The category I want to focus on is how pandemics are affecting children. For this week’s post, I want to focus on the education aspect and how schools are transitioning to online learning. This will be Part 1 of 2 focusing on education. For this first part, this will primarily focus on a first-hand account of how my 6- and 8-year-old sisters are adjusting to online learning. For context, my sisters attend a relatively well-funded public school in a suburb of San Diego, California.
Over the past few years, I’ve had a few moments where I will tell my parents about a memory I have from when I was younger, and my parents will laugh and then tell me the real context of the story. Looking back, I realized that many of the (more negative) childhood experiences were censored and it is interesting to see how my two younger sisters are experiencing the pandemic now. I remember during the 2008 California wildfires I was only 8 or 9 at the time when we had to evacuate our homes. At the time, I knew that we had to leave our home because of wildfires, as I could visibly see smoke from my house, but my parents tried to downplay the severity of the experience. I, in fact, remember it as a relatively positive experience, as my parents sold me on the fact that we were going camping (and we did in fact stay in tents) and some of our neighbors joined us, so we all just played together.
To give some context, I have two younger sisters, 6 and 8, and in kindergarten and third grade respectively. They both go to a new concept school, a K-8 school where technology is heavily integrated into their education. I had a pretty traditional public-school education compared to my sisters. At my sisters’ age, we rarely used electronics and even then when I did, it was going to a computer lab to learn typing. At my sisters’ school, they start using iPads when they are in kindergarten and get school-issued iPads to take home. While they do recieve teacher instruction, they are encouraged to learn at their own pace, they take coding classes, and have no homework. Over the past few years, there has been increasing concern from parents over the technology use, but in this particular situation, their school was much more prepared for online learning than some of the other schools in the school district.
When I first heard of their school closure, I had no idea how their learning would be moved online, particularly my 6-year-old sisters’ learning as she is in kindergarten. Both of their classes had to be restructured for online learning, but many of the apps, they were already using prior to school closure. While no work is mandatory, they have both stated that so far, every student has participated in one way or another. They both use various apps for their learning. They mainly use an app called Seesaw, which is sort of a combination of Moodle and Facebook, where they can view asignments and post updates. The other day we all made a cake and my 6-year-old sister posted it and her teacher liked it. To name off some other apps they use, there is Freckle (an app that teaches math and ELA), EPIC (an online reading app), Flip Grid (a morning check-in app where students can post videos answering a question), and Google Suite (Docs, Slides, Sites). The older one has an unpulibshed blog on Google Sites where she shares her learning. I asked them if they found it overwhelming to use so many apps, but they said no, that they are used to it.
While their teachers have given suggestions for schedules, most of their learning is self-guided, and it’s interesting seeing the different ways they are mixing up learning. Just this morning, as I was walking by as my 8-year-old sister was in a Zoom class and her teacher was leading a cooking class. As for my 6-year-old sister, they have daily morning “Coffee Chat” check-ins, where her teacher will jump in on a 30-min check-in session. She will ask all the kids how they are doing, what they find exciting about being home (my sister, who loves being in school said “nothing”). All the kids are talking over each other, many are still in pajamas, and siblings and pets join in.
When I asked my sisters about their transition to online learning and their experience with coronavirus in the days leading up to school closure, they said that the transition has been pretty easy, but they miss the structure of school and being able to interact with friends. Their teachers had both mentioned coronavirus to some degree or another before school closure. My 8-year-old sister said her teacher had reminded them to wash their hands after playing, before eating, after eating, after coughing or sneezing, and basically every chance they could get. They also started informal no-touch and no-food sharing policies. Both of them noticed that the number of students absent from their class was greater than usual–it would vary from 3-5 students in a class of 25 each day in the week leading up to school closure. Aside from being told that coronavirus could get you sick, they weren’t told much more. Interestingly, when I asked the 8-year-old what she knew about coronavirus, she said that she heard me talking about it being compared to the Spanish flu (during a Zoom class) and read that 1/3 of the population had it. I suspect she Googled it on her own.
The lack of nation-wide or even state-wide consenus earlier on put a lot of the burden on parents to decide what to do with their kids. I had discussed pulling my sisters out of class with my parents when I came back home (on a Monday) and again when Wesleyan closed (on a Wednesday) as their school did not close until that Friday. However, with 2 elementary-school kids, having them home is a really disruptive process. At such a young age, it requires a great deal of active parenting. For my parents, that, combined with the added pressure of having to work (remotely) was what kept them from pulllng my sisters out before the school mandate. This is certainly a catch-22; another day in school could mean possible exposure to coronavirus for the kids and other family members, but pulling kids out ahead of time is not a small burden for working parents.
At this point, I must recognize the privilege my sisters have to attend a well-funded public school, where the technology is widely available to transition to online learning and the internet to use this technology. They have adjusted relatively well to learning from home, given that their school was already heavily technology-focused. I know this is not the case across the board, and I hope to explore some of the challenges of online learning for children in my next blog plot.
Update 3/29/2020: My 6-year-old sister said she hasn’t been feeling well recently. There is the visible symptom, the coughing. But also some more ambiguous ones. She said that her ears hurt and that she’s tired. My dad is worried that she has coronavirus and we tried to isolate her in her room, but keeping a child alone in a room, particularly a room she shares with her sister, is not that easy. The day has been filled with constant reminders for them to stay 6 feet apart, to cough in her sleeve, to wash her hands. Updates to come.