This article was written by Jennifer Weiner, an education professor at the University of Connecticut. She explains why she refuses to follow the worksheets and detailed instructions for her twin sons. She recognizes that she is privileged as a person who has economic security, healthcare and is white. But there’s no reason to believe that children who lack her privileges need to be subjected to dull routine.
I read her article with pleasure, a welcome respite from the dire warnings issued by the test-and-punish crowd, by various bureaucrats, by think-tanks underwritten by the Gates Foundation, and many others who are certain that children’s brains will wither if they are not subjected daily to worksheets, test prep, and the holy tests themselves.
What happens if there is a respite in our academic Hunger Games? How will we know who will win and who will lose? This mother wants her children to have a timeout. I’m a grandmother now, but I suspect if my children were still in school, I would be in her camp. School is not a global race to the top. It should be a time to learn and explore and to find joy in reading, writing, thinking, and growing. What children miss most now is the personal contact with their teachers and the social interactions with other students. Jennifer Weiner reminds us that the NCLB pressure-cooker is unhealthy for all children, not just her own. When school resumes, we need to rethink the oppressive and pointless regime imposed on children by federal mandates and groupthink. It’s past time to rethink the status quo and place our faith in real education, students, and teachers, not tests and technology.
She writes:
Thanks to the coronavirus, my third-grade twins are home all day for the foreseeable future. I’m not going to recreate school for them.
Judge me all you want.
Out of respect for their amazing teachers, I’m making a good-faith effort to get my kids to do the work that’s been sent home, but that does not come anywhere close to filling what would have been a school day. After accomplishing the bare minimum, the agenda is to survive and watch too much TV. We are eating cookies and carbs and hoping for the best. We are loving one another and trying not to go insane.
When we got the call that our schools were closing, I knew I’d start seeing social media posts with home-schooling schedules and amazing and quite labor-intensive (for adults) activities for children.
My predictions were right: There have been color-coded home school charts with every minute scheduled, online resources on how to lead children through yoga and meditation, French lessons, and building their own rocket ships. Parents are sharing recipes with the right nutritional balance to enhance study productivity. Many have already begun to lament that they’re failing at meeting these new expectations.
I want to send a message to parents, and in particular to working moms, who will inevitably take on most of this home labor along with working remotely: This is going to be messy and that is OK.
I am not an expert in teaching third graders, particularly those like one of my sons, who has special needs and receives numerous services from talented professional educators every day to ensure he can thrive. We are so grateful to them and to our other son’s teachers and their patience, wisdom, and skill. We know that we don’t share these qualities.
I’m also not a parenting expert — a fact that would be clear if you met our wonderful but somewhat feral children. But I do know, from often painful firsthand experiences, that trying to turn mothering into a competitive sport is straight up unhealthy. It’s not a game I want to play.
My husband and I both work full time. Like so many others, we’re attempting to keep our family safe and fed during our state’s Covid-19 shutdown while simultaneously working to convince our boomer parents to practice social distancing, reaching out to other loved ones and friends and trying not to panic. Even when everything in our life is working the way it should, and with all the privileges we have — our solid health care, our economic stability, our whiteness — we often feel overwhelmed. So this pandemic felt like a bridge too far. We had to meet it head on: holding our breath, crossing our fingers. And not judging ourselves.
I’ve heard predictions from other parents about how this time without classroom instruction could lead to my kids (who, remember, are 8) falling behind so far that college will no longer be in their future. I hate to think of how parents who are preoccupied with worry about loss of income and how to provide food and shelter for their families feel.
They must be terrified their children will be unable to keep up as moms and dads with more flexibility, more security, or even full-time help talk about their aggressive at-home enrichment agendas for their little ones. Maybe this is the perfect time to call a timeout on the academic rat-race that was never healthy or fair in the first place.
Yes, we have embraced the need for some schedule, taking turns keeping an eye on the kids as they surf the internet to make sure whatever they are looking at is age-appropriate. (Of course, one of the boys wanted to learn about bombs.)
So far, we’ve seen them digging into mastodons, dwarf planets, the Mars rover and who made Legos and why. They’ve been reading a lot (mostly graphic novels and “Big Nate” books) because my kids were always avid readers and I don’t have to fight with them to do it. But there are no flash cards and no made-up projects to “enrich” them. We do not assign them essays or ensure their explorations are aligned with Common Core standards. There is no official “movement” or music time. We have not set up a makeshift classroom or given our family’s “school” a name.
