Coronavirus Homeschooling

Today I went to the school where I teach to help with Chromebook distribution. This was our third attempt to get devices out to every student. Teachers are trying to teach remotely, while completing district trainings via webinar about how to teach remotely.

While the school district in which I live has announced that school will be closed for the rest of this school year, as have several other districts in California, the school district next door (the district in which I teach) has not made it official.

At home, I'm trying to teach elementary school children as their Computer Lab teacher, which one would think would be the easiest subject to teach via computer, but it's not. So far, only 11 students have enrolled in my Google Classroom. (I'm supposed to have four classes of 5th graders this quarter.) I'm also trying to finish the school yearbook, complete daily online trainings, provide daily online resources to parents, and email teachers and parents about various Chromebook/email/password/program issues they're having. I'm doing this from my "home office," which is a space between the clothes hamper and the hot water heater in what is basically the mud-room of our apartment. I'm also doing this while homeschooling my own child because, well, we all do that now.

But we were homeschoolers before Corona.

In talking to "schooler" parents, the thing that resonates with me most is that these "sudden homeschoolers" are being made to be managers of their children, as opposed to co-learners. One of my favorite things about homeschooling is that I get to learn with Gemma.

The past couple of days, we've learned so many things.

Here are three:

• Marco Polo. We find places mentioned in our atlas, and search images. This week, we searched Zhangye and discovered China's Rainbow Mountains. That led to the question of why the mountains look the way they do, which led to me looking up and reading aloud an article about the mineralogical processes that give the mountains their beauty.
• Lewis Carroll's epic poem The Hunting of the Snark, one section per day, for eight days. It's a nonsense poem, but according to the trusty source Wikipedia, Carroll agreed with the interpretation that the poem was an allegory for the search for happiness.
• The Tempest. We're reading one scene per week, and have just read the part where Ferdinand and Miranda profess their love for each other, while Prospero looks on, knowing that all is going according to his plan.