This is no vacation – Teachers at home teaching their kids, and their kids
Huntsville, Texas – It’s highly likely that you’ve seen the word “coronacation” tossed around on social media. It certainly feels like a vacation for some of us.
Essential workers are still working hard at their jobs, but there’s one class of essential worker who have had to adjust in new, uncharted waters.
Teachers.
The novel COVID-19 has caused public schools across not just the nation, but the globe, to send kids and teachers home. This transition to distance learning hasn’t been an easy one. While homeschooled children might be familiar with learning on a computer at home, for much of the rest of the world it’s brand new and has never been done before.
Teachers have had to adjust in an instant. Set working hours have become fluid, and communication has become erratic, if there has been any at all. But on top of it all, teachers are not only teaching the children they are hired to teach – they still have to teach their own.
“The hardest part, for me, has just been the time management,” said Rebecca Sievert, a first-grade teacher. Sievert has been teaching for 15 years, so she knows how to operate and manage a classroom. She’s lost that stability and normalcy at home, working with and teaching her second-grade son.
“You know, my husband and I both teach, and so we’re both at home, and my kids see us at home, but we have to explain to them, no, mom and dad are at work,” Sievert said.
Speaking as a child of educators, the expectation was always there to do well. Children of teachers do have the advantage of having at home helpers, but for Sievert, she’s seeing her son as a student for the first time.
“It’s a little hard because I know how to instruct, and so I’ll guide him with assessments like I would my classroom kids,” she said. “And at times I have to slow him down to make sure he’s read everything clearly and correctly.”
It begs the question of “does he do this at school?” for Sievert. There are doubts, but Sievert is still a parent doing her best to ensure her son’s success.
For Sarah Mallory, the situation is similar, but her son is in the third grade. And she just so happens to be a third-grade teacher.
“Sometimes I’ll remind him ‘this is exactly how your teacher is doing it, I know because I work with her, and I do the same thing,’” said Mallory, who is in her fourth year of teaching third grade.
“What works for us, or rather, what I make him do, are the same things that I’d be teaching in my own classroom,” Mallory said. “It’s a one-on-one small group session. We do everything on the paper that we can, and we’ll do the computer when necessary.”
While Sievert and Mallory can see what their own children are doing firsthand, the work that gets turned in to them from their classroom children is a different story. There are some who haven’t turned in a single assignment. There are some who are doing miraculously better. There are some who are doing surprisingly worse.
And the communication is sporadic and sometimes will come at all hours.
“I’m the type of person that if I get an email at 11:30 at night, I’m going to respond,” Sievert said. “If that’s the only time that parent is going to be available to talk, I have to take that opportunity.”
At higher levels, students still have seven or eight of their classes to do, and for Melissa Hunziker and her sophomore, the responsibility is on her son.
“I do have to incentivize a little,” Hunziker admitted. Hunziker works as an innovative learning specialist at an elementary school, but she’s been teaching for 16 years at various grade levels. “I’ll let him sleep in until noon and let him go to bed later than normal, but he has to do at least two subjects a day before he gets any kind of free time.”
Hunziker works with a small group of gifted and talented (GT) students, but she’s not teaching in the traditional sense anymore. Most of her teaching has been with adults.
“I’m the person that has to help teachers troubleshoot,” Hunziker said. “Or I have to help parents get Google classroom set up.” At Hunziker’s school, Google classroom is used mostly in third and fourth grade, but kindergarten through second have had little to no exposure to it.
Hunziker is fortunate that her son is in high school. She will help when needed, or she’ll enlist her college-age daughter to help with some of his classes, but for the most part she can turn her attention to helping her own teachers.
It’s still up in the air whether or not schools will return in the fall. It seems unlikely they’d be closed that long, but Huzniker doesn’t allow herself to think that far ahead.
Until then, Sievert will have little lessons with her son using legos or cheezits to help explain area. Mallory will have her son see how long it takes for him to unload the dishwasher to help explain elapsed time.
This is no vacation for teachers. But they’re doing all they can to ensure success.