We bake and have taste tests to see which cookie recipes are the best, because we like cookies and they are among the few things I know how to make. We walk and walk and walk. We eat together. We think about how lucky we are and try to help those who are more vulnerable and without our resources.
So far, the boys have played more video games and watched more television than they did during any given week before schools shut down. It keeps them busy while their dad and I try to finish our meetings before Zoom crashes.
We love each other, we yell, we apologize, we laugh, they punch each other, we yell some more, we make up. We live, we try to be compassionate and we hope this will all be a memory soon. And when it’s over, the schoolwork will be there.
“After accomplishing the bare minimum, the agenda is to survive and watch too much TV. We are eating cookies and carbs and hoping for the best.”
“…our wonderful but somewhat feral children.”
This woman sounds like someone after my own heart.
I figure if we get to the end of the day, everyone is alive, fed, housed and not in a straitjacket, I did a damn fine job.
First, I sympathize with this mom. I’m a teacher and I wish we didn’t have to give work during this period. But we do. Our schools are telling us we have to. We are getting paid. That said, many schools will be going to pass/fail for the last quarter. I think teachers will give students every chance to pass as long as some work is getting done. Teachers know they can’t do online what they do in person. We know we will have to reteach everything we “taught” on the computer (at least I will). We know students will have various issues and we will work with students however we can. It will be ok. It will. Your children will be able to get into a college. I say embrace this time in your life as much as you can if you are staying home. Eat, play, exercise, meditate, read, hug each other more. You are being given a GIFT by the universe in some ways. Yes, do enough to pass your classes but also look on this an opportunity. I am grateful in so many ways for this time to be home with my husband and cat. There are challenges but I see it as a gift. I’m doing things I’ve wanted to do for a long time. I’m learning a lot about online “teaching.” I am grateful for what I have and the opportunity to enjoy it. I often think of previous generations. They had to go to war far away and leave their families. We are called to stay at home to fight this war. What a gift in so many ways. And remember, when you can’t go outside, go INSIDE. 🙂
I start by asking for forgiveness for my “weak English” and that I need -a little- the virtual translator.
I am a private school teacher with a social perspective (low socio-economic families), but our difficulty is that our audience DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS to sufficient technological means for distance learning. They also have no residential space to live in confines.
At this time, I raise my hands to God, asking that Paulo Freire be with him and can help us. Amen!
Nice! And parents? This mom has the right idea (in my not even slightly humble opinion).
“a respite in our academic hunger games”
Fell off my chair laughing. That’s wonderful.
Me too.
“Distance learning” is the ultimate oxymoron as there is an indirect relationship between student effort and their proximity to their teacher and classroom. We are doing the best we can under the circumstances – and we are well aware of the very creative ways that our 7 – 12 students will use to “collaborate” with their friends in completing our assignments.
Ha! Yes. Speaking the forbidden truths, as always!
Every secondary student has a built in switching system in their school brain that controls their effort and compliance. Here are a few of the traditional triggers:
“I didn’t put this this on the test, but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t know it.”
“This reading is optional, but I highly recommend it.”
“Everything counts, but no, I won’t be giving you a formal grade for this.”
“This assignment is quite challenging, but you’ll earn some extra credit if you complete it.”
“Sub! We have a sub in math today!”
Here’s the new one:
“Your login time for Social Studies is 9:00 am.”
I have a weekend job where I work with an interesting mix of upper end MS and HS students. I had a chance to chat, very informally and openly, about their “collaborative” efforts in distance learning. They were more than eager (even proud) to describe how they were working with friends to create a shared “path of least resistance”. Many of them pull this stuff off in their classrooms and with regular homework, Distance learning was no challenge at all. The move to cyberspace was literally a dream come true for them.
Great resources for why multiple choice tests and worksheets are useless in understanding what readers can do.
It gives you suggestions on what to do with your readers.
This link is for parents and everyone else.
https://drive.google.com/file/d/18j-klZ1icehgNV61Lg5PdgjTXa3WzK6f/view?fbclid=IwAR10gpMRoXmKIGYrupNr2AUKIK6owfY-DcThqCm75T0k0KMSCmvEfcbmDkQ
This one is for teachers.
