Ask HN: Parents, what are you doing for school this fall?
I'm a professional software engineer with two middle-school aged children and a working partner cramped into a small apartment. Since the shelter in place orders happened and my employer switched everyone to work from home, my apartment has seemed less and less suitable for productivity. It's also not the best environment for children to remain cooped up in their rooms on electronics all day, every day. My partner and I have experimented with some online camps and our local public schools have gone purely virtual, but I'm considering alternative schools this year as well as moving out of our cramped apartment.
Parents: What have you tried? What did you love? What did you hate?
189 comments
[ 3.1 ms ] story [ 246 ms ] threadWe are going to home-school with a private teacher.
We also found a couple of other families that we'll consider play-dates or select group lessons with.
Clever, since they’re then part of your family bubble. Must be expensive though!
We had multiple teachers in our social group reach out to us to set this up, actually and with the cost spread evenly amongst the participating families it wouldn't have been terribly expensive.
She's been working for our family for a bit over a year. We originally hired her as a full-time nanny when wife decided to do a dev bootcamp.
She has a bachelors in early childhood education/development and is personally interested in crafting positive developmental experiences for kids. Our girls really appreciate her and get a lot of value (and education) from the time they spend together. We'll supplement her efforts with more structure in the form of a curriculum.
It is very expensive (relative to our income). We live cheaply and don't do many luxuries. It made sense for us to invest in high-quality childcare for our girls.
That said I personally don't schools will stay open until even Christmas and don't know what our next step will be. We've investigated private school as the class sizes are much smaller and they have far more flexibility and motivation to make in person learning work.
Context: western Canada with big public school classes and very few cases, the majority impacting very old and those with previous health concerns
(No offense intended) I keep hearing this and wonder what proof we have of this? I have two kids, one introvert, one extrovert and neither seem to have been impacted. Sure they'd like to hang out with friends, but they're basically the same personality/kids/temperament they had pre-pandemic.
I don't know if there's evidence, but if this were to go on for years I could see kids missing milestones. Having gone to school with kids who were homeschooled without proper socialization for too long, I can comfortably say social skills need to be learned. It may not seem like much, but not knowing how to interact with peers comfortably is a serious problem, especially as you start to enter situations like interviewing for a job or trying to make friends in a new city.
Huh? I've not experienced this at all with anyone I've seen during the pandemic - even with people who I've only talked online with. This includes people who have basically not seen anyone in person for months and aren't working.
What are these "serious deficits in social skills" you're noticing in adults?
An example from this weekend, I ran into a colleague in town who is having a hard time - his roommate moved back East in May and the core parts of his social group are either immunocompromised or left the area shortly before his current absent roommate moved in. He was having trouble masking how anxious he was. There were untimely interjections. He mentioned wishing he could talk to people who didn’t work for our company - it’s a company town and no one our age/socioeconomic class (that’s an ugly thought but I won’t go down that rabbit hole) works anywhere else. I would expect him to be more nuanced in expressing the idea of hating small talk with people that work at our company, given we were actively making small talk and I work at said company.
Maybe serious is a stretch, but I’m seeing the typical CS/engineer social deficits expressed in people who are in sales/management roles and in people who previously were more capable. It probably wouldn’t stand out in San Francisco or a tech school campus, but in my current circumstances it certainly does.
This isn’t a judgment of anyone involved - everyone I’ve talked about I love to death. As a socially awkward person myself, I tend to love and appreciate other socially awkward people. They just might run into challenges when the stakes are higher.
I wouldn't call those behaviors "socially awkward". Given the time we're in - I think people realize there's little reason to try to save face. In all likelihood, they're trying to be more real about things they're facing because they realize everyone is dealing with a lot of the same shit.
You might also see people reaching out more than they did before (in terms of depth of interaction/complaints - less superficial) because - well - they can't socialize as much with others. They might start socializing with people more intimately than in the past because it's what they have available.
None of the stuff you're saying sounds very... socially awkward. It just sounds more honest...
More to your question, how would you study something like that? Previously home schooled students who had limited social interactions?
