Not Homeschooling; Crisis Schooling

When the whole quarantine began, everyone just assumed it would be like an extended spring break.  The teachers didn't even plan to take home the classroom fish tanks!  They just put in some vacation feeders and figured they'd be fine.  I insisted on taking Mrs. Gezagehn's fish home on day one and I'm so glad I did!!  Since all the teachers figured it was just an extended break, no one made any plans to teach or prepare work for the kids.  I ran into Benjamin's science teacher at the library on the last day they were open and she had a stack of novels higher than she was tall in preparation for all her new-found free time.  I decided to immediately jump into summer school/home school mode.  I pulled up my files and calendars and curriculum that I've been using since the kids were tiny and started setting up a learning and chore schedule.  After a few days of working out the kinks, we had a system going and things were moving along great.  The kids had their work in the morning and mostly finished by around lunch and we had the rest of the day to play and enjoy.  This went on for 5 weeks.  Those were some really golden weeks.  Then Gov. Whitmer shut down the schools completely and required all the districts to come up with a plan to continue to educate the kids.  Suddenly the teachers were required to get back to teaching.  Suddenly there were zoom conferences, google classroom links and mountains of information to sort through.  Each child had online meetings at different times with different teachers, dozens of different websites that needed to be accessed and hundreds of different assignments that all needed to be completed at home and digitally submitted.  It made my head spin and I couldn't figure it all out.  We hit a major emotional wall.  Everyone was crabby that first week of crisis schooling.  Eventually, over the next couple weeks. we found ways to whittle down the meetings to essential ones, got good at navigating google classroom and zoom and the other most-used sites, and we figured out a new routine that worked best for us wherein we got the work done and still had time to play.  It also allowed us to continue some of our favorite elements from my home school system.  One of these is the weekly research project.  Rather than lecture the kids on my favorite topics -history and science - I decided to let them pick what interested them and each week present what they learned.  They had to chose their topic and state their focus on Monday, research T-Th, and then present it on Friday.  It alternated between being a paper, a slide presentation, an online trivia game, or a hands-on demonstration.  It has been a blast and so educational!  I grade them on a scale of 1-100 and anyone getting over a 90 gets an additional 20 minutes screentime on Saturday.  There have been projects on making croissants, caligraphy, how to write a good story, how is electricity generated, how are cheerios made, how does the body generate energy, how is lightning produced, does making a trampoline wet make it slipperier, how to make soap and how it kills germs, how to harmonize music, how to draw people better, how do the tides work, laminar flow, how to take a good photograph, how does an internal combustion engine work and who invented it, etc.  It's been impressive to see how their work has improved over the weeks, how much fun they're having researching, and how much we're all learning as a result.  I require credible sources, written articles in addition to video sources, correct grammar and spelling, clear, organized writing, and if presented orally, good enunciation and eye contact.

In addition to the research projects, I've actually really enjoyed working with the kids on their school work.  I hated sending them to school for 7 hours and having only a cursury knowledge of what they were studying and learning all that time.  Now I know everything their teachers are trying to teach and I get to have a hand in helping them learn it.  I've loved going over potential and kinetic energy with Christian and doing a project about roller coasters.  I've loved studying the French and Indian war and helping Bella write a paper about how that war led the to Revolutionary War.  I'm getting to study my favorite things and help my kids at the same time.  I'm able to be the fun, helpful parent while the teachers get the grumbles when an assignment isn't to their liking.  It's been harder than homeschooling in some ways because it's more like being a substiatute teacher trying to decipeher the real teacher's lesson plans and helping the kids through someting you didn't set up.  However, it's easier than homewshooling because I don't have to design the plan.  The teachers have been very hard working and understanding.  I ahve been really pleased by their efforts and dedication.  Mrs. Macek, Bella's teacher, even came by the house to drop off a gift and say hi (from a safe distance).  She did this for every student in her class - all 26 kids

We also have German lessons every lunch and I still assign dictations and supplementary math lessons most days.  The kids also have piano and chores.  Otherwise, we have plenty of time for play and outdoor fun.  Unless you're Benjamin.  He liked to "reward" himself frequently for doing his work by playing around on his phone and laptop and so his work takes nearly all day sometimes.  To be fair, he has a lot more to start with, but it's unclear to me how fast he could really get it done if he just did schoolwork exclusively.  I'm guessing hours earlier.  However, he always gets it all done in plenty of time and has been doing quite well.  I'm proud of him and his maturity on that front.  Christian's school load is so small that he finishes the whole week's worth on Monday each week and works exclusively on my assignments the rest of the week.

I think the only thing that worries me about all this is what school will look like in the fall.  All this time I'd just assumed this was s short-term thing.  But now that it's dragging on and on, I"m starting to get edgy and worried.  Benjamin got into the MSC program at Churchill High school.  It's a wonderful, exclusive advanced program and I really want him to be able to participate fully and enjoy it and learn a lot but I'm worried that the program will look very , very different next year than in previous years.  I hope he still gets to do all the things he was looking forward to, such as marching band.  Also, Bella was going to be starting middle school.  Will she be wearing a mask every day at her new school?  Will she have to try to make new friends while being socially distanced?  How will that work?  I'm worried for my cuties.  Also, I was really looking forward to starting library story times, mommy and me music classes, and lots of playground trips with Peter starting in the fall when he's walking and older.  Now I'm not sure any of that will be available!  All those wonderful things I so adored with my others may not be possible.  We may just be sitting at home just like we are now.  That would be so sad.  I feel like those were so beneficial to the kids.  Anyway, I guess as this business drags on, I'm becoming increasingly worried and upset.  I cannot continue to wear this awful mask every where I go!  I hate it!

Here's what it looks like when they kids take a break from school work and play their favorite game together, Zombs Royale.