Sunday, October 4th, 2020
The wake up alarm goes off at 6:00am and every one begins to move in our house. Coffee is brewed, tea and breakfast are laid out on the dining room table between Chromebooks and paper notebooks as teenagers wander down in their comfy pants and sweatshirts with their headsets in hand. A white board with their individual schedules hangs in the corner. They sit quietly sipping their hot tea as they open their laptops, checking to make sure the computers are charged enough for class. At 7:28am, the first chime on their bell schedule rings – each schedule carefully programmed into their phone – two minutes prior to the start of class so they can get to Google Classroom and click the Class Meeting link.
School looks very different for us this year.
They attend each class via video – I can hear them responding to roll call, while I work remotely from our couch, near enough to provide tech support should there be an issue and to maximize the wifi connection between us, since it’s based in our living room. It’s quiet throughout the morning, interrupted every once in a while by the chimes on their phones, indicating the end of a class. They lay their headsets down, get up and stretch for a minute, refill water bottles, and are then seated again as the next chime begins the next class.
They each have a long stretch for lunch this year, with study halls adjacent to their lunch period. They don’t have to log in for those, so they disappear for a while – introverts that they are – to eat lunch on our patio, to play ball against the outside wall of the house or to their rooms to read. Around 12:30pm they wander back to their “classroom” to attend their afternoon classes and work on their assignments. By 2:00pm, they’re mostly finished for the day. I ask them about their classes and if they have any assignments they need to complete. They assure me things are completed and request permission to disappear again for a while – the virtual meeting drain apparent on their faces.
It’s quiet for a long while. Introverts need some time to recharge, after all. After a while, I hear giggling conversations as they visit with their friends via Facetime and in their computer games. I smile. At least there is some strange feeling of normalcy there. I love that they’re keeping in touch with their sweet friends. If it’s a pretty day, they might walk downtown to the ice cream shop or the juice bar for a snack, or over to the park across the street to sit outside, masks tucked into their pockets for when they approach people.
A few hours later, around 6:00pm, they wander back to sit with me as I’m wrapping up my work day. We decide what we’ll cook for dinner and they chat openly about computer games and their friends, or some news article that has caught their attention, or plans they’re hoping to schedule for the coming weekend. We sit together for dinner – in the living room, rather than disrupt our classroom setting – eating dinner and laughing together over whatever silly sitcom we’re enjoying this week. We talk for a while before they clean up their dishes and disappear again to their own spaces. Around 8:30pm, they wander back down to me, touching base once more, before heading up to brush teeth and run through their evening routines. They’re settled into bed by the time I get up to check on them, turning off lights and chatting through end of day thoughts.
We’re pretty lucky in all of this. We have a good internet connection and the space to designate as our classroom. My children are teenagers, tech savvy and responsible enough to manage their classes on their own for the most part. They’re introverted, independent, and creative, able to occupy themselves with their own hobbies and art projects while I do my work. On asynchronous days, they might spend the day with their Aunts, helping with their little cousins and doing art projects. They’ll check into their classrooms and complete their assignments from there, while the little ones nap. And, I work remotely, I am able to be present for them to supervise and support, as needed.
It’s not unpleasant for us, this remote learning experience. In some ways, we’ve minimized some of the dramas that come with Middle and High School – they keep in touch with the friends they adore and are relieved by circumstance of those relationships that brought stress. Our mornings don’t feel rushed or chaotic. Instead, they are calm and quiet – a refreshing change from our past experiences. My children spend more time outdoors and with our nearby family, and they have time throughout their school days to regroup on their own, which serves their quieter natures well. Even their grades have improved. We’re counting our blessings that it’s working well for us.
It feels really challenging to enjoy this setup, while so many other families are struggling to manage within the same paradigm. I can’t imagine trying to juggle work and school within this system if my children were any younger or required more support to get through their days. Or if I had to work outside of our home for hours on end, leaving my children to manage virtual school on their own or managing an additional expense to hire someone to assist them throughout the day. Or if we had to struggle for broadband access and had difficulty even attending classes in this way. Schooling this way is not without great struggle for so many of our friends and neighbors.
But, for us, for now, it’s working.