I don't know that this would work so well because lack of socialization is one of the biggest myths about homeschooling. The homeschoolers I know hang out in the park for hours 2-3 times a week, do skill shares together, take classes and electives, travel the world. This pandemic has been harder , if not more so than other groups, because they can't use the world as their classroom in the way they've done before. Also, many children struggle mighily in school. Just because there are lots of people there doesn't mean kids don't feel incredibly isolated. A bad social experience (Eg being bullied and isolated in school. Bullying and systemic racism run rampant in our schools. Teachers are exhausted spending most of their time managing behavior rather than getting time to teach and facilitate healthy social-emotional learning in the classroom.
I started a digital pod this fall and some of our kids didn't say a single word in class last fall. Now, in a group of 5-6 kids they are actively participating, sharing their hopes and dreams. Some communicate verbally, others prefer to observe.
I would not stop there when considering the topic. Socialization is a process, and its goal is growth, not stagnation.
That being said, it's also gradual, making it difficult to measure over a few months.
Lack of socialization - for a few months - is as serious as a disease that's killing people by the hundreds of thousands?
Even if the kids themselves are at lower risk, they can transmit the disease to parents as well as teachers, who are much more vulnerable.
We don't know why yet.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/18/health/coronavirus-childr...
This story might not seem that relevant to your situation, but I think my overall point is that childhood development is not necessarily linear. What seems like social regression could be a new phase he's passing through. Your child may not have had a trauma like COVID happen before and he's learning to deal with it. This crisis may not be parallel to anything we've experienced in our time, but we also do not know what is to come and we can give our children tools to navigate what lies ahead. We all have our ups and downs. As a parent or someone loves children, we yearn so much to help them feel better. It hurst our hearts so much when they are in pain. But sometimes the best thing to do is allow their pain, really listen to it, accept it, let them know we love them, that they're safe...and eventually it passes. This helps them stand strong and process emotions for their whole life. If you would like someone to talk to, feel free to reach out. I'd be happy to connect. It seems to me that if you're thinking about these things deeply that your son is very lucky and he will do quite well. It's been really hard for everyone and I hope you're taking good care of yourself.
-small online clubs -daily scheduled facetime with friends -focusing on developing/nurturing healthy relationships with siblings and parents (this goes along way in building healthy attachments later in life) -socially distanced hikes with friends wearing masks -make friends with one other family who is also socially distancing.
I already worked from home so that wasn't a change. One thing that did change right at the beginning of lockdown was that I got diagnosed with a chronic illness that requires treatment that makes me immunocompromised, so that played a role in the decision.
The other is 16 and will be attending in person every other day for half a day (1/4 of the time) and doing synchronous, online the rest of the time. She is attending an online summer school course this month to get the hang of things.
(context: Canadian, kids go to public school in Toronto)
I chose to go pod since it adds a little more socialization without nearly as much risk as a larger group.
Mornings are spent on "Kid's Club" via https://www.modulo.app , which is a fairly new startup that provides online spaces for kids to learn together, hang out together, etc. My daughter has made a number of new friends through that and she's able to do a lot of the same stuff she was doing before (art, learning apps, etc), but in a more social way. Sometimes she gets to help other kids when they get stuck with their learning apps, and visa versa, which is fun. We're likely to expand this to some of the afternoon too, since they're adding a Spanish program.
Overall, I've noticed that her development has thrived since she's moved to a more self-paced environment. There's been no sign that using screens a lot is causing any problems. We've set up an iPad on an adjustable goose-neck stand so she can (and does) run around a lot and her friends can still see her. We also make sure there's time outside for exercise.
We've found a lot of good online resources, generally free or very cheap, such as Cosmic Kids Yoga, Draw Every Day with JJK, Mo Willems Doodles, and Khan Academy Kids. We've also discovered kids coding apps, like CodeSpark and SpriteBox, that have been a big hit. The teacher at Modulo.app does a good job of helping us find resources for stuff our daughter takes an interest in, and we share stuff we find with them too.
We're both full-time parents, and certainly we're not as productive as we were before, but for me it's a totally acceptable compromise. I get to be more involved in my child's development and I get to see her much more than I did before. One key thing is to have carefully planned schedules for everyone in the house. Kids are generally much happier when they have a schedule, and it also means as parents we know when we can arrange meetings, do live coding, and so forth.
