To bin off the homeschooling

[Lemons1571]

God I’m probably BU. But bloody hell I've had enough. 14 weeks of working ft, plus trying to fit in twinkl, Oak, Khan etc. Watching my Year 4 get more isolated and sad. Feeing like a loser / outsider when the school send out their weekly newsletter asking Reception to bring in x, y and z and Year 6 to remember their deposit for (insert end of year activity).

Honestly the thought of Monday makes me want to throw things at the wall, and it’s not even Sunday yet! Got a bunch of corrections sent through on last weeks schoolwork which I now have to try and fit in around Skype work calls, deadlines, appraisals. Anyone else just about had it? So tempted to tell child to not worry about it too much and have some screen time.

I don’t need help with coping or with mood or anything like that. I just need to not have two full time jobs.

tomorrow’s another day

Priorities of this government
Golf
Football
and now Pubs

Never mind the kids and parents stuck at home trying to keep it all together.

Perhaps priority should have been:

2 key workers
2 parents working
1 key worker
Year 6 (for transition)
Year 5 (SATS next year)
then R, Y1 and so on?

How can it be right that a family could have one key worker parent and one sahp and get a school place but a single working parent (not a key worker) can't.

In that scenario you’d have to hope they’d be honest and not send their child and I think most have but some people are just lazy and entitled.

This is what has really wound me up about this - there are so many kids back at my kids school who have a SAHP, and others who definitely don’t have a key worker job but have lied about what they actually do. People who own their own business have issued themselves with letters to prove their “key worker” status. They have basically selfishly taken all the spaces which means they haven’t been able to even take r and y1 back, never mind any of the other years.

Just checking in and wanting to vent about how unfair this has all been. After yet another, hard, boring week with dh and myself working from home (to be fair I’m pt but working more days to spread my hours) tryI got to engage bored, frustrated ds2 in home school I get school newsletter. In it are pictures of Educare kids having fun playing games outside, doing their work together and having a much more positive experience than ds2.

Both dh and myself are classed as key workers though we can both work from home most of the time. We did what we were told ie to keep kids home if you could wfh even if you were key workers. I feel ds2 has been failed and really cross.

I’m not expecting any answers just wanting to vent my frustration at the mess this has been. If I see another bl**dy worksheet next week I’ll scream!!

@Makinglists

I'm not sure how old your son is. But give it up now. That's my advise. My kid did two worksheets Monday. The rest of the week he has been going for walks. Riding his bike. Playing on his tablet. Playing in his bedroom.

I'm sure you've done every bluddy task you can think of. My advise is age dependent.... Put some educational stuff on Tele like bitesize. Blue planet is on kids netflix. The deadly 60 on CBBC. Let him read. Let him play games. Let him watch YouTube videos of stuff that interests him. Then once a week get him to do some spellings or simple maths. Get him to read still. But that's not even got to be a daily thing. If he has an Amazon tablet there's apps on their to teach time and stuff.

The schools can catch them up. They will all be at different levels when they go back.

I am also sick of seeing the kids at school smiling in the sun and playing. I can't get anything done with two bored kids at home. But we are going to be walking more and enjoying nature this weekend. Into the woods tomorrow I think! The kids need to burn of some energy. I honestly think kids learn so much on a walk.

You've done enough now mum! We all have with this home schooling x

Thank you sound advice

What would they actually be doing in school right now anyway?

Sports day, activity week, school play, class party? As far as I am concerned they don't actually learn anything from the last week of June onwards!

What would they actually be doing in school right now anyway?

Sports day, activity week, school play, class party?

Those things have value. Whilst they might not be doing heaps of academic work, they'd be with their peers, having fun, rather than being isolated at home.

And that’s what hurts the most when I see these kids doing socially distanced dance, playing on the field etc. Ds2 is sat on his bum playing on iPad or switch just to keep him quiet while I work interspaced with me trying to get him to do something school related. He misses his friends his teachers everything about school. We do try and meet up outside with friends and we are lucky that his sport was able to resume training early so he has that. I’m just cross, probably with myself, I followed the rules Kept him at home and he gets a poorer offer than other kids.

We are lucky we have a relatively low infection rate and he is healthy so as his mum I’m not overly worried about his chances of catching COVID.

Just seems so unfair that some kids have had a better deal.

Rant over - today has been tough I’ve been working, there’s a pneumatic drill outside the house, it’s raining and ds2 is grumpy, frustrated and bored to the back his back teeth. On a positive note there is now wine in the house.

Yes @Makinglists. I'm more worried about the lack of social interaction than the academic stuff, although that's obviously a concern too.

Yes Yes yes ds2 is a really social animal - over the weeks I've watched him get more dependent on his screens to keep in touch, watched him get more and more anxious about covid (even though I reassure him that it Dosent often harm children and if we all follow the rules we minimise the risks). Children in Wales get 3 days contact before the 3nd of term. Acadmically that provides nothing, socially it is gold giving security that school is still there it may be different but the world's still turning and there is some normality.

