[sad] AIBU to HATE HATE HATE homeschooling?

[MrsNWT]

It's only been a couple of days and I'm f*cking losing it. I'm so depressed. We've got a small place, I have my own work to do (self employed) and I've reached my personal low trying to teach one of the kids.

What are you all doing? I'm throwing in the towel. I want them to learn and not been their screens all day and I WON'T do arts and crafts and learning activities all day long. Simply hate it.

My kids are 12, 9 and 7

AIBU to lose my SH*T already?

@ineedaholidaynow I agree no need to lesson plan. The free online access to a huge number of books just makes the task of distance learning feel huge.

Entertaining and educating are two separate things.

Parents are used to having, for example, a list of 10 spellings, a reading book plus a piece of creative writing and some maths homework to manage in an average week for primary aged children. It is instructive rather than proactive on the parents’ part.

To manage the effort of entertaining with all the usual resources removed is enough to digest.

anyone else notice how the bulk of this is flaling, yet again on women?

How it is 90% the women who are juggling THEIR work with kids, not the men?

Dh and I both WFH anyway, he does full time and I do part time.
I have been very clear, he has to do his part in making this work. If it is all left to me, then I will not gte any work done. My work have been amazing, do what I can, don't worry. But I will have to catch up later on things not done now, so I want to keep it going.

I think some dh's are going to need to step up, drop from 100% work to 80% or less in order to release their partners to do some of their work.

We have two dc so we are doing “school” with one each. I have just tidied the kitchen, dh is hoovering the house. Dc are relaxing, school in our house starts at 10.30. Equal footing in this house!!

When my year 6 class asked about how long they would take learning at home, I told them that even if I set a day's lesson's worth, it wouldn't take that long. No assembly. Minimal setting up/packing up. No 'talk to your partner' and discuss or class conversations about the issue/objective.
Half an hour guided reading = read your book for 20 mins. An 'hour' of work in school is realistically 30-40 mins of work, and that's for my older pupils. So it won't take that long.
And, we all know these are unusual times. Any school demanding pupils online for certain stretches of the day, to put in the full amount of time is a - unrealistic and b - ignoring all the other pressures on teachers/kids/families at the moment.

Dear lord
80 children on email all trying to figure out what the hell to do. And teachers and IT people being spectacularly unhelpful.

They are actually all trying to help each other and you can see who the leaders are.

Teachers saying if you don't have the text book order it on amazon? Would be helpful for the title of the book.

Sounds very stressful - luckily my two have just finished school so it isn't so bad!! A lot of my friends have been saying that getting their kids on online tools like Quizlet and Seneca has been a godsend. A couple of them have said this facebook group from Seneca is proving helpful - www.facebook.com/groups/DistanceLearningForParents/

It sounds to me like lots of schools are not as set up for this as the one I teach at. Every subject is sending out lessons daily in line wth the usual timetable plus resources and links etc. Parents are not expected to get involved beyond getting them sat down at a pc if there is one available.

Tbf it is a very well resourced school so I can see that other schools might struggle. Just letting them game/play all day though will disadvantage them down the line.

Just done our first day. I am feeling very anxious tbh. Ds1 is year 9 - his work is mounting up with not enough time to complete it, struggling to upload stuff to classroom, tasks are being set on 2 or 3 different platforms so never know if you have found it all.... Ds2 is year 5 and his is much better, all In the same place and a simple plan provided. Tomorrow I'm working in the afternoon so will try to get it done in the morning....I hate this

Ks3 only have three hours of English a week - give them some reading to do. They have three hours of Maths and about the same for Science. My advice: don’t go over the top, especially right at the beginning.

We've been told by both schools (primary) that it ISN'T full time education, some of the things we've been sent aren't that accessible to the DCs but we have other stuff and both DCs were pretty good today, enjoying the attention I think.

Documentaries about the war etc are good. Get them to watch then write 5 facts. More or less depending on their age.

koshcatt DS's school sounds like yours. Apart from the first teacher being slightly late to start, DS has had a normal school day apart from being at home. Kept to the timetable, had some homework too. But he is Y10 so he needs to keep as up to date as possible.

He asked us a couple of questions but has mainly managed on his own.

Hello,

I haven't read the full thread but I thought I would write down the structure of my day as it might help.

