Homeschooling in 2020

2020 April 20

The schools have been shut down for the past five weeks due to the coronavirus pandemic scare. I have been teaching my classes from home. The first few weeks, I had a terrible time because I was recording videos and had to do them at night. It was the only time the neighborhood was quiet enough to record audio. Now I am working on getting back to a reasonable schedule.

Parents have been “homeschooling” their children for the past five weeks, and it seems like they will continue to do so till the end of the school year. How many of these parents will decide to continue homeschooling next year and how many will be relieved when the school system is finally willing to take their “little monsters” back. How many parents will ask the school system for work to be sent home over the summer months so the children can continue to learn at home. It would be more of a guided learning than a forced learning. And for those students whose parents care about education, the students would learn more than they would if they were sitting in a classroom six hours a day. And furthermore, they would take less time to learn it. Meanwhile, the students who are slower at learning would be able to slow down and step back to a topic they didn’t understand and actually learn it before moving on to a new topic.

This could also, possibly, give the teachers a better opportunity to work with those that are slower, to present the material in a different manner that would allow them a better understanding.

I would like to see a “web based” education system in which the teachers check in with each student at least once a day to ensure the student is working on their schoolwork and has no questions that need clarification. The teacher could then help the student or parent to send in any assignments that need to be sent via whichever program the school system decided to use. Perhaps there should be a one day a week mandatory in person lecture/lab/testing day at the physical school building.

I foresee this being of some assistance in helping the student prepare for the distractions of the real world in that they would learn that there has to be a set time that they do their work and the rest of the time can be for personal pleasure/ play time. As it is, the students are learning that there is a place to do their work and when they are not at that place, they don’t need to work. How many students don’t do any homework at home because they manage to finish the work at school. And how many bring home hours of homework because the teachers think they should have more work to do.

Another reason for having children learn at home more than doing all of their learning in schools is to allow the parents an opportunity to see what material the children are being told to study. It is an idea that would work both ways. The parents would see the material and learn some of that material themselves as well as be able to see if that material is fitting for the religious /political views of the family. I will cover this in another post.

W