Is Your Kid Too Cool For School?
Parenting is hard. Co-parenting is harder. Co-parenting during a pandemic is exponentially harder when your children’s school suddenly goes online.
One of my best friends is a fourth-grade teacher, so I know how the pandemic has created a nightmare for teachers. School districts had to take classes online overnight, and it was a change that even the best teachers couldn’t have adequately prepared for.
Teaching takes bandwidth, both literally and figuratively. In tech terms, bandwidth is the maximum rate of data transfer across a given path. In the current slang, resources, mental capacity, and energy are referred to as bandwidth. To be a teacher, you have to have that perfect mixture of toughness, patience, and energy that few of us have. The rapid transition from classroom instruction to virtual teaching has left both parents and teachers reeling. Teachers are suddenly trying to teach from their homes, and they simply don’t have the bandwidth.
I grew up in a household without a television, and I was always embarrassed when I got assignments that required me to watch something on TV and report on it. These days, not all children have computers and internet connections. Schools resolved some of those problems by issuing children iPads or inexpensive laptop computers, but some homes still lack a reliable internet connection. Likewise, some teachers may not have internet connections at home. If they do, rural teachers often find that they don’t have the bandwidth (in the technical sense) necessary to live stream instruction.
Parents had to become teachers, while also working their own jobs from home, juggling their work with supervising school children who aren’t accustomed to attending school at the kitchen table. Most of our children do schoolwork in the structured environment of the classroom and go home to relax and play, so it’s problematic when school and home merge. Parents are finding themselves without the emotional bandwidth to make it work.
Toss into this confusing mix, children who are living in two different homes, and you will find yourself on the brink of one of the many circles of pandemic hell. If you share parenting time with your co-parent, your ability to communicate is about to be tested. Now, you each have to ensure your children are doing their daily school work and communicating with their teacher. Then you have to communicate with the teacher and the other parent about what has or has not been done.
Have a conversation with each child’s teacher. Include your co-parent if possible, either on a conference phone call, video chat, or group email. Be sure you understand the mechanics of how each child will interact with their teacher and what the teacher expects. Discuss with your co-parent how and where each of you will set aside specific space for each child to participate in school, how you will balance conflicting needs for computers and internet service between household members, and how you will communicate with one another about progress. It will be up to you both to decide if a platform like Our Family Wizard will be helpful, or if learning a new piece of technology is simply too much. Either way, it will be essential to keep detailed notes on some shared platform like Google Docs. Be sure that all communication with teachers gets shared in a group text or email with both parents. Your child’s teacher will appreciate it; because this change is hard enough without asking the teacher to deliver messages between parents about their children’s work.
Experts are warning parents not to be too hard on themselves or their children. Don’t make home a prison and schoolwork a battle. Some children simply won’t be able to function without the structure of the classroom, a structure that is nearly impossible for parents to duplicate at home. Don’t beat yourself up or penalize your child for the difficulties of homeschooling. Schools will reopen, and your child will catch up. In the meantime, try to focus on the basics. Invite your child to help with household chores that require math. Read with your child and discuss what you read. See? You just disguised a book report.
Keep notes and share ideas and progress with your co-parent freely. Share assignments and materials. Be generous and flexible. Yes, I do know you hate it when I tell you that, but remember, your children learn more from what you do than from what you say. They will learn volumes about how adults deal with conflict by watching you and your co-parent navigate and communicate, even when it’s hard.
