By now, a large number of American families are navigating what many are referring to as “Quarantine School.” Chromebooks and Ipads clutter the tables of families across the nation as parents scramble to help their children with schoolwork while many parents are for the first time ever being faced with working from home.
Crafting distance learning classrooms out of a brick and mortar class has been a challenge for every school educator I know. This time of upheaval and great change in our children’s education is difficult for everyone involved: teachers, administrators, parents, and most of all our students. But as a veteran homeschool mom, there’s one thing I want to clear up: quarantine school is not homeschool.
Homeschool Families Go Places
Quarantine school is out of necessity. We can’t leave our homes, so we have to make school come to us. The easiest way to do that is through technology. Laptops, tablets, and Google Classroom are keeping children indoors and tied to their devices. This is not at all what actual homeschool is like for homeschool students.
Homeschool families go places. They take field trips. They spend time learning in their communities. Homeschool families are not confined to their homes without interaction from the outside world. Quarantine has forced all students to adjust to a new way of learning, and homeschool families are suffering alongside all the public schoolers.
Our typical week includes trips to the library, sporting events, and other places in the community. We aren’t locked up at home every day like some may think; we run errands and teach our children important life skills while we are out and about. Homeschool families do not like quarantine school any more than the rest of the world!
Homeschool Families Interact Socially
Homeschool families, like all families, interact with other people in our neighborhoods and communities. We meet up for playdates and explore parks and zoos together. We attend a homeschool co-op each week where my children hang out with their friends while learning together.
My children are sad that all these things have been taken away from us. My children take swim lessons (and more) at the YMCA, play baseball with our community teams, and my youngest son even attended public preschool (more on that later). We don’t live an isolated existence.
Quarantine school has taken social interaction away from all of us. My kids long to ride bikes with their friends from our neighborhood and return to their co-op to sing and play with their peers. Quarantine school is not the same, even for homeschool families.
Homeschool Is Not Just School At Home
Homeschool isn’t quarantine school because we CHOOSE to homeschool. We choose to take our kids out into the world with us, to instruct them at home. We choose when to stay home, when to go out, what subjects we will study each day, and how to navigate life while educating our precious children. Some of these things have been taken away from us, too.
Quarantine School is Not Any of That
Quarantine school is the best alternative to people who have lost their brick and mortar schools to the pandemic right now. It is stressful and difficult because it is a desperate attempt to teach children in a new way with about five minutes of prep time before it was sprung on teachers. I can not imagine being a public school teacher and trying to navigate this right now. Teaching preschoolers and early elementary through Zoom meetings is the actual opposite of learning goals for children that age: learning to interact appropriately with peers, learn through play, etc. But now educators are left with very few options. And certainly a feeling of duty to their students that likely won’t disappear overnight.
So what I am asking of you? Don’t get this hot mess that is quarantine school confused with actual homeschool. Everyone is going through a trauma right now: a trauma to our way of life. I have been home for 50 days now. 50. It has been an experience for me that I won’t soon forget, and I am certain our children won’t either.
So when you’re busy with quarantine school, don’t let it cloud your ideas about homeschool. When a family chooses to homeschool and has the ability to safely and freely explore our world, homeschool is a freeing experience. Quarantine school and quarantine homeschool feels anything but free right now, am I right?
If you’re interested in learning more about homeschool, hop over here and here to learn my first steps to get started!
How are your children coping with the pandemic? I’d love to hear how other families are doing. Really doing. Not just the Instagram version 😉
