like for homeschooled kids vs. those that attended school (public or private). My assumption has been that homeschooling is less successful than sending the kids to school.
    • ghaff 7y ago
      Generally speaking, what research I've seen mostly says that homeschooled children are more successful on various outcomes than average. However, homeschooling is hardly random and presumably means more parental involvement than average, among other differences that are probably fairly difficult to tease apart.
      • asdff 7y ago
        I feel like economic outcomes would be more aligned to socioeconomic factors than anything. The economic success of your parents determine your future more than your schooling for the most part. More telling would be measuring social skills.
        • jki275 7y ago
          Home schooled children generally get plenty of "socialization", it's just with adults rather than with large groups of children. All of the ones I know had social skills at or above average. And yes, socioeconomic factors play a huge part in outcomes.
          • jerf 7y ago
            I find the "socialization" argument to be one of the weakest, honestly. Being able to "socialize" in a group of, say, second-graders with one teacher to 25 students is probably worse than useless; it's a pathologically bad socialization environment for spreading bad habits and incorrect expectations created only by the schooling environment in the first place. Unless you become a second-grade teacher, it'll never come up again, and you should actively not use a lot of the socialization skills you "learned" in that environment. While better than literally sitting in a room by yourself, I can't rate it above much else, and "sitting in a room by yourself" is not actually the alternative on offer. (After all, the parents aren't going to be able to stand that either, except in extremely pathological cases which are going to be pathological no matter what.) If the schools were set up more like Montessori schools, this argument against homeschooling would carry a lot more weight. Age-based cohorts are pathologically bad environments, and if you look at history as a whole, a bizarre exception to the normal human environment. If it wasn't for the fact that the people arguing happened to grow up in that environment and thereby consider it normal, despite how abnormal it actually is, nobody would be arguing it's a good idea.
• asdff 7y ago
  Lots of kids in LA seem to be spending all day skateboarding 20 people deep on the less crowded streets, playing full court basketball and soccer matches with hundreds of spectators at the supposedly closed public parks. Summer break began when LAUSD went online for a lot of kids. And its no wonder. 15% of students have yet to be in contact with their teachers during this survey period (1). In south central, 16% of students lack basic internet access. It's hard to imagine this perspective for a lot of the HN demographic, where we imagine internet has been ubiquitous in the U.S. for decades, but this is still not the case for low income areas in one of the largest cities in north america. 1. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-22/getting-free-internet-hard-for-poor-students-despite-provider-promises https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-04-22/getting-...
  • kitotik 7y ago
    Are the parks actually closed? I only saw them closed for Easter weekend.
    • asdff 7y ago
      Yup! All parks are closed, but you can't even tell if you drove by say MacArthur park right now. https://www.laparks.org/covid-19 https://www.laparks.org/covid-19
      • kitotik 7y ago
        “Parks still remain open for walking or running” This is what I suspected. I couldn’t imagine parks and rec or LAPD not shooing people away and putting up physical barriers if they were actually closed.
        • asdff 7y ago
          If social distancing guidelines are maintained, that is. Note the next line about recreational group sports which are my biggest issues with the parks right now. It would take 1 cop to tell everyone playing basketball and soccer to go home, although with the trongs of spectators on bleachers maybe a couple cops on horses would be better.
• decasteve 7y ago
  I’m in a similar boat though the school system where I am put mental health as top priority right from the start and very little emphasis on distance learning. The teachers do send resources in a do-what-you-want and let us know how we can help. My kids do a bit of math with pencil and paper, some reading, journaling, art, and whatever creative or constructive activity they want to do. After supper they play video games, watch movies/shows/documentaries, play D&D, and FaceTime with their friends. They do a lot more cooking and cleaning around the house than they would normally do. They’re becoming a lot more self-sufficient around the house.
  • serpix 7y ago
    One week in I noticed some serious pre-burnout symptoms due to the stress of working full time, being the cook, cleaner, safe parent and teacher of the house. So on my week off from my kid (I co-parent every other week) I first of all wept due to the stress and how much of an asshole I was due to all the pressure and then decided fuck it I'll lower my expectations on what a work day is and what a school day is. We stop the schooling at 2pm latest, doesn't matter if something is unfinished it won't matter. We don't do all the assignments and I don't try to be the best possible employee as it is god damn impossible under these conditions.
    • marktangotango 7y ago
      Here here, we experienced the same thing. Somethings got to give and I'm not going to ruin my relationship with my kids forever, for a job or one semesters grades.
• zitterbewegung 7y ago
  Is the issue that the parents can't help the students with homework? In Grade school I generally did all of my homework. Sometimes my parents would help but it stopped after going to high school. They did get me in an ACT prep course and I also took the SAT early since I was in a gifted program.
  • asdff 7y ago
    Part of it is that. Part of it is being in a good learning environment (imagine self isolating with an alcoholic abusive parent and learning at the same time, at 6 years old). Theres also issues with differential access to technology and internet. A lot of low income students have fallen of the face of the earth when LAUSD went online.
  • bobthepanda 7y ago
    TFA says that the general problem is that 1. Parents are now the primary enforcement mechanism for doing schoolwork, which is not a role they have necessarily been trained to do 2. Teachers do not coordinate the amount of schoolwork, so parents are in the unenviable position of essentially executing multiple lesson plans in place of the multiple teachers, each which is probably complex in its own right. 2 was a problem when I went to public school normally and 8 teachers each giving 45mins-1 hr of homework easily added up and ate into free time. Now parents are actually exposed to the problem.
