By Pat Brown
Contributing Writer
The need for social distancing has put parents on the front line in their students’ educational pursuits after Gov. Ralph Northam closed schools on March 13 for two weeks then extended the closure for the rest of the school year.
Kate Jackson of Radford is a working mother who has two girls at home. Jackson is working from home now that her employer, Montgomery County Schools, has shut down its offices in
Christiansburg.
Jackson’s daughters would ordinarily be attending Belle Heath Elementary School. Daughter
Adeline Daby, a fifth grader, “really does miss school,” Jackson said, “the routine, the structure, even the rigor.” She said Zoom meetings with classmates have helped.
“Some of the work in fifth grade is hard,” Jackson said. “Luckily I have an educational background, so I can pull on that, but it must be hard for some people.” Jackson is the coordinator for Virginia Tiered Systems of Support in Montgomery County.
Daughter CC Daby, in the third grade, looks forward to the school bus which brings lunch by every other day. Even a little thing like seeing the bus and the driver keeps her daughter connected, Jackson said, “and one day her assistant principal was on the bus.”
On a Friday in late March, both girls were excited their teachers were part of a “car parade.”
Teachers organized themselves into a convoy to drive all over Radford greeting kids with cheerful signs and waves.
As a parent, Jackson said, “It was heartbreaking that the girls were losing in-school instruction and the personal contact school that includes. The teachers’ signs said, ‘Miss you’ and ‘Love you,’” Jackson recalled.
Balancing her work for Montgomery County Schools and her daughters’ needs has been tough for Jackson. At first, she was going into work part of each week, but since the closing of the county administrative offices, Jackson and the other employees are working from home.
At the Jackson household, “We decided to keep a structure,” so the daughters join their mother at the dining room table. “We wake up and get dressed like we’re going to school or work,” she said.
“It’s a lot of start and stop for me,” said the mother, explaining that she fields questions and gives help when the girls ask for it, setting aside her own tasks until later. During spring break she did some catching up on a podcast she was preparing for her job.
Radford residents Christopher and Mary Madeline Webster are also facing the challenge of juggling their work and their children’s at-home schooling. Before the school shut down, son Louis, 12, was a sixth grader at Belle Heath Elementary School. Daughter, Nora, 8, was a second grader at McHarg Elementary School.
Employed by the State Department of Environmental Quality in Salem, dad Christopher has had the opportunity to do some work from home in the past, but becoming a tutor for his children “has been a challenge,” he said.
He said his kids generally do better when they are in separate rooms. Mom and dad tag-team, helping the children based on the workload they need to produce for their jobs. Mom Mary Madeline is a career coach at New River Community College.
The family divides the day into academics, creative time and physical activity. But the kids want
to stay up later at night and get up later because “they know they don’t have to be somewhere,” their father said.
“They are upset that they can’t see their friends and can’t make any plans,” Webster said. “Having something to look forward to is important, and that just doesn’t exist.”
.Louis tries to connect with friends using Zoom meetings and Nora can talk to friends on
FaceTime.
But Nora ran into some additional bad luck. Practicing soccer in the back yard, she fell and broke her arm, necessitating a trip to the emergency room. “The doctor said he’d seen more injuries since schools closed,” Webster said. He said his daughter is doing well. Unfortunately, she won’t be able to collect her friends’ signatures on her cast.
Webster improved the family’s Ethernet connection so the on-line learning and the needs of two working parents could all be accommodated.
A mother who chose to remain anonymous and 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 noted.
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,” she said. “The instructions on the screen say, ‘Complete.” Her son’s special education teacher is in touch with her. “We’re just doing the best we can,” this mom said.
In Montgomery County, mother-of-four Angie Starr says her first grader, Kassidy, requires more of her time than her other three children. Kassidy is working on her second packet of paper assignments sent by her Belview Elementary School teachers.
Bryson Starr, a fifth grader, gets up each day ready for at-home school. His lessons are on computer 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,” Starr said, “but she misses her friends.”
When her saxophone lessons are challenging, Allison can turn to older brother Joshua, a freshman at Christiansburg High School and saxophone player.
Joshua was in Spanish I, business management and biology class 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 asks.
And she’s concerned about the language class as well. “It’s not ideal, not the way he would have chosen to take Spanish,” Starr said. “He’s missing conversation with a real live teacher.”
Starr is 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.
Starr was clear, though 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.
