Stop Telling Parents to Relax About Remote Learning — And Start Giving Them Reasons to Relax
Schools need to stop with the unrealistic expectations so we can support our children
For the last month my social media feed and email have been filled with articles and inspirational messages about how I should “just say no” to the avalanche of school work piling up in my son’s google classroom. I have been told that the only thing that matters is my child’s emotional well-being, that I should focus on regulating my own emotions so I can support him and that zoom calls and hours watching video assignments on a screen are stressful and anxiety-producing for kids.
Here’s the thing: I know all of these things to be true. I could have written them myself. During normal times, I was the one who fought for schools to prioritize social-emotional learning and questioned the academic expectations and heavy homework loads put on students. I am fully on-board with the message being promoted in such pieces.
But when schools are working overtime to maintain high academic expectations, they can add to the intolerable burden, not to mention guilt, being foisted onto the shoulders of individual families. These messages need to be directed at those in power — to the people who are setting the pace and expectations. For most of us, saying no to those expectations — or navigating them with grace under pressure — just seems like another impossible demand.
Almost all the parents I know feel like they are drowning right now. And as the pandemic continues its relentless scorched earth campaign, it is getting even harder. Each day I hear stories about kids at a school who have lost parents or parents who have lost loved ones themselves. Those of us not directly affected live with the fear and anxiety of what comes next.
I hear a friend on the phone with my son ask if he is afraid. When my son, always refusing to let in or acknowledge the scary thoughts, says no, I can barely hear his friend when he whispers, I am. They move on to the next stage in their video game, but my heart breaks for this high-achieving child who finishes all the work on time and without struggle but is silently living in fear.
And I think that everything should just stop for a moment. We should have time to breathe and to hold our children and to listen to their whispered fears. We should offer to play their games with them, or binge watch their favorite television show, or make cookies and cake without worrying about the sugar content. But nothing stops. School continues with its forced facade of normalcy. We are told — against every instinct in our body — that this is what our children need.
So when I see the messages telling us that our children need us to prioritize love and support — not academics — to protect them from the trauma of this moment, you are telling me something I already know. But you are also assuming that parents have anything resembling a real choice in the matter.
The messages coming from our Department of Education almost exclusively emphasize the importance of continuity of learning. We are fed motivational success stories about how schools are rising to the challenges of remote learning. We had our Spring Break cancelled because our Mayor and our Governor believed that our children would lose momentum if they weren’t continuing to engage with school.
One friend tells me how her neighbor spends 8 hours a day doing school with her second-grader, but tried to relax the pressure over what would have been the spring break. Her child’s principal then threatened that her child, with perfect attendance and performing on grade level, would be held back if she did not complete the assignments on time. My own son’s school repeatedly tells me that they don’t want us to be overwhelmed and that his emotional health is the top priority, but they cannot tell me what will happen if I cease my uphill battle to get him to continue working through tears of frustration.
Of course, there are parents who have chosen to opt out. But the stories that get profiled and circulated almost inevitably feature families with resources and kids who are already successful in school. These parents assure us that they are not worried about their children who are “avid readers” and independent learners. But what about the parent whose kid, like mine, resists reading for pleasure? What about the parent whose child was already struggling in school? Every message they receive tells them that only other parents can afford to prioritize connected time with their children over stressful academic work.
I am a member of multiple Facebook groups for parents of children with ADHD or other special needs. Every day parents post messages about the difficulties of getting their children to engage in remote learning or how they are struggling with the assignments. The pain in these posts is palpable. Parents, mostly mothers, describe tears of frustration, screaming children and screaming parents and guilt that they cannot seem to give their children what they need. They almost always blame themselves. I find myself spending hours trying to provide reassurance that there is nothing wrong with them or their children. In speaking to them, I realize, I am also speaking to myself.
The truth is that it is impossible to fully escape the messages that surround families who are disadvantaged by our educational system. Families who are poor, who don’t speak English as a first language, who are headed by single parents, those with children labeled with learning disabilities or who do not fit in or struggle in school for various reasons…we are all told that we are not enough for our children, that our children are not enough. We are seen as in need of remediation or saving by the benevolent efforts of schools. We are told that our children were behind before they even started and that they must work twice as hard just to keep the pace.
