Back to School… during a pandemic!

I grew up loving back-to-school. I love shopping for new backpacks and school supplies, the new clothes and then of course the excitement of seeing everyone at school. But this year is very different. This year we have a pandemic! And this year William is starting Junior Kindergarten. My little boy is going to a big kid school! It’s supposed to be an exciting time for him (and hopefully it still will be). But just a little different, because he’s not going! This weekend we would have been prepping his backpack and getting it ready for school. Tomorrow morning, we would have been taking pictures to commemorate the first day of going to school.

To send or not to send…

A couple of weeks ago we had to make a decision on whether we would send him to school or keep him home for virtual learning. A few factors came into play but ultimately we decided that it was best to keep him at home for virtual learning. We’re not sure how it will go, but we will give it a shot.

Here’s what we know about virtual learning in our school district.

Week of Sept 9-14 – online orientation activities to do on your time, at your own pace.

Week of Sept 14 – Teacher will be in contact to let us know when classes begin and with more info.

That’s it, that’s all we know! Oh, and that we will be doing 180 minutes of synchronous learning and 120 minutes of non-synchronous learning a day. ARE YOU KIDDING ME?!?!?! And this is specific to kindergarten. Have they met these kids? There is no way that 3 and 4 year olds will sit in front of a computer screen to learn for 3-5 hours a day. I can’t even get my kid to sit in a Facetime call with people he actually knows!

Here’s what we’ve done to prep so far:

• A week ago we started talking to William about school and that school will be at home for a while and he will have a new teacher that he will meet on the computer. He wasn’t too excited about this idea, but we’ve been talking about school and learning everyday and he’s asking a lot of great questions about it, so he’s getting interested. We will also go through the orientation together so we get used to sitting in front of the computer and logging into the system and watching their videos.
• Buying school supplies. We have not received a list of school supplies we will need yet but I’ve picked up the basics like blank paper, pencils, crayons, markers, glue sticks, scissors, etc. William loves doing crafts so we will use everything anyways. It’s just good to get some of the basics out of the way and not have to scramble when the list comes.
• Practice workbooks. Costco had some great pre-kindergarten and kindergarten workbooks that we have been using the last few weeks. We do a few pages at a time and William is getting more and more confident doing them and will ask to do them if I forget. We have been practicing letters, numbers and different themes likes sharks and dinosaurs. I am hoping our teacher will have themes that he will be interested in and we can continue learning about them offline.
• Support groups. In the last month, there has been an explosion of Facebook groups for homeschooling, virtual learning and learning pods. I joined all of them. Ha, I’m not joking. It seems like a lot of parents are feeling uneasy about virtual learning (mainly sitting in front of a screen) and are trying to get ahead of the system with either homeschooling their kids by following a curriculum or paying an educator or ECE to teach in a smaller learning pod. These are great options to consider and I’ve met some parents in the community who have considered these too. But most parents are going to wait to see how the virtual learning goes and then make a decision. We’re going to try to have the kids meet every once in a while, so that they get some social interaction that they are missing out on.

I spoke to a teacher today who just found out what class she is teaching yesterday. And today is Labour Day Monday… So yes, schools are still behind. Teachers need to plan their classes. We will need to be extra patient with teachers because it’s a learning curve for them too. Both in-school and virtual actually.

The next few weeks will be interesting and I’m excited to document how it goes. We don’t even know when the first day of virtual school is! But when it comes, we’re ready for it.

What does school look like for your kids this year? Are we excited, nervous or both?