I’m a primary teacher teaching a bubble during the day, but also with a Year 3 class at home, whose home learning I am filming and marking in the evenings.

The amount of work being uploaded to Seesaw (app we use for HL) has significantly reduced this week. I think the children are really struggling with feeling on the outside, as you said OP - they’re struggling through at home, knowing that I as their class teacher am teaching other children in their classroom. Makes it worse that I can’t even respond to their questions until my bubble are busy eating their lunch.

I honestly wouldn’t blame you OP. Absolutely keep up the reading though, it makes a huge difference. Maybe some spelling and times table practise too.

We're not stopping. Seeing how my bubble class have come back so varied in terms of what they can do, I'm glad I pushed on with my own kids even though it has been really tiring. This will be a great shake up in terms of ability levels and attainment within a class and the effort you put in now could be the difference between your child working towards or meeting expectations next year.

The rules were fair enough

It’s just that many people took the piss

Let’s Not forget When this is started most people were scared and were OK to stay home

the effort you put in now could be the difference between your child working towards or meeting expectations next year.

Thanks. That’s just what I needed to hear as a full time working parent who already feels ridiculously guilty about my children being neglected all day while the kids of SAHMs get to go back to school because their mummy married a doctor

Don’t schools have to catch students learning up when they get back?

Won’t they just have to put them on ieps and give them more individualised teaching?

@Barbie222 - I doubt any child will meet let alone exceed - they’ve had no schooling for more than a term. A few worksheets with a parent is no substitute for a varied syllabus with a qualified teacher.

Our school has sent a questionnaire to ask what our children are most struggling with so that they can use that to plan for catching up in September. So thankfully there does seem to be a plan to do that.

The questionnaire idea is a great one. If my school don’t do that i was planning to send them an email highlighting the areas of concern and work he was secure in anyway. I know they’re sending me an end of year report, I’m probably in a better position to send them one!

They will open when it is deemed safe to do so Words fail me

OP, I would bin it off now if I were you because it sounds like you've done a great job!

I work in an infant school and so I can only speak from my experience. I am working from home, partly because my yr group weren't given the option to return ( why reception have the choice but yr2 who are transitioning to junior school weren't baffles me hugely) and partly because I'm in the vulnerable group.

Anyway, I have been ringing parents (when they answer) and just checking how people are managing etc and I also feedback on any work that has been handed in on Google Classroom.

I can definitely say that much less work is being handed in now and even the more able children who were super keen at the beginning and completed everything set, are now struggling to be motivated. I honestly feel for the mums who write that their child just couldn't be bothered that day. It's so sad. I always make a huge point of telling them - and the parents that I speak to on the phone - not to beat themselves up and just do what you can do and if that means nothing very constructive then so be it!

I have friends who are in a pod (classroom) in school and from what I gather, they generally leave the children to get on with the same work on Google Classroom that the homeschooled children have and they have to focus on the children with behaviour issues or the lower children that maybe can't read etc.

When I log in at around 9.15 ish, it's usually the children in school (yr2 key-worker children) that have handed in their work first. A lot of the time they have missed big chunks out, or not answered correctly because they know that once they race through it and hand it in then they can go off and do something more fun! So from my experience, they're not getting much out of the situation either.

So, if I were you I'd scale right back and just make sure you keep up some reading etc and try to claw back some sanity. You've done great!

We’re officially on summer holidays just now but are continuing with our home education because I have the ability to (no, my oh is not a doctor, we’ve just had to cut our cloth to suit our needs) and I feel it would be an inservice to my dc to send them back to school at a deficit in their education.

No child should have been “without an education for a term”, most children have been without a school environment. If these children haven’t received an appropriate education then that’s on their parents.

We are both nhs key workers. We have struggled to educate at home, which has literally included coming home from a night shift on a Covid ITU and logging on to see what work we have to do that day.

It has been beyond hideous, but we kept our child at home because, in theory, there is somebody in the house, even if it’s a parent in bed from a night shift, or another parent on a conference call for hours.

Our school took children with only one key worker. We noticed families using those places where we knew full well that there was a SAHM. When I mooted sending our child in, the head tutted because they knew that, in theory, we didn’t have to.

I was going to send my child back after whit, as we were all really struggling, however at that point they announced that kids on the ‘key worker’ bubble would have to remain there. As my child is Y6, I faced a choice between sending them in and isolating them from their Y6 peers in the final few weeks, or carrying on with the home schooling.

We chose to home school, then the head announced they weren’t taking Y6 back anyway. Oh yes they were, oh no they weren’t. It has honestly been such a stressful few weeks.

In the end, Y6 did go back, and my child was able to join them. But then the head changed their mind again, and made the full time offer into a part time offer, splitting Y6 into the beginning and end of the week. So although they’ve gone back, they aren’t with friends anyway, which was the reason I kept them off.

The whole thing has been an absolute shitshow.