Homeschooling

Before I start my rant, I want to send a heartfelt THANK YOU to our teachers, school districts and every single staff member that are working tirelessly to educate my children. Yes, I admit this first week has not been easy, the first week of new learning after six weeks of keeping up with acquired skills and me getting to teach them what ever my heart desired. No, not an easy week, but it wasn’t easy for you guys either, so THANK YOU!

It has also been extremely eye opening for a very Scandinavian parent that happened to have a firm belief of not meddling with my kids’ education. We have never done academic enrichment, tutors nor have I had them work during their summer vacation. Summers have been for playing outside, swimming, and relaxing, and teachers have been there to take care of my kids’ education. I have not meddled with their homework and I have never been the parent who does their children’s class projects. That being said, their projects have always looked very age appropriate and homemade, and we have never won any awards at science fair.

Don’t get me wrong. I do care. I care very much, and I am highly active when it comes to the school community. This coming school year I will be the co-President of the PTSA at one of my kiddos school and a board member at the other one. I just do not meddle with teaching and homework.

As all parents with more than one child know, we too have three vastly different children. There is the book smart but socially awkward, there is the one that is technologically challenged and seems a bit lost in general, but still does well in school, and then we have our wonderful social butterfly. Everyone loves him and he greets life with a gigantic smile every single morning, until it’s time for math. When it comes to math, adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing is a soup where everything seems to be mixed together.

There were tears on Monday. Tears of sheer frustration and fear of the unknown. Several new applications, pages after pages of directions and new skills to be learned. The first child was frustrated because her work was not ready and waiting by the given timeline. We later heard that it was due to one of the websites having a major lag, not teachers missing their timelines. The second child was overwhelmed by the amount of technology required and could no longer get onto any website and the third one was staring at fractions in tears. I was frustrated because I had stuff to do and instead, I was moving from one laptop to the next trying to help; It says you have same password and username as you have for your school site? What do you mean it does not work? Are you sure you have the correct username? Remember dear, 1/1=2/2=3/3=4/4… Why? Because a number divided by itself is always one. Yes, I’m sure. Use my calculator to test the theory… Dear, this is the same, 1/1=2/2=3/3… yes, that goes for any number divided by itself. Yes, I’m sure. Honey, we are not dividing now, you are subtracting. Yes darling, I’m sure there’s a good reason why your science teacher hasn’t uploaded your work yet. Remember this is new for everyone. Yes, it is unfair that the boys have their work and you don’t, however I am unable to fix this. This being said, my house has a child that could do way more than what has been assigned, one that has just the right amount of work and the one that is not independent by any means and could have a bit less work. I understand our teachers have to cater to the middle group.

I bet you had some version of this at your house too… Tuesday was a repeat of Monday with the exception that my eldest now had all her assignments and I had three back to back conference calls. Wednesday was a bit better as I had now understood that I will have to spend my mornings teaching math, at least for now. By Wednesday I had also googled and printed out every single fraction aid I could find. I also created an alarm system on my cellphone after I forgot one Karate lesson and one other meeting that my child was supposed to be attending. I also have a weekly schedule of meetings on the whiteboard in my office.

Today is Friday. I have rewarded my children myself with a day off. We survived the first week of new learning, and I know next week will be smoother as everyone is now one week smarter on how to do this. All my children’s teachers and school staff have been extremely supportive and done everything they can to help. Enjoy your weekend. I hope the teachers will get some rest too as I know they have been working way past their expected and assigned hours. We did it! We are all in this together!