Life in lockdown: new homeschooling reality

As another Monday rolls around I can’t help but get a little anxious about having to put on the “Teacher’s Hat” again. The idea of becoming your kids’ full-time teacher (not to mention the various other domestic tasks you have to be on top of during the lockdown), I have to say, is not so appealing to me! I was never really good at mentoring the interns back when I was working in banking, nor did I have the patience to describe how a financial product worked to a junior. It was a cut-throat environment where the smart kids got it straight away, and the ones that didn’t quickly got left in the dust.

 

Anastasia is wearing a dress by Charabia and George’s outfit is by Pepa&Co

 

But it’s my kids, I keep telling myself, and the school syllabus is not going to get done if I don’t put in the effort. I have to remain warm, caring, and endlessly patient it seems. Guided by Google Classroom, last week I got straight to work on a detailed plan for the children’s schooling. Feeling rather pleased with myself, I scheduled allotted times for the kids to interact online with their teachers, read, practice maths, and of course I made space for science and arts. In my head it was perfect time management. Of course the reality was quite different.

 

 

Google Classrooms may be a great idea, but my five-year-old quickly lost patience with the computer – he wanted to go out to the garden and look at bugs… and can you blame him? Similarly, my seven-year-old didn’t last much longer. At the end of each lesson I had to double over everything that was said again, then follow this with her homework assignments. It wasn’t long before we were so far off my perfect plan for time management that I realised the timetable needed to be scrapped altogether. For a person who is used to being driven by results and achievements I felt I was failing miserably as both a teacher and a parent. Most of my allocated time was spent convincing them just to do some work, telling them off for losing concentration, then trying to motivate them again – by which point my energy levels and my motivation had all but dried up too.

 

I realise I’m not alone on this and there are so many other mummies (pulling their hair out in Whatsapp groups) in the same situation. Nobody asked for the pandemic, and we can’t all expect to be great teachers overnight. I guess we all have to take a step back and realise what is important.

 

Be really clear about those things are, write them down, because these are the things that will drive everything forward. For me, I had to reassess what success meant entirely – because if you don’t know how to spot it then you are never going to be able to reward it, which is demotivating both for you and your children. I am slowly coming to terms with rewarding effort and not outcome.

 

Once you’ve worked out your measure of success, you can establish a reward system. Perhaps curiosity, determination and organisation are indicators of some effort that your child should be praised for – whether or not they are keeping up with the syllabus. We must remember that our children are also experiencing anxiety and missing their friends and their regular routines. They may not even be able to explain these worries to you.

 

Sure, home schooling has been chaotic and challenging and no doubt it will continue like this. But if we ground ourselves and stay calm hopefully we will all realise what’s really important to us. Simple things like having the whole family at the dinner table, playing, creating and laughing together, each family member growing as an individual as we also form unique bonds. Surely these are also vital lessons that will carry them through life.
 

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