Now that many thousands of schools have closed, millions of parents have suddenly become responsible for home schooling their child or children.
Sam Chaltain offers some sound suggestions.
He calls it “A Parent Guide to Home-Schooling During the Apocalypse.”
Diane Ravitch's blog 
Families with books in the home are fortunate.
It’s officially called “Distance/On-Line Learning” or “Remote Instruction” Homeschooling implies a different connotation.
Now that schools have closed, parents have suddenly become responsible for their
child or children, as they do when school’s out for the summer. They seem to survive
during the summer break, spring break, and holidays. What stands in the way of
the survival methods used during the “traditional” breaks?
Most parents rely on some form of summer camp. No such things are available right now. Grandparents are also not a wise choice.
dienne 77 I beg your pardon!!!
We Face Time our grandchildren – for those who have an Echo View, we engage in conversation. I give them ideas for writing poetry. I suggested writing a poem a day and making a booklet of their poems. At the end of the week I asked them to send me their favorite poem and I would post them. My grandson in fifth sent me two already. There are countless books on line to read or listen to. For our granddaughter in pre-school we asked her if she would draw a picture for us and then have her father or mother send it to us via the Internet. Before we ended our conversation she zoomed away to gather her crayons and paper to draw a picture for us. Fun ideas in every area are countless.
Wonderful ideas if you are also aware that these are fraimed around a host of assumptons about life at “home”…including, as Yvonne notes, books in the home.
I just ran across this set of posts about the hazards of working at home, especially with video conferencing.
https://www.fastcompany.com/90478967/farts-cats-naked-bodies-people-are-failing-hilariously-at-working-from-home?utm_campaign=eem524%3A524%3As00%3A20200319_fc&utm_medium=Compass&utm_source=newsletter
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It’s a really nice essay but the parents here are absolutely terrified- not of schooling their children at home but of losing their jobs and homes. We are looking at tens of thousands of lay offs virtually overnight. There’s no precedent for this- people are really scared. They have no sick leave, no savings, no cushion of any kind and there are now 6 hour waits on the unemployment application telephone line- they all gave up on using the online application.
We are going to have tens of thousands of parents with no income at all here shortly. In about a week the food banks will be overrun. These are not people with credit cards- they will just be flat broke. I hope the state of Ohio has some plan for this because the federal government is failing, utterly.
In the 2009 crash unemployment was about 15% here- very high, a lot of misery. This one could be 50% abruptly thrown out of work in places like where I live.
In 2 weeks this is going to be really bad. They won’t be worrying about homeschooling. They’re going to be worried about surviving.
Exactly.
They should do some emergency measure with food stamps. I just don’t get the sense that anyone in government has any understanding of how close to the edge a lot of people live. They can’t go two weeks without income, especially if all their extended family and neighbors ALSO have no income.
I’m watching the US Senate diddle around and they’re just clueless. Get it DONE. It’s an emergency. They’re not going to be able to parent these kids properly if they’re panicking about running out of food and gasoline.
This is why we shouldn’t fill government with billionaires and millionaires- they no longer understand the people they serve.
My son-in-law had just started a new business which was showing signs of real promise for the past two weeks. Now the factories he services in Texas are all closed. It is a time of great uncertainty about the future for all of us..
Here’s one parent’s reaction to distance learning:
Exactly.
While some children will respond to this laissez faire type of education (think Summer Hill), others respond better to some sort of structure.
My one daughter is actually working all day (albeit from home), but her son is an independent learner and is whipping through the assignments and apps (the teacher has been in touch to check in). My grandson’s issue is not the school work but the socialization since he is on the spectrum. That is why the entire family (2 adults, one teen, and nine year old Mason) has started a running game of Monopoly.
My school-age grandchildren told their parents that they want a daily schedule. Like school.
My daughter-in-law proposed a time consuming project – the Family Tree. Regardless how far back one goes it involves history, geography, writing, math, science as well as music and the arts.
Before schools were shut down, one grandson was studying Lewis and Clarks’ Expedition – a perfect starting point. One family branch took him to the a spot near the Missouri River where Lewis and Clark camped for a few days. It introduced him to his ancestor’s mode of travel when they first arrived in the US one of which was the Saratoga wagons. It introduced him to the Homestead Act which offered free land to settlers if they promised to live on the land, build a home, make improvements and farm for five years. It exposed him to the tension between the Indians and the white man who tried to push the Indian’s off their land .and how tension resorted into sculpting and kidnapping. History was recorded in the first newspapers printed and preserved.
Personal stories are countless.
Besides the German history focusing on the German Christians, another branch introduced him to the German Jews not only the struggle and suffering in Germany but the struggle to survive in the States. Another branch took them the Hungarian roots as well as the Italian roots. Countless personal stories along each branch.
Regardless of the branch one follows all involve geography, history, science, math, music … After all survival involved countless aspects of science and math- inventions of all kinds.
We are looking at tens of thousands of lay offs virtually overnight. There’s no precedent for this- people are really scared. They have no sick leave, no savings, no cushion of any kind and there are now 6 hour waits on the unemployment application telephone line- they all gave up on using the online application. https://fakazaok.com/makhadzi-mashaka/
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Today a friend sent me information on a company named Edmentum- learning at home during this crucial time. The company offers learning programs for at home during this school shut down for K -12. The company advertizes,
“If you are looking for resources to help you plan for and execute e-learning days, for a short or extended period of time, designed to keep students on-track and learning from home, check out our School Closure Resource Page.”
https://www.edmentum.com/support2020