We're very lucky to have these options. I know a lot of parents just don't have the ability to work from home, or to reduce their working hours to spend more time with their children.
Many of the ppl that will be homeschooling are doing so bc of the blm education being introduced in schools- it isn't just about covid.
https://www.modulo.app/notmyidea
I suppose there is a market for that, and you're serving it, making money as you divide society.
The division is caused by treating with different skin colour or ethnic background as lesser, or as criminals. Pretending it doesn't exist doesn't make it go away. It's real, and it needs to be addressed. Making kids more aware of that is absolutely important.
If the kid is white, possible learning outcomes include:
a. self-hate, leading to depression and self-harm
b. reading between the lines, learning that to be normal he must be racist against black people, because that is just how white people are
c. rage at being disfavored by every diversity initiative, leading to a desire for revenge
If the kid is black, possible learning outcomes include:
a. hatred toward white people due to being told that white people are to blame for all the bad in life
b. giving up on life because the world seems so racist that life is hopeless
c. deciding that if most people believe he is prone to crime, it is probably true or he might as well make it true
Most of the above will be recognized by both sides as "othering" that is enough to prevent friendship. That's what is being taught, even if not intended.
Of course you shouldn't teach them self-hate, depression and that sort of thing, but you can teach black and white kids to unite against those old patterns that have kept them separate, to have them work together, to teach them they are equals.
I keep seeing too many excuses not to tackle racism, but that means it will continue to exist and hold new generations back.
You don't solve problems by ignoring them. Of course you should also not solve them by making them worse. So you should absolutely look critically at the way in which kids are taught about this, but it's important to make kids aware that this is something that has held previous generations back, and they shouldn't be held back the same way. Sheltering kids from history is not going to make them learn from it, and as we know, people who don't learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
We have seen what teaching people about this leads to, because we've been doing it for decades, and the result is not a lack of racism. You don't solve racial division with racial division.
Most of these efforts do shelter kids from history. Kids learn a false narrative that slavery was just evil white southerners enslaving black people. Nothing is said of the fact that the first slaveowner in the pre-USA colonies was a black person named Anthony Johnson, or that free blacks in the USA often owned slaves, or that black slaves were purchased from black people in Africa, or that the very term "slave" comes from the white Slavic people, or that black Africans are still being sold today, or that enslavement (generally, and particularly of black people) is endorsed by a major world religion.
Don't make it an us-vs-them thing, but unite them. Let them embrace those differences.
You can't stop human nature. At best, you can divert it to something less problematic, like nationalism. If everybody is on Team USA, then there is no room for racism.
We will never eliminate the urge to judge, rank, and exclude. It's very deeply in our DNA. All the social mammals have the urge.
It's important that kids grow up knowing that there are different people out there, with different backgrounds, different ideas, different skin colours, and indeed that some people have been treated differently in the past, and often still are. A too sheltered upbringing is not doing your kid any favours.
I've observed the opposite to be true, especially in secular homeschooling communities I've been a part of in NYC and San Francisco. Parents are homeschooling because they want to expose their child to a more diverse community - or they are joining a more inclusive community because they experienced discrimination in the school community they were a part of.
I think that many families feel that designing their child's learning has paved the way for them to meet families from more diverse perspectives and backgrounds than they would in their school, join a more inclusive community that has space to be more conscientious about how they relate to each other and paves the way for them to include historical viewpoints that are not incorporated in many traditional schools. Of course, the opposite can also be true. It mostly depends on the parent's intention I've found.
Some really great examples of diverse, inclusive homeschooling communities to give you a flavor for this are:
SEA homeschoolers https://www.facebook.com/groups/seahomeschoolers/
San Francisco Homeschooling and Unschooling Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/166286810672946/
HUGS SF https://www.facebook.com/groups/1931740383552142/
New York City Homeschool Support https://www.facebook.com/groups/262047073979701/
Wildschooling https://www.facebook.com/groups/wildschooling/
Bay Area Homeschool Group https://www.facebook.com/groups/1537398423139116/
This looks like a cool service though and I'll be taking a deeper look TY.
