‘It’s a circus’: With no school, parents juggle working at home and educating children
The West Ada and Boise school districts rolled out their official online-classroom instruction this week, joining the Nampa School District, which has conducted virtual instruction since March 31.
This brave new world of home-based schooling — a necessity as the coronavirus prompted the closure of schools statewide — has forced parents across the Treasure Valley to add a role to mom, dad, provider and workforce member: educator.
“I am the teacher, but I am also an employee, consultant and a professional. So I have to try to balance that,” said Natalie Hilde, who is working from home and has two daughters in West Ada schools. “What I found is it feels a lot like I have a newborn or I’m just running around the house trying to get multiple things done.”
Hilde’s husband is a Micron employee who is working from home, and their increased involvement in the girls’ education highlights what is a challenge for parents, students and teachers.
“I find I have to be very involved in my kids’ schoolwork because they’re out of their environment, where their normal, routine learning takes place,” Hilde said. “I have to adjust them to try to actually have this remote learning experience.”
Real estate agent Amanda Spurgeon and her husband have children in the eighth, sixth, third and second grades, and she said she’s thankful for what teachers in Nampa have been able to provide as she tries to balance work with their schooling. Her husband works for a demolition company and is still out on jobs.
“It gets tough sometimes, when I’m trying to reply to emails, fill out paperwork and schedule things, if they need help right then,” Spurgeon said. “It can get pretty loud and hectic around here when trying to work. I think that is the biggest obstacle. I have Zoom meetings once a week, and that almost always gets interrupted by at least one of the kids.”
The Idaho State Board of Education decided last week to keep schools closed and have criteria for districts to meet to reopen, but the board did not set the criteria at that time. It met Thursday to address further steps and possible reopenings.
The criteria provides schools local control and includes: the lifting of all state and local social distancing orders (including stay-home orders or business closures; the peak of the state infection curve was at least 14 days ago; approval from the local public health district; and approval from the local school board.
In the meantime, the Boise School District, Pocatello School District and Blaine County have officially closed schools for the academic year.
Remote learning concerns and challenges
For Dana Bye and her daughter, a senior at Idaho Fine Arts Academy in Eagle, working on a computer and online learning are not new. But the dynamic is — being at home, alone, without a teacher or other students around.
And there are financial worries as well. Bye said she’s been able to make ends meet, but how much longer she can do that is a concern.
“I actually own a small business that has been impacted by this. So I am trying to figure out and make sure that I’m going to have internet service for her to do this with because it’s not like she can go to the library now or sit in a McDonald’s and use their free WiFi,” Bye said.
The loss of classroom structure is something parents said they will continue to confront. At first, Roberta Garvin said she received pushback from her middle-school son, who felt he was being given more work at home than his friends. Since West Ada didn’t release instruction until Monday, Garvin wanted to keep her son engaged.
“We want him to keep learning. We don’t want him to take a five- or six-week break and then try to dive back in and get back into a routine,” Garvin said. “You kind of want to keep them on a schedule and keep them doing something productive.”
Parents told the Statesman they have been taking steps to bring elements of school into the home, such as buying whiteboards to list assignments and other things. They are reading novels and working on review assignments sent by instructors.
Chance Whitmore, principal at West Middle School in Nampa, is seeing both sides of this new equation. He and his wife, who is a teacher at Columbia High School, have transitioned to working from home while also educating their kids: a sixth-grader and third-grader, as well as a 3-year-old.
“You’re making choices. ... I mean, as an educator, I get it,” Whitmore said. “When you’re working full time from home, and your wife’s working full time from home, there are times your kids and their education end up playing second fiddle to everything else you’re trying to accomplish and everything you’re trying to do for everyone else.
“I have a lot of empathy for parents who are having to leave their kids in charge of their own education and trying to help us because we’re really dependent on parents right now.”
Parents filling multiple roles
Hilde has found that making a daily schedule has been helpful. Best-case scenario, the schedule is drafted the night before and she plans work meetings at the same time her kids are supposed to be doing school work.
“However, what inevitably happens is, they get off task as soon as I get on to a work call,” Hilde said. “And then I end up just needing to put them on a screen or something so that they’re occupied while I can get business done. Then I have to go back to get schoolwork done.”
Britt Celusta, who has a first-grader and a second-grader in Nampa schools, is a “nonessential worker” spending her time at home while her husband works as a medical assistant on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic.
“I’m trying to manage being a teacher and being a parent for them, and trying to decide when they’ve been too stressed out, because I am not a certified teacher by any means,” Celusta said.
She said her biggest challenges have been math and the newest common core standards. Celusta and Spurgeon both said they’ve found that teachers have been available over Zoom to connect with students and answer questions, which they called a giant help. Celusta also said the continuation of school lunch programs has been vital.
Hilde said a silver lining to this crisis could be better experiencing and appreciating how a teacher interacts and works with children, which could help with future classroom strategies.
The obvious negative, she said, is that “it’s a circus.”
“I feel like I’m constantly running around because I have to engage creatively and have creative ways to keep my kids engaged, using the tools that I have, not as an educator, but as a mom — trying to become quickly an educator — and then balance that with working,” Hilde said.
With everyone at home all the time, the parents say there is simply a lot of learning and adjusting for everyone.
“I think the biggest thing is giving everybody a lot of grace because everybody’s winging it,” Hilde said. “And I think everybody is pretty much doing their best, from the teachers to the administrators to even my kids.”
