Schools Are Closed, But Education Doesn’t Have to Stop
Three tips from a teacher on how to teach your kids during a pandemic.
I arrived home at about 3:45. It’s my usual time to enter my home every day after teaching incarcerated children at my local juvenile detention center. Our Spring Break was next week, and I was ready for some relaxing time at home when a message came across my phone that made coronavirus real for me.
By order of the Governor of Illinois, all public schools in the state are closed through March 30th, 2020. I read the message at least three times. I even shut off my phone and restarted, hoping the message was my imagination.
However, it wasn’t. A microorganism, a virus, had shut down all the schools in a large state. There was no winter storm, flood, or wind chill warning. It was an enemy that attacked silently and wielded power to stop one of the largest organizations in the country-the public school.
I stood up, wiped my brow with a shaking hand, and sat down. My wife looked at me. “What?” she asked.
“You haven’t read your email?” I asked
She opened her phone and gasped. It was now real for her too. Within the next 24 hours, schools across the nation were turning off smart boards and closing their doors. Many were uncertain if schools would open ever again as COVID-19 dragged its fingers across the world like a filthy hand.
Parents, who were still obligated to work, scrambled to find childcare. Most parents had no idea how to continue their child’s education, and many kitchen tables became family meeting spots as parents discussed how to educate their children.
It’s been almost a week since schools closed, and from what I’ve seen on social media, parents are struggling to teach kids from preschool to high school. I am a certified teacher and school administrator with a double bachelor, two master’s degrees, and hours towards my doctorate and teaching is still difficult. Therefore, I know parents are beating their heads against a brick wall, trying to corral kids and teach. My heart and support goes out to them.
However, there are resources to help you navigate this new and unusual reality. I want to help you with at least three suggestions that I believe will make your days a little more bearable as your rugs rats play at your feet.
Utilize free online resources
I understand that this may not be an option for many children across our nation. According to recent research, 3 million or 18 percent of kids across the country don’t have internet access. That’s a tragedy in this teacher’s opinion, and something needs to change, but I will leave that for a future article.
If you are blessed to have internet in your home and access to a tablet or computer, you can have your kiddos up and learning in no time. Trust they know how to use a computer better than some of us. Our kids were born into a time where technology is a vital part of education. Everything from reading programs to standardized testing is on computers. My eight year old knows how his way around a Chromebook like we know the backs of our hands.
All you have to do is access the free resources and facilitate the work. Yes, I know you don’t teach, but I bet you are a well spring of useful information about several different topics.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, many education sites that are usually subscription-based are free. Kahn Academy, Discovery, and Scholastic are only a few. Adding all of these to your educational arsenal can be expensive. Still, at the moment, you can enjoy these with your kids and keep money in your pockets for other necessities during this unusual time. Here is a website with many of the free options listed.
A Sanity-Saving Resource Guide to Help Educate and Entertain the Kids
If you don’t have internet or the hardware, there are still great learning opportunities
In these challenging times, it’s no surprise if parents can’t come up with unique activities for their kids to do. I must create something for my students at JDC everyday. I give three presentation a day to about 25 kids. However in the past it was five classes a day and each class contained at least 33 kids. That’s a lot of planning and presentations. I must entertain and enthrall the anxious teenage masses every day, so I know what you are going through trying to entertain and educate your kids. You pay tax dollars for me to do it, and when my establishment closes, you are on an island alone with little to no direction. However, I do have three ideas to possibly help you educate your children.
- Assign your kids a reading assignment. It can be a short article or a book lying around their room. By doing this you can improve their reading and comprehension. Offer incentives for writing a book report. For instance, create chore coupons, and for each book report, they complete they can lose a chore. If not, chores maybe an extra time on their favorite video game.
- Have your kids give presentations about what they learned in school or ask them to present their favorite subject and why they like it. Furthermore, if you have multiple kids, you can have a contest to award the best presentation. Nothing wrong with a little fun competition, and it also builds family time. Presentations can teach your kids valuable presentation skills, and you, as a parent, may discover some new things about your kids.
- How about teaching your kids about your favorite hobby or creating a science experiment. Maybe track the weather during the day or observe the cycles of the moon. My eight year old recently did that one. Teach your kids what you know about the novel coronavirus. Help them understand this won’t last forever, and life will return to normal. That’s a lesson which can ease panic and concern in your children. If your local library is open, which is rare at the moment, go there and access your school districts website. I am sure they have more ideas that don’t require technology.
These are only a few ideas. However, I hope these few bullet points spark your imagination.
Take this opportunity to converse with your children
As the world as we know it changes and grinds to a halt, we find ourselves at home as we try to educate our children or work from our kitchen table. I suggest we take this time and get to know our children. Our lives are busy, and most of the time, families pass each other on the way out the door to an event or some other obligation.
It’s the nature of the current world. However, COVID-19 has placed brakes on life as countless Americans are forced to self-quarantine. I suggest gathering in the living room during this pandemic and discussing how each family member feels. I am sure children and parents are mentally suffering, as this pandemic spreads across the globe. However, we can find comfort in each other at this time.
Talk with your kids about what it means to be a young person in these strange days. Many seniors may miss graduations and proms.
Your senior high school students are looking forward to meeting a significant milestone leading towards adulthood, and it’s almost a certainty graduations won’t happen. Ask them how they feel about losing something they worked four long years for- only to have a disease with no remorse steal it from them.
These are teachable moments for you and your kids to learn about each other. Share your concerns with them, so they can witness you are human too. Talk with your younger kids. They don’t have the capacity in early elementary education to understand what’s happening.
Your senior high school students are looking forward to meeting a significant milestone leading towards adulthood, and it’s almost a certainty graduations won’t happen.
Answer your little one’s questions and teach them about human compassion. Yes, tell them in words they understand about loving the world and how they can help. They can call grandparents, aunts, uncles, friends, and brighten their days as they sit at home, waiting for what’s next.
Yes, use these days to teach your children humility and how to help their fellow man.
Final thoughts
I sincerely hope these few words help you in these strange days. I have two school-age children at home with my wife, and I. One is in 3rd grade, and the second is in 10th. My wife and I are both educators and don’t look forward to facilitating the education of a flighty eight-year-old and moody 16-year-old. However, it’s part of being a parent, and we signed up for it, so we must provide what we can.
We are blessed to have resources for our kids, but I am concerned about the ones that don’t have the luxury of tablets, PCs, or smartphones. I know poverty because I’ve worked in it for 23 years, and I see what it does to families.
This shutdown of public school will expose the inequity we have in our school systems across the world. I pray for my most impoverished students to get through this, ok.
Parents, this educator is with you as you try to navigate a new reality. Prayers to you all, and remember to be safe and stay healthy — peace and love y’all.
Estacious(Charles White) is a 23-year educator. He began writing over 25 years ago. His work experience encompasses managing schools and teaching a variety of subjects. His passions are poetry, short fiction, playwrighting, and non-fiction. He won one of six prizes in the Rockford play festival for his play “Incarcerated Christmas”. He is married with three children and a native of New Orleans.