    • whatshisface 7y ago
      >1. Parents are now the primary enforcement mechanism for doing schoolwork, which is not a role they have necessarily been trained to do Parents were always the primary enforcement mechanism for doing homework, what would the school do if a kid was getting all Fs because they didn't care? The most a school can do is force kids to be quiet, and even then if the kids refuse to be quiet the school can't punish them - a child that does not voluntarily submit to punishments like sitting and not talking can only be sent home.
      • crtlaltdel 7y ago
• cbsks 7y ago
  My daughter is in preschool but she still has 10 zoom meetings a week plus extra activities to do. Both my wife and I are working full time which means she will occasionally miss a zoom meeting, and she rarely does the extra activities. Luckily it doesn’t matter much since she’s in preschool. The only thing she really gets out of it is that she gets to see her teachers and friends. I don’t know how people who work full time and have multiple kids in school manage to do it. I’m exhausted and we have it relatively easy. My heart goes out to all the single parents out there!!
  • interestica 7y ago
    Zoom meetings for preschool?! I had no idea.
    • cbsks 7y ago
      Oh yeah. It’s as much of a disaster as you think it is. Half the kids aren’t paying attention or wander off. The rest are all talking at once. It took a few days for the teachers to realize they should mute everyone at the beginning of the call and only unmute one at a time when it’s time to participate. My daughter enjoys seeing her friends and teachers so we call in as much as we can, and as long as she is dressed and interested in it. It’s a lot of work for my wife and I though. If our work schedules weren’t flexible we’d skip them entirely.
  • usaar333 7y ago
    I'm impressed you can both work full time with a preschooler at home. On my end, I've found the class zoom meetings not very useful - the kids in the class (including mine) just get disengaged with no parent helping them out.
• scop 7y ago
  The problem is that homeschooling and schooling in a classroom environment are two fundamentally different things. Tasking parents with mimicking a school environment and school schedule at home is a recipe for failure that teaches parents that they can’t teach their kids. We have been homeschooling our eldest son for a year now and can never imagine going back to full time school. It has brought an immense amount of freedom and bonding to our family, not to mention an incredible amount of life experience for him with various activities (grocery shopping, museums, parks, hikes, etc). However, it was miserable to start primarily because we tried to mimic the exact school environment and schedule at home; a complete disaster! Schools are designed to teach a large amount of children; parents and homes are designed to teach individual children. Would you use an entire cafeteria kitchen to cook lunch for your kids?
  • OJFord 7y ago
    Interesting (to me anyway) that (it seems?) you decided you wanted to home-school separately and before you decided how? I suppose I just imagine most people have an idealised view of their child's education, and then decide they need to home-school to realise it. But perhaps that just wrong, I've no experience, first-hand or otherwise.
    • jcims 7y ago
      >>However, it was miserable to start primarily because we tried to mimic the exact school environment and schedule at home; a complete disaster They had decided how, it just turned out they found a better way after giving it a try. >I suppose I just imagine most people have an idealised view of their child's education, and then decide they need to home-school to realise it. But perhaps that just wrong, I've no experience, first-hand or otherwise. They do, and they also have idealized views of their children. If you go into home education with a rigid plan of execution, you (and your children) are likely going to have a bad time. Teaching is hard. Striking out on your own vector of pedagogy is a large risk that, if done well, can yield very large rewards...it can also be a disaster.
  • txsoftwaredev 7y ago
    Precisely. We have homeschooled our three kids from the beginning and learned a lot. It only takes a few hours to go through the curriculum for three kids of different ages. It might take a bit longer if they are being difficult or going thru a new concept but rarely. After that we have various activities around the house / neighborhood they will participate in on their own. We would also have activities outside the house, piano lessons, P.E. classes with other homeschooled kids etc. They are kept fairly busy but not with the busy work you would typically find in public schools.
• hirundo 7y ago
  This pain point may be a disguised blessing. The sudden demand for remote education might break the lock by local educators, exposing most subjects to global competition. Instead of getting the best teacher within walking or busing distance, parents are starting to level up to picking them from anywhere on the interweb. In many places it's the difference between no choice and some choice. It's like the difference between being limited to books only by local authors, and being unlimited. It's worth a good deal of pain to get from here to there. It is a massively less demanding task to curate and monitor your kid's education than to personally conduct it. And even the curating and much of the monitoring can be outsourced.
  • whatshisface 7y ago
    There is enough resistance to the idea of letting people choose between schools within walking distance that I can't ever imagine it being permissible to choose schools within an unlimited distance.
    • asdff 7y ago
      Public magnet schools exist in many districts.
    • analog31 7y ago
      I'm trying to imagine the amount of added car traffic if you add 10 - 20 miles to the average commute.
  • JediWing 7y ago
    Perhaps to some extent, but I think the larger demand is for remote-education platforms, rather than educational content. The shortcomings of platforms such as Google Classroom, SeeSaw, etc. are being laid bare both from the side of the educators and the side of the students. I think we may see a huge opportunity for a new remote learning ed-tech platform to really run away with things in the near future.
    • wadefletch 7y ago
• mjh2539 7y ago
  The irony is that for kids that are actually homeschooled, they spend maybe 2 to 3 hours per day doing schoolwork. That kids spend so long in public school is not to their benefit, but to the benefit of those that need to keep their parents away from them for 9+ hours a day. I can barely attend several hours worth of digital meetings, and I'm an adult. Imagine a 7-year old trying to do the same thing. Ridiculous.
  • john_moscow 7y ago
    The school isn't just about the academic part. It also teaches you invaluable soft skills. How to handle conflicts, how to present in front of the audience, how to make friendships, how to respond to bullying, how to find like minded people. All those skills are extremely important in your average team environment, and learning them as a kid is much easier than guessing why you've been laid off, while your useless, but very empathic colleague got promoted instead.