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1F1OtGbYD8GJFvWVSY2mpcaijMswVMKHm/edit?fbclid=IwAR2xkxNyrSG7rFyQyZb1jvjNBbs4g7qpgPuLbIDCearJPQq0-IczbUhGJnQ#
Remote learning for the children provokes strong response worldwide.
Wow. I’m glad I already “dialed it down” for my students.
Now if I could just stop annoying my family with all my positive energy, ha, ha. (My “let’s make a family video that might go viral” got…blank stares. And, no, I am not and have never been “on meth”, as a loved one put it.)
After a single “survey” conducted by one charter promoting ed reform org, ed reformers have all concluded that charter and private schools are better than public schools at handling this crisis:
https://www.the74million.org/article/analysis-how-18-top-charter-school-networks-are-adapting-to-online-education-and-what-other-schools-can-learn-from-them/
Why bother with the survey? The conclusion was pre-ordained.
Surely public schools have better things to do than respond to surveys that are only going to be used to promote an anti-public school narrative anyway.
It’s tough. Really tough. Most of my school day was spent with 12th graders. What a crazy end to their senior year.
There are students who the last thing they want to hear from is me. Me and whatever work I might be dragging behind me, even if I don’t mention it. I get that. Most of these kids had their own online worlds long before we adults started trying to reinvent the classroom for them in some distant computers. I feel like an intruder sometimes.
And, then there are students who are so glad to hear from me. An hour or so ago I climbed up the hill above our house to see if I could get cell service. The phone went in and out. Was it the clouds? My own straying thoughts? The fields are golden up there…it was absolutely empty except for the cold wind and the brighter, April sun. I reached one student. “I miss school,” he said. It was nice to hear his actual voice.
I have to admit I’m starting to really hate the internet.
Love it.
Yes, many of my students WANT to do work and want to learn. They want to hear from me and have me create the most engaging learning opportunities that I can. They want to have a chance to talk about their feelings on our discussion boards. They want to challenge themselves, with my guidance. They want to be creative and be able to process their thoughts and experiences.
I am creating assignments that are not just worksheets. I have found ways for students to grow and learn. It’s certainly not easy to figure this out, but it’s making me a better teacher.
The author of the above article, a mother of the eight-year-old twins, has some good points, but the high school experience may be different than the elementary experience. Some of our high school students are bored and eager to connect and to learn. They can also be more self-directed.
Here’s an example of how we are digging in to current events and making connections with the past: Our next assignment will be a Definition Mode paper: Define “Dictator,” looking at historic and current examples.
This is an amazing time to be a teacher and a learner.
Reading this post, I thought back to my childhood. After my mother and 1st-grade teacher taught me to read (after admin experts told them I was too retarded to learn to read and write) and I became an avid reader, I was mostly self-taught from the books I read.
Even in high school, I did just enough schoolwork to earn passing grades and spent all of the time I wasn’t doing school work reading books. Most days, I managed to read two books a day while ignoring the assignments in the “BORING” textbooks that I was not interested in.
After high school, I joined the Marines and ended up in Vietnam and when I wasn’t in the field being shot at with rockets, mortar shells, and bullets, I’d read books that my mother mailed to me.
After the Marines, I went to college on the GI Bill. The community college where I started had me take a test (probably because my high school transcripts revealed that my GPA at graduation was 0.95) to prove I could read.
My literacy score was so high, they had me take a second one, and I wasn’t required to take any remedial classes known as bone head English.
That literacy score did not come from all the K-12 schoolwork I did not do as a child. It came from reading thousands of books staring at age seven that were mysteries, thrillers, science fiction, fantasy, and historical fiction. I read a lot of historical fiction and learned about the world from those books.
Aren’t books wonderful?!
Without books, the world would be Death Valley in the middle of July. Summer temperatures often top 120°F (49°C) in the shade with overnight lows dipping into the 90s°F (mid-30s°C.)
Well said. Wow.
I agree completely, but want to make again one point because everyone seems to be ignoring it. What she is describing is NOT homeschooling. If her kids are checking in with a teacher, THEY are doing the schooling.
And I wish someone would tell the parents at my competitive high school that yes, your kids will still get into college.
Beautifully written… and so relatable… Thanks, Diane, for posting. And thanks to Jennifer Weiner for sharing.