School in the Fall 2020 was strange, to say the least. The school district decided to continue distance learning due to Covid. They also decided that all instruction must be synchronous, meaning it would all be done in live time on zoom. Our family soon called this “zoom school.” The kids had to sit on zoom calls for 3 hours every day. Ridiculous right? This was way more zoom time than any other district in our area. We were completely beside ourselves.
The boys’ teachers did all they could to make it a positive experience. Praises to them for all their hard work and sacrifice! As a teacher myself doing online instruction during the pandemic, I had a ton of empathy for them. I knew how extremely exhausted and frustrated they were, and how much they were investing emotionally into making zoom school work.
But as we all know, school on a computer doesn’t work for all students, and that included my children. The zooming itself created a ton of anxiety for both of our boys, each in different ways.
Tanner was actually learning a few new things during his zoom classes (the biggest success being cursive!), BUT he struggled with the unnatural ways of interacting with his class online…
“Mom, do I have to keep the camera on the whole time? I don’t like it when everyone is looking at me while I need to doodle so that I can pay attention, and I don’t like how they can see me doing that.”
“UGH, that one kid has their mic un-muted AGAIN and I can’t hear anything the teacher is saying!”
“Mom, when the teacher asks something, there is a big long pause and then two people answer at the same time even though she called on a certain kid, and we can’t hear anything. And then they all have to repeat what they said. It’s such a waist of time. If we were in a real classroom, everyone would know their turn to talk so much easier.”
“Our teacher got booted off the meeting again, so we are just sitting here waiting.”
“I don’t even know any of the kids in my class. Can we do a playdate with them? Except I don’t even know them…I don’t have any friends.”
“I wish we could watch the teacher in a video, because then all the easy stuff I can listen to in double time and have extra time to play outside, and the stuff I can’t understand, I could watch it twice.”
“MOM! She put us in smaller groups on the zoom call and I don’t know what to say!? AH!”
Tanner also got upset when he had to miss class for therapy and other reasons. He felt like he couldn’t get caught up during the next zoom call and would have huge outbursts and meltdowns about not knowing how to do something. Even though I tried to get him caught up before the next lessons, he would not listen to me and would let his anxiety take over. Yelling, crying, falling on the ground, hyperventilating. In all reality, he was never behind, because I knew exactly what the lessons were.
I did my best to help Tanner work through these frustrations. We talked with his teacher about being able to have his camera off, and she was very accommodating. I wrote letters to the principal and district asking for options to allow the teachers to record their teaching. We were told that teachers are not allowed to record the zoom meetings for privacy reasons and the cant post videos for contract reasons.
At the end of the day, Tanner was right. None of this was natural or productive way to learn. None of this was equitable or helpful for any of his needs. And quite frankly, this was inhumane for children.
I wrote more letters to the school board, and wrote public comments that were shared during public board meetings, asking for more options to help our kids. If not in-person options, then to at least allow recording and posting videos. But no responses or answers were ever given. I started following a parent group called Reopen SDUSD, and signed their petition to provide in-person options for our kids.
Not suprisingly, Tanner was having meltdowns daily, and it was harder and harder to calm him down. He made more suicide comments and threats, similar to when school was online in the spring. He needed more breaks and heavy work in between zoom calls, making it really upsetting on him to miss even more class.
Also, doing any of the independent work was a nightmare for him. His anxiety was through the roof. He cried when we help him, he cried when we let him do it alone. He fought and screamed and punched and threw supplies. He’d run into the kitchen to grab anything sharp and threaten to “kill myself because I’m stupid and a bad kid.”
It was devastating.
Dallin hated zoom too, but in a different way.
He didn’t want anything to do with the zoom classes. To no fault of his own, he had a really hard time staying engaged in his lessons and when something was either too slow or too challenging, he would leave the room or turn off his computer. I would often find him reading books with his camera off during his zoom lessons. It sure felt weird to tell my kid to stop reading during his “school” time.
It didn’t take long for Dallin to figure out that his school laptop allowed him to watch YouTube videos and play video games during the zoom calls. This created SO many challenges and power struggles for us. It got to a point where we simply could not let him do zoom school unless we were sitting right next to him, which between our two work schedules and managing Tanner’s issues was 20 minutes a day if we were lucky.
When we COULD watch him like a hawk, Dallin would do everything he could to get out of the zoom class. He would do the work rushed and sloppy, beg to leave, mess up the supplies, push and kick us, scream and fight, throw stuff at me, and it always ended in big tears for everyone. We tried to be stern with him and create incentives for him, but none of that made any sense to him… or to me! Why force a 7 year old boy to sit in front of a screen for 3 hours with 30 strangers and expect him to read and write and learn? Any idiot can recognize this is not how children learn!
