Yeah guys that was carnage, I’m sorry.

But distance learning is over for now.

Like I said, it’s not that homeschooling itself is terrible. It’s not. It’s four kids and two parents bending to the will of 20+ school teachers. I don’t know anything about the clarinet. Suddenly we have to teach it. I don’t know anything about music. But suddenly we’re teaching choir and sheet music. And remember all those times you felt like you would never need half that math from 7th grade? No, you will.. when you have to remember it to teach it to your own kids so they can feel like they’ll never use it either.

We had four kids rotating on two computers in perpetuity. Class assignments getting done at 10pm because multiple teachers wouldn’t put the day’s work up until noon. Or later. Or we just couldn’t find it because it’s buried on other website’s pages or links. (One PE coach just phoned his lesson plan in and directed students to a PDF and worksheets he found on Google, which required kids to access some school district in Montana.) Sometimes we’d work with our kids on projects until the Sunday night cutoff. And everything had to be documented. Scan worksheets. Take pictures of worksheets. The health teachers even required daily photos of all students doing their exercises. (And let me tell you how fun it is to be told you need to upload daily pics of your kids to the web. Joy.) The kindergarten teacher would give us a weeks worth of assignments (read a book to your child, have your child read a book to you, discuss your favorite parts, sing a song..) then at the end of the week, tells us we suddenly had to upload proof of all activities being completed.

How exactly are we supposed to upload “reading a book to my kid?”

You can’t.

Unless we’re just live streaming each child all day.

And think about those assignments, and how kindergarten is. It’s very adult-to-child attention heavy. You can’t just pile them high with worksheets and expect them to keep busy. And that’s how the work was doled out. Every lesson plan was 100% hands-on, child-by-your-side ALL DAY. Imagine one of those terrible kids cartoons like Sid the Science Kid. Sitting in a circle all day, talking about butterflies and bumblebee asses, and how to use our imagination, right? Yeah, that’s the expected work load and it completely knocks one parent out of the equation for an entire day. And that was a huge issue too. Every teacher was acting like they were teaching an only child. No brothers, no sisters, no other grades.

And my God, the guilt.

The teachers guilt so many of them had.

As in “These poor kids are missing a valuable education right now during this historic pandemic. I MUST TEACH THESE KEEDS”

*anime fury fist clenched*

*streaming tears down face.*

Now we have 40 minute science classes taking 3 hours to finish each day. Math taking 2 hours a night. History teachers linking 1 hour long Youtube videos on Egypt.

And my biggest beef is this:

These teachers, that stand in front of, teach, and interact with 100+ plus kids a day.. now have the ability to make a singular daily lesson to distribute to all of them. No repeating the same thing for 7 periods over and over. And with all that time saved, and the expectation every kid have some kind of cellphone to show their work, not a single teacher ever made a video ACTUALLY teaching. I know every single one of them has a smart phone. And they require us to have them.

Not a single video of “Hey, this is how to do these equations” with a dry erase behind them. Not a single video of “Here’s me showing you how these molecules work.” “Here’s me demonstrating different pitches in voice/range/whatever.”

Our kids have to utilize the internet. Our kids have to set up emails. And our kids have to have video/camera.

Our teachers? Nope. It may as well be the 1980’s.

They can’t make videos actually answering questions or showing how something is done.

It’s just a deluge of worksheets, online quizzes, endless pdf reading, and so on.

Then when you try to consult the teacher on a lesson, or even just.. heh.. how to access their hidden lessons.. you get this:

>__>

You serious?

She’s there. She’s not a bot. But for some reason she’s just copy/pasting.

Yeah we had 3 principals on speed dial… (speed email.)

Now I know the teachers got thrown into this right along with us. Trust me, I get it. They’re not all going to be tech savvy.

But they’re requiring the kids to be. One of Lily’s assignments was to turn in a Youtube video.

And you can bet your ass she got an A on that! (Dad don’t slack)

And don’t get me started on the meals.

Okay, I’ll start.

We had paid food credits for all 4 kids. The school required parents to load up all their kids, and drive them to the school, DAILY, to pick up their meals. Let’s not, you know, maybe identify the parent when they show up and say “Okay here are your meals for the 4 kids I’ve verified you have.” No. Let’s make all kids, in a pandemic you’ve made up hysterical over, pile in a car every day (with two of ours being asthmatic) and constantly expose them to a potential virus. Ridiculous.

I know I’m rambling now.

In short, I got up at 5am daily to do chores, make breakfast, and get the kids started. Then Claire would get up to help, gather all their assignments from emails, texts, or an 1850’s mail donkey. Then we’d surrender our computers and open the tutoring center back up. We’d maybe get 2 hours to ourselves when the kids went back to bed. Then we’d do it again. Spend the weekend doing the rest of the chores and any homework catch up.

It was absolutely insane, and it rarely let up.

My heart goes out to any other parents that dealt with a convoluted, confusing and/or overzealous school district. Our schools and teachers mean well. I know they do. But man was there a lot of over-compensation.

Now it’s summer. And the kids can go back to exactly what they normally did: