Sending our kids to public school has always been an intentional decision. From the beginning, we wanted our kids around the diversity of our community. This year, public school looks different than it has in the past. With COVID-19 still a real and present danger, our local public school offered, along with in-person traditional school, a virtual option. We had a decision to make.
Our family talked about our privileges and even what we could sacrifice for the greater good of our community. We started with our privileges. As a pastor, much of my work during the week is study, preparation, correspondence, and administrative work. This used to happen in my office, but it can easily be shifted to home. In fifth and seventh grades, my children are old enough to work without me reading instructions and guiding them at every step. They also do not have the needs of many of their peers for extra attention from their teachers. And we have really good internet.
Then there was the greater good for our community part. Attending virtually would take one less contact out of the school. Through my work at the church, if we brought home COVID from school, we could potentially infect other school systems. We could infect the elderly at church and their families and grandchildren as well. By staying home, we can break a lot of potential infection chains.
Were we willing to sacrifice seeing friends everyday? Learning being potentially more challenging? Were we will to take the extra responsibility of being where we needed to be online everyday? Were my husband and I willing to have our work interrupted during school hours because...kids? Was our sacrifice worth what would be gained by us and our community? The best thing we could do for our community, our church, our school was to stay home. Because we can.
We have been doing virtual school through our public school system for a week and half now and it's going way better than I had expected. Our school had not given us much on the way of how this would logistically work. We were just told to plan on being "in class" during normal school hours. While not having more details was annoying on our part, it allowed teachers flexibility to do what works best for them. I think it was really smart for our school system to trust its teachers and not do a one-size-fits-all approach. It also means school looks different for both of our kids.
Our fifth grader is still in elementary school. His grade has 22 virtual students, and they are all grouped together into one class. His teacher's full attention is devoted to virtual students. She connects the kids virtually to specialty teachers like gym, art, music, etc. She quiets the room by asking her students to mute and requires them to have their video on so she can be sure they are in class. They raise their hands by putting ? in the chat. They are learning a lot...and not just about reading and math.
Our seventh grader is in middle school. She logs into in-person classes with a video set up 8 periods a day. Teachers are intentional about checking in with their virtual students to make sure they don't have questions before dismissing them. All of her books are online.
Deciding what to do is different for every family. School options are different for every school system. This is our story of how we came to virtual learning and how it is going so far. If hearing our story can help other families wrestling with what to do or other schools still making these decisions, it's worth sharing. There are still things we are figuring out, but I have a feeling this is going to be a good school year.
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