    • nickff 7y ago
      Those goals make sense to me, as I think they're all valuable, and I think some people do learn those skills while in school, but I'm not sure they learn them because of school. As the old saying goes: "what gets measured gets done", and schools only really measure test scores and years attended. I am not sure that schools really help people learn many social skills. Have you seen evidence that schools contribute more to social skills than their alternatives might? I'd like to agree with you, but I am a little skeptical.
    • spaginal 7y ago
      School doesn’t teach those skills from my personal experience. I was a product of public schooling, the my way or highway attitudes of some teachers, the social isolation, cliches, bullying, teasing, all severely stunted my social development until I was a teenager and began competing in sports team environments, working jobs, and interacting with the public outside of school. After a couple years I was far more developed socially than anything the school environment provided in the decade prior to that. When I hear this reason often used, I fear it’s from people who enjoyed their social life in school due to reasons not actually involving the school, and place too much value in those social dynamics, ignoring the really ugly parts of it that hamper growth for a lot of students, including themselves. My own experiences show they lack any real application to life outside of school. I’ve never had a decent job that worked socially like any school environment I’ve been in, and the one or two I did have were quickly left.
• daxfohl 7y ago
  I'm having much more success designing our own curriculum for our 7 and 4 year olds, than dealing with random emails and updates and changes and new things to try and blah blah blah from their schools. It takes a couple hours max to cover the bases and progress is like 2x the rate they were learning in school. Our schools have been great at trying to stay engaged, but I feel it's more stressful than helpful at this point. Schools are still trying to accommodate a huge range of kids, and trying to keep up with everything they're putting out is a huge time and energy sink. I appreciate the schools wanting to keep involved but the way things are now it's a distraction.
  • chasd00 7y ago
    The only work my kids (10 and 7) are getting from school is maybe one question per subject per day. My wife and I have designed our own curriculum to fill the gaps. The kids are done with their "day at school" after about 3 hours. They work with me in the morning, I've been able to keep up with their questions and guide them through their day while doing my own work and meetings. It's a lot like being a team lead again haha EDIT: my kids are in DISD ( Dallas ) so the bar isn't exactly high. Even during regular school they were in various tutoring and clubs to fill the gaps
• pjdemers 7y ago
  My local high school district went to online classes. The district said 10% of the students "disappeared". They haven't shown up for a single class or turned in any work, nor even answered a single email.
  • joezydeco 7y ago
    That’s nothing. One teacher in our high school has seen a 39% drop rate in her classes. And this is an honors teacher.
  • marktangotango 7y ago
    They probably don't have internet access at home. I read here 15% of families don't have internet at home.
• twomoretime 7y ago
  I feel the proportion of students taking school seriously has been gradually decreasing over the last decade or so. And now we treat college kids like children. It's hard to believe today's 18 year olds are old enough to vote. These aren't just rose tinted glasses occluding my view. I don't think it's a stretch to suggest that people in general were expected to grow up a decade sooner than today. That's the price of increased living standards - delayed adulthood and reduced fertility. Then its the generation after that suffers from immature parenting.
• JungleGymSam 7y ago
  Parenting is hard. Giving up is the wrong thing to do for the child.
  • brianpan 7y ago
    Teachers and school district are not prepared to provide a curriculum for distance learning. It's takes months and years to develop a curriculum and no one had time to do that. Teachers may be doing their best but there's nothing wrong with stepping back and choosing to provide a different experience for your kid. Preparation for adulthood happens in different ways and parents should recognize that. Also, parenting is hard and involves trade-offs every day. There are always going to be things you give up on to win the battles you can win.
    • nonbirithm 7y ago
      > Teachers may be doing their best but there's nothing wrong with stepping back and choosing to provide a different experience for your kid. Preparation for adulthood happens in different ways and parents should recognize that. Would this statement sound as reasonable in non-pandemic times? It feels like public schools would still be a better option if the choice were still available. It isn't, but as a result I feel like people who would have been able to go to school are missing out on something beneficial. Especially given how important expensive pieces of college-minted paper are for more and more careers, and how competitive it is to get a chance at earning one in public schools alone. If I had children, which I do not, I would rather choose the teachers with the time available to prepare the in-depth curriculum specifically designed to earn the chance at the expensive piece of paper with some proven degree of success over what I could provide by myself, alongside what time it takes out of work and all that implies. That is assuming they have no difficulties in learning however. In that case the schools would likely be unprepared. But of course nobody has that option now, so I would probably have much the same experience as the parents in the article. I'm not sure what else we can do in the short term.
      • brianpan 7y ago
        Exactly, these are crazy, never-before-experienced times. In the short term there will be compromises. We should recognize that and give ourselves a break.
• DiffEq 7y ago
  Just want to take exception to what you have said here. The issue is a matter of culture, not of access to teachers or the Internet. I home school my children and they have NO access to the Internet, have had no other teachers except for myself and my wife and yet you would not find them shirking their educational opportunities like this. We taught them discipline, to learn, to value education, and a love for knowledge; after that we could not keep them away from education. They were teaching themselves and pulling ahead of their peers years ago. They used pencils, paper and books...libraries and the books in them. That is not to say they don't love the outdoors; they also love to hunt, camp, hike and play baseball but they keep it in it's proper place. My children are the way they are because of our family culture. If those children had such a culture then this would not be a problem. But the truth is that the parents hand their children over to the schools and then that is it. They are not involved in any other way...it is no wonder the children are the way they are.