It's really hard to find, how to write a loop in go. But how to write a loop in golang is easier. Maybe you can be modulo learning or something. But make sure you have a catch phrase people use to discuss your app that makes it easier to find in Google. Exposure and time might fix that but you want the way people think of your tool to be the way they search it.
I'm no expert on this stuff, this advice might suck, that's my I am not a lawyer disclaimer. Good luck!!!
If the days are staggered, it would reduce the occupancy rate of the classrooms, which seems sensible.
Location: Oviedo, Spain
I'm setting up study areas in the house for the kids that are away from each other and me. I'm going to get comfortable headphones for their school-issued Chromebooks.
The plan is instructional blocks that include webinars, basically, along with some study time with the teacher available online. They can come up to my office if they have questions as well.
I built out my home office to mirror my work office this past spring, so I'm pretty well setup to be a remote employee and hopefully the quiet spaces I setup for the kids will be good for their remote learning.
Have you researched this yet? I'm having a hard time finding good headphones for children.
12-year-old: School over the internet is awesome! Takes me a quarter of the time and I'm not just waiting for the teacher and the class. Doing an online, tech-focused, home schooling program, with in-person advanced math class and drama class.
The 12-yo had been explicitly told he "could miss two weeks and not fall behind", and the teacher tried to forbid working ahead in the math book. (The in-person math class is up a grade level plus "advanced").
This is day one, but here's what I'm going to try this week: 1). Get up earlier. I'm going to try to be in front of my computer with coffee by 5:30am. I'm hoping I can log a couple solid hours of work before I have to punch in for school. 2). Long lunch for the kids. Their school schedule only gives them 50 minutes, but the school is going to have to deal with it. I'm going to do 90 minutes so I can try to focus on work while inhaling a sandwich or something. 3) Bourbon when the kids are sleep.
I really hope we can get a rhythm and my kids can pick up some study skills where we don't have to be so hands-on.
You're going to have to let something slide. Choose one priority and then fit what you can into the time that's left, and accept that it doesn't all fit. I hope you choose your child as your priority, but you'll find your own way. Good luck.
I switched to a reduced-hours contractor status at my day job and went "full-time" on my side project so I can make my own schedule.
I do the bulk of my focused work either after my kid goes to bed or before she starts school for the day.
During the day when she's in class, it seems like every class period, there's at least one or two tech issues she needs help with. To keep that time productive for me, I do household chores, meal prep, and any easily-interruptable work-related tasks (like writing correspondence).
It's not ideal, but I feel like I can make it work for us indefinitely.
One of the ways I tried to demonstrate appreciation for their help was by actively working to structure my life and career so I could be less reliant on them in the future. I had no idea how soon I wouldn't have any choice, but my preparation for self-employment and plan to minimize outside child-care definitely made handling the COVID-forced changes easier.
Today was the first day of school and my kids are in 3rd grade.
Just like you said, there was at least four times that I needed to come over and fix tech support issues. And help them figure out how to do something.
I am trying to figure out which is better right now, with using ipad, laptop, or chromebooks.
My priorities as an educator were for the kids to be able to jump up, lay down and whisper across the room. I also wanted to make sure the devices were safe (for small ears) etc. I wanted the kids to feel as much as possible like they were in the room with me. I didn't want to create an experience where kids had to sit still at their desk or strain to see or hear.
As a teacher, I prefer when kids use a mac laptop because when they screen share or use an app their image does not disappear (which gives less of an in-person feel). I like that they can open multiple windows, so for example, I can be showing them one app, while they're working independently - and I can see their face when they're trying to work independently. Otherwise it makes me feel less like I know what's going on with them.
The big downside with the chromebook is that it doesn't support a lot of amazing apps which are so great for learning, especially at a time when giving kids a fun app they can use independently is a big support to the whole family.
As much as I like a laptop, a lot of our parents prefer the ipad, however, because kids are a bit more free to move about the house. Also, it's considerably less expensive, which makes it easier for all of us to help keep access to our group equitable. We do our best to sponsor any child who can't afford our group but wants to join and we're trying to make this as scaleable as possible so we can offer it to more families everywhere.
Ultimately, this is the winning combo we went with.