The media is filled with stories about how remote learning is exposing and deepening educational inequities. Far less attention is paid to how it is exposing and deepening the deficit-based models that drive our schools.
The assumption that low-income children enter school with lagging skills, less exposure to rich vocabulary and other deficits shapes their school experience from the youngest age. Low-income children receive more homework in the elementary grades and are more likely to receive explicit academic skills instruction. Meanwhile, more affluent children are likely to be engaged in play and project-based learning that embeds skills within meaningful contexts and activities.
Low-income children, struggling students and their families are more likely to experience school as a source of anxiety and stress. Their parents are more likely to receive negative messages from the school about their children’s performance. They are less likely to be heard if they push back against school policies.
This is the context in which the vast majority of families are experiencing the demands of remote learning. We are bombarded with messages about how students will fall behind if they lose instruction. While some parents can look at their children who are already doing well and comfort themselves that the stakes aren’t so high, the rest of us have no one providing that reassurance.
Because the discussion of educational inequality is so thoroughly imbued with a deficit-based view of disadvantaged children and their families, the proposed solutions have centered on ways to carry out remote learning more effectively: technology access, outreach to families, time management and other behavioral advice — all while maintaining “high standards” and expectations. A friend of mine aptly described her school administration’s relentless demands on teachers, parents and children as a form of “white savior complex”. It doesn’t matter how much stress and anxiety these demands may be causing because the children need this.
The tragic irony here is that the families who suffer the most in our educational system are the ones who most need the freedom and support to focus on their needs for emotional, physical and financial security. These are the families most at risk for experiencing trauma as they are either on the front lines providing essential services or suffering the economic fallout of this crisis. But they are the ones upon whom the academic demands are exerted most forcefully.
Almost all discussions about remote learning assume its necessity. But few grapple with the potential damage it may do to children and their families. To the extent this threat is discussed, the responsibility for minimizing it is put on families. No one asks: if we know that remote learning will only deepen inequalities and that it is placing families under more stress, why don’t we stop the whole charade? Why not offer support and resources, but allow families to use this time as they see fit? And why not free teachers and schools to use this time to plan deliberately for the inevitable challenges we will face when kids return to school?
To do otherwise, to persist on this path with all its well-documented inequalities, is to perpetuate the illusion that we can return to normal when schools open.
The answer to this cannot simply be one of individual choice. Inequality will always shape the choices people make and what options they have. It is the responsibility of those in charge of our school systems to prioritize relationships over rigor. This starts with developing and clearly communicating equity-driven grading and promotion policies. No student should be penalized or held back this year. It is shameful that schools have been so slow to adopt such policies and that many districts are maintaining policies that will penalize students. But even when schools do adopt equitable policies, they need to go beyond this minimum standard.
Families need to be assured that their children will not be behind when schools re-open. This must include a commitment to providing additional resources and supports for children who need it. But it also means that schools should plan to adapt and modify the curriculum to meet the needs of the majority of students — not the minority who will have moved forward during this pandemic.
Social and emotional learning must comprise a much greater part of the curriculum when schools re-open. Existing standards and measurements should be re-evaluated. Instead of pushing kids to catch up in the race to an arbitrary finish line, we need to question why that line exists in the first place and if there are better ways of measuring learning.
Families need more than to be told they are not falling behind. They need to have the lessons that their children are learning and the strengths that they will bring back to the classroom recognized and valued. We are living in a moment in which society is being forced to recognize that it is the people who currently receive the least respect and the least rewards who are essential to our survival. It is not the lawyers, stock brokers and managers, but the healthcare workers, grocery, delivery, warehouse, domestic and agricultural workers who make our world run.
At 7pm each evening, neighborhoods across my city explode in applause and cheering in gratitude and celebration of essential workers. Their children are equally deserving of such respect and celebration. They are being asked to develop responsibility, resilience and fortitude far beyond their years. When schools re-open, I hope that their capacities and talents are made visible and honored in their classrooms. In the meanwhile, school systems should stop talking about lost learning time and maintaining normalcy and start talking about how to support families through this time that is anything but normal.