The good news was that Dallin WOULD work on assignments with us away from the zoom calls. He would even do some of the stuff independently. We would get his work done very quickly because it was too easy for him. But don’t get me started on how annoying it was to try taking pictures of his work an posting it on their school online platform called SeeSaw. Agh!
Distance learning was wrong on so many levels. I continued to write letters, speak out and sign petitions.
And still we kept trying to make it work. I’m not sure why I felt like we should give it our best effort, but we certainly felt pressure to, and we certainly DID give it our best effort.
I’m still amazed that we endured this nonsense for 7 whole weeks!
SEVEN weeks. A very dark and challenging time for our family, which still has its affect on us today.
I regret giving it so much effort. I regret not finding alternative education sooner.
People kept saying it would get easier each week, and I really wanted to believe that. For our family, this advice was wrong!
We also had faith that the district would reopen by mid- October because many other neighboring districts were. Our faith was in vain.
With much sadness, we finally withdrew our children from their school and the district. A part of me felt like we were abandoning our great teachers and school community. We appreciated them so much. There was a deep sense of loss there. Even Tanner was sad about leaving, despite how much he hated zoom school.
We had to remind ourselves that the district had abandoned us. We needed to do what was best for our family.
After lots of research, we figured out how to create our own private school affidavit (homeschool) and get our kids on the road to detoxing from zoom. My biggest goal for homeschooling was to minimize the continued trauma that our family was facing during the pandemic.
We had considered enrolling them in private school. There was still so much up in the air at this point on whether that made sense for us. Schools reopening and closing all the time. It was a tough decision, and hindsight, it might have been better to put the kids in private school. I’m not sure. But we did what knew best to do with the information we had.
Our first day of homeschool was Oct 19!
We named our school Renegade Elementary, which is a name I’ve been keeping in mind for a charter school I might open someday. The name seemed especially fitting with our given circumstances.
We immediately noticed a difference in the frequency and intensity of power struggles and meltdowns in the home. It was SO wonderful to have the stress of zoom school lifted from our shoulders. It took about 2 months for the boys to completely detox from the zoom fatigue.
I loved having a better sense of control over our lives– something that Covid had stolen from us for all too long. I could let the boys play outside for a couple hours at a time and there was no stress or fear about what they were missing or had to make up. We could hop over to the zoo or beach or park whenever we wanted and incorporate mini-lessons throughout the outings that applied to the things we were learning.
Most school days at Renegade Elem consisted of lots of play time and STEM time, reading time and math activities. Then we rotated through subjects like science, social studies, art, music, typing, cursive, and field trips.
I had no problem coming up with lessons and curriculum for the kids, some of which I’m sure will be blogged about in the coming months. Reading science and social studies books to the boys was my favorite. Math was easy to teach because we had their math textbooks from school. It was nice being able to let the boys test out of different chapters that they already knew, and to do the chapters in a customized order and pacing.
We continued doing lessons with the grandparents and aunties online that we had started at the beginning of the year. By the end of the school year they had done:
WWII class with Gpa Papa,
How the Body Works with Auntie Desha,
World Cultures with Gma Nana,
Field Trips and Powerpoints with Uncle Matt,
Mystery Food Science with Aunt Katie,
Bucket Drumming with me and other students,
Language Arts Time with Taryn
Also, Tanner took All About Elections with Uncle Clay and Auntie Tanya and did Reading Buddies with Gpa Papa (they finished two Hardy’s Boys books together)
The boys also participated in a few YMCA enrichment classes interspersed throughout the school year, where they got to be around other kids. Also, our school year continued into the summer, where we kept on with math and writing to make sure we covered everything needed. The boys got to do a lot of summer camps which added to their homeschool experience.
Not gonna lie, it wasn’t all rainbows and roses. We still had meltdowns and power struggles. The boys complained about their work at least once a day. But the frequency and intensity of the power struggles were much lower than when we were trying zoom school. Every time that we reminded them how bad it used to be to sit on a zoom call with their class, they agreed that homeschool wasn’t so bad.
Turns out that our district never opened up to a normal in-person schedule during this whole school year. They allowed students to come in-person for only 9 weeks in the spring, but the kids still had to do zoom lessons and online assignments.
I am SO glad we got out of the system when we did. My only regret is that we didn’t get out sooner. It was absolutely criminal what our district officials imposed upon our children, teachers, and families.
No doubt, the 2020-2021 school year was a major refiner’s fire for everyone, including our family.
I did my best to give my babies the best year they could have. It wasn’t anything close to perfect. It wasn’t even ideal.
But it was the very best we could give them.
I hope that Tanner and Dallin remember all the good times we had, along with the bad.
The thing I want them to remember the most is that we worked through really tough times and found ways to make the most of it. Lots more pictures to come as I blog about life throughout the rest of the school year, but here’s a few from when we first got started with homeschool.