10am - Practical activity eg PE with Joe /outside to play football/gardening
10.30am 15 - 20 minutes of Maths, English, Reading - they have to do all of them but they can choose the order
11.15am - Break no screens
11.30am - Lesson set by the school
12pm - Something practical like cooking/going for a walk/art/science experiment/watch a ted talk
1pm End - which includes recapping rules, giving stickers, praise

So it goes practical - sit and focus (and they feel like they have a choice) - practical - sit and focus -practical.

My children are 9 and 6 so sit and focus is 30 mins/45 mins your children are a bit old so could probably do a bit longer but no more than an hour.

I sat down and the first thing I did was ask them how they wanted to work together and we agreed guidelines. This is always a good way to begin.

They get stickers for good things and a mark which takes 10 minutes of screen time away if they misbehave.

Also have the timetable written up and decided on before the session. Just a piece of paper is fine but it makes it appear more planned and formal and less open to negotiation.

It will all be okay.

It's not been too bad, started off amazing, I was so surprised. Then there were tears, for no reason that I could fathom. Then there was a lost document- I watched him save it and then it disappeared. Fortunately he'd printed it, so it was easy enough to reproduce.
I feel like Supermom, so wine is deserved

I can't tell you how much I was dreading it.

Ours was bit rubbish as not much learning happened. She's yr10 but the school did say that they will formally start setting work after the Easter break, so in 2 weeks.
So dd and I did some baking, sat in the garden in sun and chatted and laughed, and watched a film. We got along well, Dh joined in in the garden while he was doing some gardening and so as a family it was a success in our relationship.

As a teacher what @planningaheadtoday said is utter shit!!!
As a parent, you are already a teacher, you just teach different things. I strongly suggest sticking to some sort of routine, albeit relaxed a little from a school day. If you have a routine the kids know what to expect and it gives you an "authority" to fall on... I. E "look we have to do half hour of maths, it's Wednesday etc"...

Will schools have to close for the next 3 weeks? Boris didn't seem to mention them

Because we are looking after the children of key workers so need to stay open with a skeleton staff.

I’ve told my sons school he will not be doing any timetabled lessons end of. Send in all the work you want and he will do it and I will gladly be in his case to get it fine but it is nuts to think or assume all children have a sole use laptop they can access all day and a desk/table space they can use for the “school day”

It actually makes me wonder if teachers/schools (more so in schools with a high number of FSM) realise how hard things are for some children in poverty/low income

hoxton yes I feel terribly sorry for those children disadvantaged by their home circumstances in this way. This event will mean that they fall even further behind.

My son's school has basically tried to recreate the school day in our homes. (Secondary) It is totally stressing him out and I am getting nothing done because I'm constantly having to talk him down / hold his hand to ensure he meets their expectations. He can't accept not meeting those expectations at this stage. Can't see us keeping it up. We were faring much better when we decided what needed doing.

We've had the very pushy parent who has now already pressed their child to complete ALL the work set for the next two weeks.

A friend of mine has shared this folder of spreadsheets where kids or parents can type in the topic they are interested in/working on and it brings up a list of resources from different sites - went down super well with mine. Will see how long that lasts haha. drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ou1BobdHkEvXYRaqEG8Xeo0HzYr4a5wl

@koshkatt

But they do not need to fall behind as long as there is flexibility. Not all children that are low income/FSM are behind, some are even gifted, but creating a situation where one child has to hog the laptop meaning the other gets less time/has added pressure to complete the work by a 5pm through no doing of their own is a sad state of affairs.

These are not normal times so schools shouldn’t be trying to apply the norms of a school classroom timetable. Upload all the class work from all subjects for the day from either the night before or by 8am the morning of and the child can get on with it in one go, thus freeing up the Laptop for the other siblings etc in the house that also needs to use it, but to have mr smith uploading at 9am then ms Smith uploading at 10am, then mr Taylor uploading his Lessons at 11, then ms Taylor uploading after lunch at 1.15 after “lunch” and so forth that’s just a recipe for disaster for families that have more than one child that needs to use the one and only laptop available in the house.

Schools just need to lay off this timetable nonsense. The actual work I 100% agree with, the following of the daily timetable to the letter I disagree with, as long the work is uploaded by 8am and it is submitted by say 4pm the same day I don’t see what the problem is.

Mine has done all the work, but I’m fucked if I can figure out how to send it in. He certainly can’t.
It’s really bad, the teachers are being snotty, even though they’re supposed to be available by email.
Private school too.