Turns Out, 45% Of Parents Are Struggling With The Decision To Send Their Kids Back Into A Classroom

Do you have school-aged kids? Where do you stand on sending them back to school in the fall? Yay or Nay?

I will admit, I am leaning heavily towards not letting my kids go back immediately in the fall, but that is just based on what I have read about guidelines for opening schools back up.

I also saw this prototype for a type of socially distanced classroom, and I’ll be honest, it scares me. I can’t even imagine what a kid might feel while having to go to school under such conditions.

The school system is really going to have to convince me that it is (1) safe for the kids to go back, and (2) that the kids won’t feel like they are in prison in their classroom.

I am not alone in my feelings! According to an ABC News/Ipsos poll, 45% of parents with school-aged children are struggling with the decision on whether to let their kids go back inside the classroom come fall.

I’m going to be honest, I know they did the best they could with what they had and the timeframe with which they had to do it in, but I’m not 100% certain that socially distanced learning was beneficial for the students.

Let me preface what I am about to say with — We LOVE the teachers at our schools. They worked hard, and really scrambled to do what they thought was best for all the students. What they thought was going to be a two-week break in learning, turned into the remainder of the school year, and that’s not their fault.

That being said, the teachers at my kids’ schools simply handed the kids packets of paperwork, and had them just go for it. The directions were to just finish them at home. The kids weren’t really given any direction as to HOW to do the work — and I don’t do math; Not even 3rd grade math.

Especially the NEW math. I don’t understand it myself, let alone know how to teach it to my 8 year old. My son just got confused, because I was trying to reteach him MY way of math.

Now, parents are having to make the hard decision, “Do I try to homeschool my children in the fall? What exactly will that look like? What exactly will that entail?”

I hope to goodness the schools have a learn-from-home option, and it involves actual teaching time from the school district teachers. Whether that happens via YouTube, Google Meet, or Zoom, I don’t really care. It just needs to be a structured learning environment for the children, with good resources to aid in that learning.

The next best option would be to go through a homeschool company. It might be a good alternative to the chaos that is probably going to be happening at the school level, trying to navigate all the new and uncharted territory.

According to Time4Learning, a homeschool company, parents might actually be pleasantly surprised to know that a structured HOMESCHOOL probably isn’t quite what you think it will be.

One of the biggest surprises to parents is it turns out they aren’t signing up to be a teacher. What a homeschool parent really does in the modern world is orchestrate resources for their children, watch their students learn, and then help them pursue their interests. That’s a myth-busting there, where parents really don’t teach, they really orchestrate the resource.

John Edelson, Time4Learning President to KXAN

There are these online interactive programs which do the teaching, and really what they do is they manage the instructional process. Students are provided with information, that might include video or something that they read, then there’s a series of exercises where they learn to apply the knowledge. They deepen their understanding of it. They build critical thinking skills.

John Edelson, Time4Learning President to KXAN

So, whether it is a school system sponsored homeschool, or whether it is done through an ACTUAL homeschool company, having your kids learn at home might not be as complicated as all that mess at the end of last school year.

If they have actual resources and teaching, and an efficient and effective way for the kids to learn, I might just keep my kids at home for awhile.

Like almost half of the country, I might not be alone. We can do this!!