COVID-19 Shutdown Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 89

Forced Homeschool Parent Log – Day 89

The Summer of Bummer has officially ended with the lamest “start” of school since the middle ages when the illegitimate sons and daughters of royalty were forced to report to monasteries and nunneries to be hidden away forever.

Our seventh-grader started his exciting middle school run upstairs on a couch he made himself out of three chairs and a futon. Check the Woodshop and Home Ec. boxes simultaneously.

Our incoming freshman began his exciting high school years in our living room, on a regular swiveling office chair. Intro to Business credits!

Our sophomore was already sitting at his computer screen, so he just shrugged and said, “whatever.”

California just couldn’t figure out how to get everyone back to actual school. I’m not even going to pretend to understand the decision-making processes being used, but as a logic and numbers guy I still maintain that it would have been safer for the kids to be required to return to school as long as no one was allowed to drive there.

I can’t thank California enough for all the fun shopping and family IT manager opportunities this has provided me. Laptops, Chromebooks, monitors, Wi-Fi extenders, printer ink and paper, keyboards, mice, desk pads, swivel office chairs, protective floor mats for under the swivel office chairs, white boards and pens, and the list goes on. What ever would I do with my time and money if it wasn’t for school at home? Probably just waste it on stuff like food and retirement savings.

Also, without this opportunity, I never would have known if I could convert a single-family home into a working office. Turns out I can’t. It really ended up being a crappy excuse for an office inside a home that now looks like a crappy office. Sweet!

And the increase in screen time has been just what the doctor ordered for my teenagers! Their gooey developing brains are just soaking in all the goodness, and it shows any time we pry them away from their devices. What caring, cooperative, and patient personalities this is breeding!

And let’s not forget about my delightful screen time increase. What a nifty collection of emails I’ve received in the last few weeks. Just a quick count in my Gmail shows eighty-four emails in the past two weeks, many of them containing links to videos. That’s six a day, including weekends. A big shout out to the superintendent, principals, assistant principals, counselors, teachers, librarians, athletic departments, coaches, food service staff, front office personnel, custodians, yard duties, crossing guards, student body presidents, and activities directors for cranking those out! I’ve never been more informed about the unprecedented-ness of our unique and challenging situation.

Happily, the schools have also provided me with something to fill my downtime between emails and videos. Gone are the days of simply hearing at dinner about how class is going from your child, and talking quarterly with their teacher. We now have so many more options, digitally, to stay engaged in real-time while they are actually learning during each day, just down the hall.

I’ve had the pleasure of creating accounts with a number of different online learning platforms used in a wide variety between the fifteen different classes I am now invited to keep up with, through helpful reminder emails, each day.

It’s a darn good thing that all the California parents like myself were able to quit their jobs and stay home to manage all this learning!

Maybe I’ll enroll in online school while I’m at it. Perhaps some IT and education classes? That would probably help tremendously in my new role as home school office IT manager.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. The Wi-Fi is down. Everyone just got kicked out of class.

See you soon,

-Smidge

 

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