  • Talanes 7y ago
    And I doubt you would have been able to achieve the same results if your wife was dead and you were working an essential job for minimum wage. "Culture" seems to be a byword for money here.
    • kansface 7y ago
      Negative, plenty of poor immigrants (and natives for that matter) instill a strong regard for education and personal responsibility including my own family.
      • tkzed49 7y ago
        And this still does not solve the problem of access to the internet (through which formal education is being delivered) or this idea of parents being able to both work to support their children and somehow replace this online formal instruction with homeschooling.
      • andrepd 7y ago
        No, not negative. It's an empirically proven fact that children of wealthy parents perform better in school. This is not up for debate.
• hindsightbias 7y ago
  Those of you here with kids should already have an underemployed tutor/helper working with your kids, and looking for an au pair for Fall. This is an investment opportunity for those with means while the other 90% falls behind. It takes a village, but it’s unlikely your village will be highly functional before 2021.
  • iandanforth 7y ago
    Are you suggesting remote or in-person?
    • hindsightbias 7y ago
      Yes
• iandanforth 7y ago
  I'd like to hear from parents who are managing well. I have a hypothesis that in households where children's behavior is better regulated (through example, discipline, or disposition) things are going better than they would otherwise. (I have evidence from my own childhood that this would be the case), but I'd like to know, if this situation is manageable or even an improvement for your child's education, what are you doing to make it so?
  • bitcharmer 7y ago
    My kids are well-behaved. No tantrums, calm, very cooperative and with great attitudes towards learning. Still, I have to spend at least an hour with the 9 yo and 2-2.5 hours with the 7 yo. There's so much work assigned by the school that even with them it's overwhelming. Add to that having to prepare breakfasts and lunches and it's 4.5 hours taken off my day (at least). Now, I also work from home which means I actually finish around 10-11 pm. I don't even have time or energy for other chores. Barely coping. I don't envy parents with problematic kids.
  • lemmox 7y ago
    This is my experience. One part luck, one part upbringing, one part privilege. Both my kids are thoughtful, even tempered, curious, and tenacious. Often they are called "mature" for their ages (8/11). Such is not a description that fits most of the children in their peer group at school. FWIW most would probably call me a strict parent. Not in a punitive sense, but we do keep our standards high and do not normalise behaviours that we don't like. Honestly the school board's efforts have been phenomenally bad. We're in BC, Canada, which appears to have said "hey teachers, here's your Zoom license! Get on that e-learning thing - kthxbye!" In aggregate it's a bum deal for the teachers, students, and parents. Hopefully it works for some but it doesn't for anybody that I know. However... I took control of the curriculum. I'm not a teacher so I didn't presume I knew best: I based it on the Khan School Closure Schedule [1]. We sprinkle in a few arts & crafts projects with their mom, some nature walks in the afternoon, some Khan math and language arts in the morning, and an hour or so of coding after lunch. They have a few extra chores around the house - nothing too onerous. We've increased their music practice sessions. I've been working from home for several years so I did not have much adjustment to my working situation. It took a bit to find our education groove but, by and large, I'm happy with it now that we've deprioritised the haphazard din coming from the teachers. My wife's impression is that both kids are performing at a higher level than they were in meatspace school. The kids and I agree. I could probably sustain this indefinitely as my kids are kind of self-directing their way through the assignments. I'm keen for the new normal to kick in but, from my POV, this has unexpectedly turned into one of those "golden years" moments for me. We're making some memories and the kids are fine. Lemons and lemonade, I guess. [1] https://keeplearning.khanacademy.org/daily-schedule https://keeplearning.khanacademy.org/daily-schedule
• axguscbklp 7y ago
  I think this might be a great thing for those kids. They'll actually get to experience reality outside of the rat race for a bit longer than they otherwise would have. Based on what I've seen, I'd say the following... Kids who love book learning do it voluntarily, for fun, whether or not they're formally in school. On the other hand, kids who don't love book learning don't get much from it one way or another no matter how hard the parents try, unless the parents resort to measures so overbearing that the kids become psychologically deformed as a result - and even then, those overbearing measures only work on some kids.
• daxfohl 7y ago
  Anybody else with the opposite problem? I find the at-home schooling quite fun. At-home work just sucks though -- new product dev right now seems so disconnected with reality. That said, obviously fortunate still to have a job at all.
• hinkley 7y ago
  I feel like we should be collecting a list of things to tackle given this huge social experiment. The first one is air quality, but it sounds like the next might be, “yeah, teaching isn’t so easy is it? Maybe that skill deserves some compensation, hmm?”
  • geomark 7y ago
    I think most people are realizing it isn't so much the teaching aspect as it is the daycare function that schools serve. So the discussion might be about compensation, but it is very much about how much what I would call "structured daycare" is worth.
• dabbledash 7y ago
  It isn’t really shocking to discover that people don’t have the bandwidth to take on an additional full time job.
• jinushaun 7y ago
  I'm currently in this situation. Home schooling would be easy if we were a single income household where one parent remains working and the other dedicates their whole time to home schooling and preparing meals. But we're not. So are a lot of other parents.
  • grecy 7y ago
    I absolutely don't want to criticize, so I hope this doesn't come off that way. I'm wondering if this situation is making you (and people in your situation) re-think some of your life choices. Do you think in the future you will make changes so you can live happily off a single income to give you more freedom and ability to adjust when something like this happens? i.e. smaller house, less cars, less consumption?
    • jinushaun 7y ago
      You're assuming everyone else has that option. Smaller house? Less cars? What?! I grew up with two parents making minimum wage. I have that choice, but others don't.
