Schooling Amid a Pandemic

I was sitting on my front porch and drinking my second (at least) cup of coffee. The morning was cool so far, but it wouldn't last. Spring feels like summer in Florida, with the unrelenting sun but beautiful blue skies. Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed something move in the dirt maybe a foot from the porch. I leaned forward to look closer and noticed a small turtle. Quickly, I pushed through the front door and called out to my kids, a kindergartener and a fifth grader: “Do you want to see a turtle?” Of course, they did. We've been sheltering in place for a while now. The spread of COVID-19 impacted not only higher ed but also K–12 schools. To flatten the curve of this virus, K–12 schools had to pivot to online or remote learning with very little notice. Teachers had to figure out how to create assignments to be completed at home and how to stay in touch with their students. How do you teach pre-K or kindergarten solely online? (You can't really.) How do you teach students who have limited access to technology or the internet? How do students and parents manage a shift from face-to-face classrooms to doing schoolwork at home? The same problems exist for higher ed and K–12 schools. Early on into the stay-at-home recommendation, my partner and I incorporated academics into my children's days. We've used educational apps, in math and reading, available through their school's respective Focus portals and Scholastic's daily lessons. My kids have been creating canvases with octopuses and rainbows, drawings of their family members and painted rocks that look like the night sky or galaxies of stars or planets. They've picked things they want to learn about each day, like the life cycles of frogs. They've been reading and reading. Then there are the at-home assignments from their schools, which include worksheet after worksheet. Our county's school district relied on paper packets because of the spotty access to the internet. We are all adjusting to life during a pandemic. It's a lot to ask of students and parents. Everyone is stressed, and I can only imagine the stress college students and professors are under in these uncertain times. Unsurprisingly, I'm stressed about balancing at-home schooling of two kids while also covering COVID-19's impact on higher ed for two magazines. I'm stressed about the pandemic. Full stop. “That's the communicative property,” my older kid said about one of her math problems in an app. I have no idea what the communicative property is. (Thank goodness for Google.) This isn't home schooling; it's crisis schooling. I'm trying not to panic. I'm not an elementary school educator. I can't replace the four teachers they have in total. It's not possible. Their teachers' knowledge, training and experience far surpass mine. They're teaching them competencies I mostly can't identify. I'm someone with a background in education who is freaking out, so I can easily imagine the panic that other parents feel or that their children, students, feel about our current arrangement. This isn't home schooling; it's crisis schooling. I'm trying not to panic. So, back to the turtle. My kids dashed out of the house to see the turtle, who they promptly named “Grassy.” As they crept closer and closer to Grassy, I asked, “Would you like to know what kind of turtle this is?” A quick internet search turned up that Grassy was a Florida box turtle. We learned that we could identify the sex of the turtle by the color of its eyes. Since Grassy's eyes were brown, not orange or red, we learned that she was a female turtle. We also learned that this turtle primarily eats insects, 60% of her diet, and prefers berries and mushrooms to grass. We learned that you can sort of estimate the turtle's age by looking at its shell, and that it is illegal in Florida to make a wild box turtle a pet. We learned that this kind of turtle is an excellent climber that likes to sun and only lay in the water rather than swim. We learned more about Florida box turtles than we knew before. They encountered the turtle, made guesses (hypotheses) about it and did research to figure out things we didn't know before. As both kids followed Grassy around our yard, I realized that while I can't replace their teachers, I can teach them. I can. And we're learning together through encounter and experience. We're still learning, even in a crisis. That's enough for right now.