Law and order is on the verge of breaking down — within the confines of my own house. My two kids, 11 and 13, aren’t just cooped up; they’re in full revolt. They have some homework assignments to do but no regular online classes to engage them. So my wife and I are taking shifts, almost like prison guards, imposing TV shutdowns and mandatory yard time.

Our parents — the kids’ grandparents — are also bottled up. My mom and stepdad are holed up in the Berkshires, on a lonely mountain. They barely ever see another person. The isolation is taking a toll, but it’s more than that. I think, on some level, they feel rather expendable. And who could blame them? The young keep telling one another: Things are OK; only the old people will die.

So my wife came up with an idea: Why don’t we connect these two generations? Her notion was to conscript the grandparents as teachers. We pooled a bunch of kids from our neighborhood and their grandparents and formed an online school. We called it Grandparents’ Academy. Had a nice ring to it. Yes, even in the face of the apocalypse, branding matters.

Setting the whole thing up was surprisingly simple. We did it in less than 24 hours. We created a Google calendar and asked the grandparents to pick time slots for weekly and bi-weekly classes. They could teach, well … anything they wanted. In no time, we had a schedule.