By Pat Brown
Contributing Writer
The need for social distancing has put parents on the front line in their students’ educational pursuits since Gov. Ralph Northam closed schools for the rest of the school year.
Robin Kaufman of Christiansburg said she’s grateful to see learning continue so that “there’s one less thing falling apart” as COVID-19 upends normalcy across the nation.
She says her fifth grader, Vivian, expressed some frustration in the past with computer lessons, but these days she has no choice. Kaufman’s children attend Falling Branch Elementary School.
Chromebooks, computers used in classrooms, were sent home with students in grades 3 through 12 when schools closed.
Younger brother Joel is in third grade. Kaufman said his teacher has given a lot of feedback to her students and has offered to hold telephone conferences with parents.
“Our system really has done an amazing job,” said Kaufman. She said emails filled with schedules, school lunch announcements and all sorts of helpful information are being generated at the school board office almost daily. Left behind personal possessions were gathered up and delivered on the school lunch buses to each child. Teachers call parents frequently, she said.
“The (in-school) structure was gone almost overnight,” said Kaufman.
Parents and professionals recognize the need to soothe youngsters. For instance, a guidance counselor read a story for Joel’s age group. “It was a calming factor,” Kaufman said.
Still, Kaufman regrets that her children are “cut off socially.” After a Zoom meeting with classmates recently one of them complained, “Mom, I only got to talk once.”
Kaufman heard of one teacher who made copies of her class’s photo and sent them out to all her students.
Another mother who has little ones at home in addition to her nine-year-old, described herself as “overwhelmed” by at-home schooling. She sits her son down beside her to help him, but invariably the younger children interrupt. “My special needs kid wasn’t even using Chromebooks in school,” she said.
When she hears from his teachers that something wasn’t handed in or was done incorrectly, this mom said, “I feel crushed. I’m trying not to let it get to me.
“I don’t know how to turn the material in. The instructions on the screen say, ‘complete,’” she said.
Her son’s special education teacher is in touch with her. “We’re just doing the best we can,” this mom said.
Mother of four Angie Starr says her first grader, Kassidy, requires more of her time than her three other children. Kassidy is working on her second packet of paper assignments sent by her Belview Elementary School teacher.
Bryson Starr, a fifth grader, gets up each day ready for at-home school. His lessons are computerized and he’s attended a couple of Google group meetings that are optional.
Allison Starr is a sixth grader at Christiansburg Middle School. In Google Classroom and through emails, she can communicate with her teacher.
“She’s very motivated,” mom Angie said, “but she misses her friends.”
When her saxophone lessons are challenging, Allison can turn to her older brother, Joshua, a freshman at Christiansburg High School who also plays the saxophone.
Joshua was in Spanish I, business management and biology classes for only nine weeks when students left their campuses. (Band and physical education were year-long classes.)
“You only take biology once. Will he have learned what he needs?” Angie Starr asked.
And she’s concerned about the language class as well. “It’s not ideal, not the way he would have chosen to take Spanish,” said mom Starr. “He’s missing conversation with a real live teacher.”
Starr was grateful that technology enhances “the teachers’ ability to be there for our kids.” She feels continuing school online was the right thing to do. “I still want my kids to be learning something,” she said.
She was clear on the down side of at-home education. “The kids are in each other’s faces all the time,” she said, even though she spreads them out to different locations.
Callie Bailey is experiencing at-home learning from three different perspectives. She has one son in college and a daughter in high school, and she is a kindergarten teacher at Auburn Elementary School who now teaches from home.
Son Carter Bailey is a student at New River Community College and is Virginia-Tech bound next year. Daughter Lacy is a junior at Auburn High School who doesn’t have to be reminded to Zoom with teachers even when the session is not required. Their mother is leaving these two to their own online resources.
“I miss my students so much,” Bailey said, referring to her kindergarten class.
She said she is conferencing all day as parents work with them on one of five learning packets she and other kindergarten teachers developed in response to school evacuations. Envelopes are already stamped so that parents can mail completed packets back to schools by the deadline.
In addition to the learning packets, Bailey said she is using technology she has never tried before to reach out to her students. Fellow teachers are enthusiastically sharing ideas that have worked well for them, she said.
Parents get a list of morning announcements that might include “Nest News” about a bird that is laying eggs in a nest on one student’s porch.
Many parents are still reporting to work, Bailey said, so relatives are helping with their children’s care and school work. All those helpers — the parents, the friends, the older siblings — “need to know exactly what skills we are working on,” she said.
In one of those emails coming out of the school board office, parents were reassured that grades earned prior to March 13 will be weighted more heavily than those earned from virtual learning strategies after the statewide mandate to close.
As for students who don’t have access to the Internet, students in grades 3-5 have paper packets to keep their learning flowing. Older students get their work loaded onto jump drives.