      • grecy 7y ago
        Sorry, I didn't mean to assume that at all. I was just asking if it's something you are thinking about, and if this current situation will have long lasting impacts on your financial decisions going forward.
• hackermailman 7y ago
  Since this is only temporary one thing to try is what Erik Demaine did as a home schooled kid, his father told to look up whatever he was interested in and pursue it directly in the library which for him was programming games and origami. They're just going to hard reset the school year anyway
• Simulacra 7y ago
  I remember a friend of mine in high school was pulled out to do homeschool. The parents had a family friend who was supposed to come over and teach them, but after a while, Family friend just come over and sit on American online all day… It was a couple of years before anyone realized the kids were not being taught anything. My friend “graduated“ but he didn’t know how to do multiplication.
• LockAndLol 7y ago
  Maybe this will help show parents just how valuable school and teachers are. Maybe they'll actually vote or even show some initiative when it comes to school budget and teacher salaries.
• Maultasche 7y ago
  We've also been overwhelmed juggling a full time job (while working at home), but I've learned to compensate by picking and choosing what they do. My childrens' school is throwing more work at them than they could possibly handle (elementary school kids cannot handle huge amounts of self study), so there's no way they can do it all. So I just pick a variety of lessons, intersperse them with periods of free time throughout the day, and if everything doesn't work out, oh well. I'd rather have them do less than having them be stressed out and me feeling stressed out from having to do so much. I've been emphasizing reading practice with some math exercises, where they can be self-directed and letting the other stuff (which means lots of time for me) only be occasional. I've found they've made some significant improvements in reading, so I'm content with that.
• deskamess 7y ago
  Ontario, Canada reporting. This is the general note at the top of the weekly schedule we get (paraphrased): "Students in Grade 4-6 are to be doing 5 hours a week of at home learning - total Math, Language (French and English), Science, and Social Studies" That's 1 hour a day. The schedule that a teacher has provided luckily takes close to 2+ hours a day if you do it diligently. There are still issues that come up in terms of clarity of question, or how much depth an answer should have. Word problems are especially hard - I am not sure how to teach the analysis and solution of word problems. This is going to have a detrimental effect on my kid in spite of my ability to help them. I supplement with Khanh Academy but she is so focused on achieving Mastery she spends a long time there. Sometimes I see her guess her way through some problems.
• deleted 7y ago
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• amiga_500 7y ago
  Parents who both have to work because mortgage/rent now requires two salaries are going to find this next to impossible. Yet they are living in a house that most likely stood during their parents' time and then it required just one income. What changed? Lending against household income instead of primary income.
• codekilla 7y ago
  I have six kids, eldest 10, so 3 in school, other 3 pre K and younger. I think I essentially gave up today on online learning. I decided to grab some math circle books and a whiteboard. I’m also going to get the Mathematica for schools setup and teach them myself. I essentially have to make a choice between doing my job full time at home, or letting them essentially whither into gaming/YouTube addicts. Not sure what will happen, but school for them has been a joke so far.
• swayvil 7y ago
  Good! There are infinitely better ways to spend your childhood than in "schooling". Sitting at a desk and filling your head with "important information" is relatively crappy.
• KopitarFan 7y ago
  My daughter is in special needs pre-school. They do a 15 minute kinda "wakeup" session at 9am and then a craft session at 9:15. Honestly, it's useless. The kids can barely pay attention and it's just an all around mess. We're honestly thinking of stopping because it just stresses my daughter out and she's really not getting anything out of it.
• obiefernandez 7y ago
  If anyone is curious about how "unschooling" or "relaxed homeschooling" works, I've been writing a blog about my ongoing experience with it and our 12-year old. https://medium.com/exploring-wisdom-unschooling-and-world-schooling https://medium.com/exploring-wisdom-unschooling-and-world-sc...
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• glenvdb 7y ago
  Good. A home is not a school. That's not to say you can't do lots of learning at home, but the way that learning takes place will (and should) be completely different from how it is done at school.
• jeffrallen 7y ago
  As a parent in a crisis situation, your job is to provide emotional stability for your kids. So you need to ensure your own physical and emotional health first (see also: "put your oxygen mask on before helping others"). So if "home school" has to take a backseat to showing the kids that "this is different, but this can be healthy/interesting/stimulating too", then so be it. And some days are good homeschool days, some are less. Take each day as it comes. However, juggling work and home school is just impossible. In a two salary family, someone needs to go on disability or take unpaid leave or whatever. Your kids need you right now more than your boss does.
• dang 7y ago
  There's a related thread at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011419 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23011419. Normally we'd merge threads that are that similar, but I couldn't figure out a good way to do it, so maybe they're different enough in some subtle way.
• arkanciscan 7y ago
  Maybe if people had to actually raise them, people would stop having so many kids.
  • noideawlolm 7y ago
    The entitled parents of HN aren’t going to like that comment, but it’s so damn true.
  • arkanciscan 7y ago
    It's funny how this got flagged. Breeders are so sensitive about their god-given right to breed.
• unfocused 7y ago
  At-home schooling, when you weren't prepared and cannot provide the time, is not at-home schooling. The educators were caught off-guard. The parents were caught off-guard. Let's not make decisions about what method works and doesn't work. These are unprecedented times. Just make sure your child reads about topics they enjoy, and do activities they enjoy. Reading and Writing are the most important skills. This is for a short period of time anyways. Relax, you only need an hour or 2 a day. Ensure your child is happy and healthy. Those are the most important measurements. All the best.