Ipad (most recent version or possible)
Wide lens (so kids can move around) https://www.amazon.com/Xenvo-iPhone-Camera-Lens-Clip
Airpod pro (by far the best for sound and most comfortable) https://www.apple.com/airpods-pro
Ipad stand (so kids aren't constantly looking down) https://www.amazon.com/Gooseneck-Tablet-Mount-Holder-Bed/dp/...
Hope this is helpful. Let me know if you have any more questions about our findings:)
In response, we teamed up with five other families of first graders in our area, and have contracted with a tutor to handle the other three-and-two-half days of the week. We may switch to the remote learning option, since it seems like 75% of their class will do that, which would the benefit of in-person social experiences, but simplify logistics. When not in school, the five kids will be in a basement apartment at one of the families' houses with the tutor, working on their distance learning.
We still have a zillion and a half things to iron out, but it's both progress and ridiculous.
Do all 5 families have some kind of agreement about safety and rules about exposing yourself? Or is it some friends that you trust? I'm always curious about the dynamics there.
We had a number of conversations before deciding to "pod up," and certainly before contracting with a teacher/tutor, so we have a sense of each person's risk tolerance. We agreed we were close enough to take this first step, and we'd iron out the rest later.
Middle kid's going in, at least until they probably shut down in a month or two. Youngest is going to grandparents whom we very much hope we don't give The COVID, but none of the rest is happening if that one's home. No way.
Have you considered any of the learning tools like Khan Academy that don't need a parent to necessarily sit down with the child and can study independently?
Also, if you need a friendly ear, I'd be happy to help you and your partner think this through. I've been a teacher for 15 years in 3 countries, founded 3 startups to support homeschoolers, and most recently led schoolclosures.org and Modulo which are working directly to provide support to families. Happy to help in any way we can.
We're banking hard on the 1-2 hours a day of direct instruction thing being true :-)
> Have you considered any of the learning tools like Khan Academy that don't need a parent to necessarily sit down with the child and can study independently?
Absolutely, apps and youtube videos are how we're going to handle much or all of "specials" instruction (foreign language, art, music—I wouldn't have counted on it for music except we happen to already be doing that and it's going better than I could have imagined) and probably some of the science and social studies work. We're mostly focused on keeping our foot on the gas for reading and math, at which she's already far "ahead", as far as direct instruction goes—a kid who can read and is curious can cover more science and social studies on their own than they do in school, we both know from experience, so if those two core literacy subjects are going well we reckon no serious long-term harm has been done, even if we somehow fail at everything else.
> Also, if you need a friendly ear, I'd be happy to help you and your partner think this through. I've been a teacher for 15 years in 3 countries, founded 3 startups to support homeschoolers, and most recently led schoolclosures.org and Modulo which are working directly to provide support to families. Happy to help in any way we can.
Oh hey, we based a bunch of our research on a pile of modulo resources you posted on an HN thread some time back! Haha, cool, didn't realize you were you until I got to this paragraph. Thanks for the work you've done, and for your kind offer of support. At this point we don't know what we don't know and our unknowns are down to things we won't uncover until we start trying it, though, I think. Which is very soon. If our Singapore Math books we ordered 2 weeks ago ever show up, that is. :-/
Net result: We will be sending him to school once it opens.
Our productivity at home will be lower and I will have to relearn fractions, but we're going to make it work.
I am disappointed we didn't use the summer to better prepare by starting to teach the kids, but it seemed like none of us wanted to do anything related to school given what is happening.
I would be thankful. I appreciate your time.
Also Math Tango is our all time favorite app and they have lots of great fraction stuff. https://www.originatorkids.com/?p=1008
More fraction specific - Slice Fractions is a favorite in our community. https://ululab.com/slice-fractions/
First three weeks are remote for all students in my district, but we'll have some hard choices ahead balancing health and education needs. Seems so much these days is choosing between options that are all far, far from ideal.
Oh, and we live in Texas where 7,500 new cases/day are still being reported.
What curriculum or learning apps have you tried so far? Some are better suited to different types of educational needs than others. I'd be happy to recommend some resources that might be helpful and also can connect you to specialists and tutors who are volunteering for free to help kids with special needs during the crisis.
Please let me know if I can be of support in any way I can.