For many years, Work From Home (WFH) has been popular in several service industries (ex: Airline reservations, phone customer support) and tech. Thanks to the #CoronavirusOutbreak now we have school from home for my kids as well. One of the strongest anti-dote to slow down the spread of virus is to do self-isolation or add more social distance. In particular closing schools may help reduce the viral spread. All parents who had kids coming back from daycare with the common cold or flu will strongly attest to the benefit of reduced exposure.
School From Home (SFH) is different from the erstwhile popular #homeschooling option. In the households practicing homeschools, one or both of the parents are deeply involved in the kids education. In most cases, the parents of SFH kids are not prepared for this new responsibility. I like spending time with my kids in the evening helping them with their homework or coach their extracurriculars. However, doing this full time for the entire day is NOT easy. Further not having the facility for kids to socialize and play with their peer age group is more challenging as well.
Just to give you an example, I have a ten year old attending the 4th grade. During the normal school year, We have a decent morning routine. My wife packs off lunch for him in the morning; I drop him off in the morning. One of the weekday evenings, he goes for basketball practices. On another day I coach a Destination Imagination team which consists of my son along with 3 other kids. He goes for a game of soccer or basketball in the weekend. Now in the world of SFH, all these have changed!
Our morning routine is adjusted. Given that there is no school commute, my son may sleep longer and get started later. Usually we set a regular plan for his class time mimicking the daily schedule at school. We write down a list of tasks for him to complete on a given day. He has his own laptop and continues with his work. Using the Pomodoro technique I encourage him to work for 20 minutes and take a 10 minute break. Often it is hard to remind him to come back after the 10 minute break. Usually the 10-minute break goes towards reading another storybook or jumping around inside the house.
In the SFH, there is no concept of recess wherein he can play with other kids. I had to resort to stepping aside for 20 minutes myself. We do throw and catch of the football (okay, the oblong American Football). We may do a FBB (Football with Burpies) to add more personal exercise. For afternoon lunch, we try to do some fresh food. One day we baked a pizza with pre-made dough. Another day we made some fresh pasta. It was tight to make and eat lunch within 60-minutes. Nonetheless we tried it well.
The nice thing that I observed in his first week of SFH has been that he usually completed the planned tasks, including what was supposedly homework. He uses Khan Academy and You Tube. It is not evident that he is learning sufficient materials at an appropriate pace. We scan and send the homework sheets to his teacher. In some cases he also submits his homework online (yes, true for a 4th grader). Sometimes we may resort to checking on his homework completion. I also like the Quizlet App for learning and testing of language and social studies. It is hard to use Quizlet to evaluate math concepts and steps used. It is super difficult to use Quizlet to probe his science learning.
One thing has been certain. We are living a new normal life. We are living a wholesomely connected life. We are challenged with the changes from self-isolation stemming from the COVID19 issues. I emphasize the FDP principle with my son: F for Focus, D for Discipline, P for Practice. I am optimistic that both of us are learning new methods and practices.
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