  • tenaciousDaniel 7y ago
    I fear that we'll come out of this with a warped, unreasonably negative perspective of several things that are actually very good and beneficial. Remote work is one thing that might take a hit, because people will think that this is what remote work is like. I've been remote for 2.5 years now and this experience is not representative. I fear the same will happen to the notion of home schooling.
    • unfocused 7y ago
      Agreed. Both are not representative of what they actually are because of the context!
    • keithnz 7y ago
      I think now, a lot more companies will be open to it, and will be prepared for it. I know many companies who have maintained they REALLY need onsite, but now realizing that wasn't actually a hard requirement. I'm sure some are having negative experiences. Also I think it is actually easier with everyone remote rather than some in office and some remote.
      • warent 7y ago
        > Also I think it is actually easier with everyone remote rather than some in office and some remote. I agree with that and would add that I think a huge part of the difficulty comes from a rift in culture. If a CEO does not consciously make an effort bridge the culture between remote and in-office work, it creates a strange divide that chokes collaboration and can even be catastrophic to turnover. Having a mix of remote and non-remote can work great, just keep in mind there's a particularly difficult dynamic that will constantly need management and maintenance.
• sunsetSamurai 7y ago
  Hopefully, this will drive some parents to appreciate a bit more the job that teachers do, I've heard so many parents trash-talking teachers' work. It's not easy dealing with a bunch of kids.
• valuearb 7y ago
  I understand how they feel. I’m being asked to serve as part time IT specialist, Nath Tutor and Booboo Nurse while trying to bill hours on my clients project. I’ve also given up on tracking their assignments, I just give them a printout of the days of week each Monday and ask them to fill it out with due dates to organize themselves. Fortunately my kids are early teens and actually care about getting good grades.
• olliej 7y ago
  I mean it’s fair - you need support systems to support it at the best of times. In NZ there is the NZ correspondence school for children that can’t get to a physical school. It provides the curriculum, materials, textbooks, grading, etc. But the US treats homeschooling as a system to allow parents to indoctrinate kids rather than actually teach them so provides no such support (even though their are people who are homeschooled due to actual need and whose parents want their kids to be educated). Couple that lack of support, with the lack of choice or real warning, and that many parents still do have to work and you’ve got a quagmire that is understandably overwhelming.
• colecut 7y ago
  The overwhelming number of websites utilized for an elementary school education drastically overcomplicates attempting to complete my son's school work.. Just for math alone, often times to complete a single day's activitiy, four different websites are involved, usually all requiring different login/password information. Get assignments from Google Calendar Watch instruction on youtube. Do lesson on Zearn.org. Watch video on Khan Academy. Complete quiz on iReady. Take picture of your scratch work so you can upload to google calendar. I am a technology junkie and always have been, but I definitely miss the days from my own schooling where everything I needed to both learn and do in Math for the day was in a single textbook... It's sad how much we have complicated things with technology. Now they have completely changed how math should be done, require many extra "steps" that seem to be unnecessary that parents were never taught, and do not provide a book at all for reference of what these new methods are. It almost seems like they are trying to make learning as frustrating as possible.
  • Craighead 7y ago
    The simple textbook is impossible because of companies like pearson looking to monetize every character of every page through licensing of online textbooks. They could implement this tomorrow but choose not to.
  • karatestomp 7y ago
    Oh god, so much this. If they'd just use books and worksheets and the occasional Youtube video maybe, it'd be so much better. We had prepped worksheet packets for the first couple weeks and it's been hell since those ran out. I'd also love just a simple (please, just the plainest of HTML, it does not need to be another fucking app or "webapp") checklist of what's due for the current week, per day, with a check for "submitted", a check for "received/acknowledged", and a check for "graded" (so don't bother submitted or updating if you didn't already). Maybe make the name of each thing linkable when relevant. [EDIT] Oh and > Now they have completely changed how math should be done, require many extra "steps" that seem to be unnecessary that parents were never taught, and do not provide a book at all for reference of what these new methods are. It almost seems like they are trying to make learning as frustrating as possible. Yes. Ugh. "Word sentence". No. It's a fucking equation. I swear I can't figure out what they even want half the time because they're using weird terms. And this is first grade math.
• apatters 7y ago
  Even when I use the web link I get stuck at the paywall and can't read this. I thought pages that require login were banned from HN?
• AndrewKemendo 7y ago
  I'm almost there...it's impossible to have two full time working parents also homeschooling + meals. Technology isn't anywhere good enough yet that you can just give a kid a computer, no matter what the curriculum or the other side is doing (zoom, altitude etc...) and let them go. I'm really of the mind that this is a unique period and that I'm not going to stress all to death that they didn't get their SOLs in for a few months.
• jasonv 7y ago
  Been homeschooling my teenager for a few years. First year or two were huge learning experiences for all of us. It took a lot of work and prep and, among the adults, a bit of negotiation to cover the topics. It would be tough to suddenly have to take on, or cover, someone else’s curriculum. Just understanding the requirements, time intervals, and external expectations can be a real challenge.
• dgentile 7y ago
  HS student here. Our district made the decision to keep grades, or you can apply to drop distance learning if you meet certain circumstances. This is incredibly frustrating for me since 1) I can't slack off and work on my C++ projects ;) and 2) It's a ridiculous amount of work, and some teachers are not exactly being fair. Our school has the IB program, and I am in the "Precalculus" class before HL Math 1. The teacher is a bad teacher anyway in school, and yet out of school they are worse. We are given instruction in these obscure note packets that are basically a list of formulas. Every single time I need to solve the online problems we are given, I end up on Wikipedia, or Khan Academy... so why am I taking this class? In other classes, the teachers don't seem to grok that we have other classes, and instead will give us one "trivial 1 hour" assignment a day. I'm starting to feel burnt out, unlike during actual school which was manageable for me. I would rather we were given an assignment or two a week in each class, or shorter assignments each day. (Thankfully two of my teachers get this) Also, google classroom can be frustrating if the teacher doesn't use it well. Let's say they post a couple announcements a day, along with assignments, and there was a project assigned on Monday. I have to go hunting to see if there was something. It gets buried in a big stack, and sometimes it will just up and surprise me on Friday when it pops up as "Due today". This I blame more on google than the teachers, since I think there should be a way to visually represent the assignments that isn't a twitter feed.
