Speaking as someone who was homeschooled well, but has spoken with a lot of people who were homeschooled poorly, I think it would be LESS disruptive to cancel school for a number of months until covid is handled than to do this patchwork response designed to gut public schools.

Give everyone in the district free internet and make streaming channels full of age appropriate "fun" educational material so the kids have stuff to watch, but don't do tests or otherwise stress them. The point here is to provide simulation during an emotionally difficult time.

Because hooboy, I've seen a lot of right-wingers (or bots) brag about how they're just going to homeschool, and Bad Homeschool is so much worse than just plopping the kids in front of, idk, a Beakman's World marathon.

First of all, a really good approach to homeschooling often isn't cheap. I'm sure there's a lot of free resources you can cobble together, but I needed structured textbooks. Those run hundreds of dollars, and have HIGHLY VARIABLE QUALITY. You need time and experience to pick em.

Second, once you have your materials you either need a student who is amazingly good at self-directed learning (hi!) DURING A PANDEMIC (lol, no, absolutely not) or you need a parent with time to teach and tremendous skill. A small classroom is not easy to teach, esp. ur own kids.

You basically need someone who is qualified to be a full-time teacher living in your home, but for some reason they can afford to teach full-time for free and you don't need them working to pay the bills. In THIS economy?

As scary as it is to imagine children collectively taking all of 2020 off, at least they'd have a shared cultural experience of a gap year. There wouldn't be this patchwork approach of mixed-result trauma that they have to each navigate individually. Trauma shared is easier, ime.

If we reopen, it seems to me we're going to have a lot of sick and dead poor kids (REALLY BAD) plus a lot of homeschool-damaged richer kids whose lives were saved but their academics were fucked up in ways that can damage them scholastically long-term (ALSO NOT GREAT).

And just to be really clear: If you're reading this and thinking about homeschooling your kid to protect them, I'm not saying you're going to hurt them.

I'm saying a lot of right-wingers should not be teachers, especially of their own children.

If you do plan to homeschool, my recommendation would be to prioritize gentleness. Your goal here isn't education, it's keeping your kid alive. Whether they learn on schedule isn't really relevant in a pandemic.

Give them pleasant stimulus when you can (television, youtube, internet). Learn to recognize stress responses and take lots of breaks as needed. Understand that some days are gonna be "cancel school, play instead" days because you're in a pandemic and pandemics are scary.

Basically: Be ready to treat this like daycare instead of school, because these conditions aren't conducive to school. Worst case, your child needs to retake the grade later. They're still alive. You're doing amazing keeping them alive.

Try not to get hung up on learning schedules, or where your child is "supposed" to be at academically, or feeling competitive with the neighbors. Humans crave yardsticks to measure how well we're doing, but the yardstick you need is "how alive is Sally today? Yes? Good."

Disclaimer: I'm not an educator and I haven't raised kids. I've just been homeschooled for, like, 11 years of my life. That's the sum of my relevant experience here. Take with a grain of salt.

Oh, one more thing, and this is just a practical advice tweet:

Find out what classes they would've taken this year and write those names down somewhere. Even if you ARE just marathoning television. (1/)

I say this because someday someone will ask whether Sally specifically took Algebra II or American Literature or whatever and they won't care whether she knows the material, they just want to be told that yes, that class was taken, thanks, next question. (2/2)