  • ImaCake 7y ago
    I find math courses (as an adult doing a masters in biostatistics) can be very poorly taught sometimes. I think this comes from a desire to "keep things simple" and elegant. But the lack of practical examples and no alternative explanations can make it really difficult for some people to learn concepts. Sometimes you get a good maths course, but many are terrible. As a suggestion, you could look to torrent a good textbook if you can find one.
• newshorts 7y ago
  My 1.5 year old is not in school, but I’d like to wonder aloud how damaging this might be to our 1 year olds. Our daughter was in daycare at 2 months (both wife and I work full time). She adapted and quickly developed a very strong and social personality. She was totally the type of kid that would greet new people, very confident. Even finding the occasional random grandma to pick her up. Now when she sees people on our walks and doesn’t wave or give any indication that she wants to interact, she definitely more frightened of things than she used to be. I fear this whole thing is messing with her personality.
  • heeen2 7y ago
    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_anxiety https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stranger_anxiety It is a natural development process in most children.
• cachestash 7y ago
  "“A part of me does feel guilty,” said Ms. Belyea, who lives in Toronto. “I am the parent, and sometimes kids have to do what they don’t want to do. But it’s just too much. I can’t fight with him every day like this.” Having an Asian mother, this all just sounds so alien to me.
• jvvw 7y ago
  We have primary school aged kids and after the first few weeks, have decided to just do a token hour a day on the work set by school, although we try and do other 'educational' things in some of the other time, but not following any curriculum. I only work 3.5 hours a week (already remotely before all this) but can't imagine what this is like for anybody working full-time. I think the school is trying really hard to provide guidance but has fallen into an awkward half-way house where they have provided resources but not quite enough to make them work without some prep by the parent and extremely cooperative kids! I feel like we should play to the strengths of being at home and do stuff where one-on-one (or one-on-two!) works better, following their interests, helping them with the stuff they are actually stuck on it (or in the zone of proximal development in pedagogical speak), reading and just enjoying spending precious time together. My husband is taking off half a day's leave a week (what else are we going to use it on this year?) to look after the kids for an hour a day too, which has been a lifesaver and give him some time with them. Also, I think most people trying to do this home education thing at the moment are way too busy to write about it!
• hoseja 7y ago
  This just shows how many people don't have healthy respectful relationships with their children.
• jiux 7y ago
  I’m a single, full-time dad to two girls - a six year old kindergartener and two year old toddler. I’ll share some of my observations and thoughts so far (in no particular order): - It’s nice to be around them more. Seriously. I personally invest a lot into their development and seeing them positively grow is a great feeling. Being around them more during the day seems to amplify this. “Time” is finite. - I put my daughter into private school and the expensive monthly tuition bill still came at full price. Was it fair? I don’t know. I knew I could get by financially so never brought it up with hopes it might just help a teacher keep a paycheck. The teachers are passionate and are really trying with distant learning too. If anything, they deserve more. - No longer paying for a babysitter nor after school care returned a lot back into the wallet. This actually turned into a new and positive financial investment adventure. I’ve saved more money in the last two months than I have in a year. ”Wow” is the feeling. - The heightened risk around handled food has mentally “forced” me into eating exclusively at home from grocery store goods. We three were a 99% eat-out/takeout everyday family beforehand. Surprisingly, the adaptation has been a lot easier than expected. Eating out was almost never for self-pleasure, just convenient usually. This also has helped save lots of $$$. - The commute to work has lightened up a little. I think maybe 10ft (+/- a foot or two for you anal type). The car has been with a full tank for over a month. ~5 miles in this timeframe, all of which for grocery store (wow more money saved). - Morning commute consisted of driving girls to school and babysitter, then to work. That short distance in the car alone cost me ~1 hour each way, so ~2 hours of time returned daily. I normally lay outfits out the night before, the toddler is usually chill about what outfit to wear, and the school requires uniforms, so morning prep was fast and smooth, usually. Maybe 30 minutes returned here. - Standard of cleaning dipped lower than desired once we became the three musketeers. New found time went as fast as it came here. Having our apartment a little more clean feels good though. - My official title at the 9-5 is “software engineer”, so the concept of working from home is realistic. Doing so with children as a single parent is where reality hits the fan too. Just one child around is not too bad, doesn’t matter which one. Having both means girls argue, fight over stuff like who gets the last corndog, if Barbie should or shouldn’t go stand in the corner in timeout for doing something bad, so on. My concentration skills with work have been tested here FOR SURE. It’s easy and then it’s not. Productivity is overall on average higher when they take an afternoon nap and lower when awake and about. - This whole online learning concept sounds nice on paper and might be the best alternative next to in-person schooling, but man it really is difficult to pull off during the week for me. An hour or two a day? I’m already writing this at 3am if that tells you anything. That might be realistic to some, but it’s not for me, and I’m not even dismissing any opportunity to save time. For example, I have it figured out when I wake up: first use the restroom, wash hands, then proceed to brush teeth after washing hands, but before drying. This saves from wetting hands and drying with towel twice. When time is at a premium, it makes you think about weird stuff like that. I try for weekends to catch up on daughters schooling. We are a week and a half behind. I also emailed the teacher on my own behalf to simply let her know I’m having a hard time keeping up and to ask if she had any tips or suggestions to offer. Overall, social distancing hasn’t phased us since we keep to ourselves in our private time for the most part already. No real negatives experienced on a personal level and our health is good. I suspect this concept of online learning might be easy for some, if not most, but it sure as hell hasn’t been for me with time already at a premium. My girls and I will get through it, just like the rest of you reading this will.
• supernova87a 7y ago
  I'm not a parent, but I remember as a kid in the 80s watching PBS specials during the day on science that were packed with interesting content. I stayed out of my parents hair during the summer watching these things. Yes, admittedly I was probably not the typical child. But are there not public service lecture series on Youtube by teachers (funded by foundations, etc) that have produced videos for all kinds of grade levels and subjects? It feels like we have the world of knowledge at our fingers, but can't find anything productive to watch? Is it not possible to at least occupy a couple hours of kids' time with Khan Academy videos? Why do parents have to make up curricula to teach?
  • imhoguy 7y ago
    The problem is that open medium like YT also contains ton of distracting and low quality content. It is too easy to let kid click on some "5 minute tricks" garbage or celebrities bait.
• gridlockd 7y ago
  Schools are daycare centers, the curriculum only expands to serve that purpose. So why not use this opportunity to cut the bullshit and focus on reading, writing and math? All of the other stuff is eventually forgotten anyway, to no detriment.
• tragomaskhalos 7y ago
  I am homeschooling my autistic son; his (mainstream) school have stipulated 3 hours of lessons a day, and we are hitting that. With the proviso that, obviously, I am nowhere near as good as a proper teacher, I'd argue that he is actually benefitting by getting more of the 1-1 attention that he needs than he would be getting at school. The downside is that in order to provide that, I need to be pretty much full time with him for those 3 hours, which is tiring and time-consuming (kudos to the professionals - teaching is hard work!), and interferes severely with my actual job (although the company are v supportive). The key I have found is: - Focus on the core subjects, viz English, Maths and Science, but do mix in other subjects as well; - Just bin some other subjects entirely (specifically, those he's not going to be doing for GCSE); - Know at the end of each day what the lessons and topics are going to be for the following day, as this reduces stress all round; - Stick to some sort of timetable, albeit needing to be flexible because of work; we always do one hour lesson first thing, and a second mid- to late-morning, leaving just one after lunch.
• lowken10 7y ago
  If my son was eight (he's 12) when this happened I would have been in a terrible position. He was a nightmare at that age with regards to school. I feel the pain of these parents. Fortunately my son has matured and it doing well with home schooling. He only requires mild levels of supervision.
• SethMurphy 7y ago
  I and mostly the students Grandmother now are home schooling a first grader in the NYC public system and would like to provide a description of what our situation looks like to better facilitate this discussion for those that are not living though this. 1. Everyday there is a video conference call. This communication is mostly about trying to keep a relationship with the teacher and sharing stories they are writing only if a student desires. 2. There is no teaching, just lesson plans. The responsibility of the actual schooling has been left completely up to the caregivers at home. 3. Schoolwork is expected to be uploaded daily. There was no set way to do this. We are simply taking photos of the work done on paper (and at times screen shots if a login is shared for an activity) and pasting them in a google doc for each day in the students NYC google drive account. 4. There has been zero specific feedback on any of the work submitted. The only accountability has been an online sticker chart where parents award award stars and teacher do also. We have given 1 star a day for completing assigned work, and 2 for a day when it is done with less struggle to maintain attention. Each parent has their own view of what a star means. 5. Writing has been the main focus over the past month. My child already struggles with “writers block” even in school. We are fortunate to have a retired teachers assistant in our household who is able to do one-on-one teaching. While not trained or experienced in first grade education with the attention my child receives I have seen more improvement in the past month than the previous three months by a long shot. 6. The schooldays often goes later than when in school, and rarely earlier. This is skewed by a new 9:00 start time, so the actual time may be less, but I would say it feels like more. It took at least 3 weeks to get into a rhythm where the days did drag out from morning to night. 7. There is no homework anymore. Well, more correctly homework was initially part of the daily lesson plan, but we always did it during the day. 8. Reading, social studies and science have been done almost exclusively online. This is the easiest for us as it is mostly self directed at this point. Additionally no work needs to be uploaded. IT started with Social Studies and Science each day, but they are now alternating days. 9. Friday’s have just become catch up days. This is great, but in our situation was not necessary. We are hoping this means a 4 day school week. 10. We left NYC to a place where we have space to have school in a separate room behind a closed door. I don’t think it would have been possible in our NYC apartment to limit distractions. There is also a younger sibling that requires attention and provides distraction to the student. In addition we now have ample outdoor space to allow the children to play with zero pandemic anxiety involved. 11. We still get assignments for the enrichment classes (music, art, physical education, and foreign language) separate from the primary teacher. The first three are generally videos posted of the teacher providing interactive instruction. Foreign language is done with an online lesson and mimics social studies and science comments above. The morning conference call does not address these at all. In summary, my child has probably been doing better or as well as most in their class, and I don’t think they are falling behind. However, this is due to the time we have to teach them ourselves and not the attention given by the teacher. The teacher has been good at creating lesson plans and lowering our expectations, but other than that has been diminished to a technical support role in our case. There has been little to no remote teaching. We do have the ability to call hotlines and request more help from the teacher, but I can’t comment on those methods.