PARENTS, KIDS ADJUST TO STAYING AT HOME
Woodland families find creative ways to learn while sheltering in place
With California school campuses shut down for the rest of the academic year due to the coronavirus outbreak, parents have had to step into the formidable task of educating their kids at home.
The transition for local families has ranged from an inconvenience to outright disruption.
For schools in the Woodland District, teacher-guided distance learning is still on track to begin on April 20, when students were initially scheduled to return from spring break, but what about the time in between?
Parents and guardians around the district have had to get creative.
Julia Lopez, a former preschool teacher at St. Luke’s and mother of four, has done just that.
“I have an accumulation of resources, which makes it a little bit easier to kind of just keep my kids busy,” Lopez said. “For instance, we are planting flowers right now. We are also doing a bean comparison with Peruvian and pinto beans. We are sprouting them in the bag, which kind of falls in line with a science project. Just some home-based things you can do to keep them busy to try to tie in some science and home economics stuff.”
Lopez, 32, has an eighth- and seventh-grader attending Douglass Middle School, a fifthgrader at Woodland Prairie, and her youngest will start kindergarten this fall.
Through some serendipitous timing, Lopez had just left her job as a preschool teacher and was about to start training for a new job working with special needs kids with the Center for Autism and Related Disorders the week the schools first closed.
“I had just received my training schedule and submitted my fingerprints, but then I got the call about the hiring freeze,” Lopez said. “They notified me that my training was on hold, so that’s why I’ve been able to stay home.”
Along with planting, painting, cruising up lavender for her home, and sprouting beans, Lopez has been using YouTube to introduce the French language to her youngest, per his request. She’s also introduced the language learning app Duolingo
to her daughters to change up their activities.
Working in education has given Lopez insight and an opportunity to be there for her kids while they are at home, but she remains mindful of families that may not have the same resources.
“I know that a lot of other parents are still working,” a concerned Lopez said. “It’s tough on them because those kids won’t have the same resources we do. I feel for those parents and other kids who need that extra help, especially parents that are still working.”
Despite making the best of her situation and enjoying the positive outcomes of her family quarantine, Lopez is ready to get back to normal.
“I’m pretty eager to get back to normal, but I have always been into educating my kids, so homeschooling has not too difficult for me,” Lopez said. “But I am used to working, and my kids are used to socializing with people outside of the family. On the flip side of that, an unexpected positive is that it has been nice to go at our own pace and to take time to explore different things. Normally, there are high expectations, and right now, we don’t have that.”
Over at Woodland Christian, teachers have begun online instruction, starting slowly with Zoom calls and Google classroom, depending on the grade.
Brain Ganyo, the head basketball coach at Woodland Christian, has five kids that go to the school, including a kindergartener, and a first, fifth, eighth, and tenth grader.
“It’s been a big adjustment for both my wife and me,” Ganyo said. “I’m an essential worker, but I’ve been asked to limit contact with people, so I’m working from home. My wife is a teacher at Woodland Christian and has been super busy trying to get all of her classes online, so it’s just been both of us trying to tag team.”
While the adjustment has been tough on the parents, it has also undoubtedly been an adaptation for his kids.
“All my kids understand what is happening,” Ganyo said. “I think at first they all thought this was kind of cool, but then after the second day, I think they realized it would be cool to see their friends. I think they realize how nice it is to go to school every day. It’s not like we are on summer break. We’re stuck at home.”
Being stuck at home and the lack of a routine outside the house has taken a toll, especially on his youngest.
“My three youngest miss the routine,” Ganyo said. “They’ll spend the first two and a half hours of the day doing all their homework and finishing it, so its a learning lesson as to how to entertain yourself afterward.”
“The older kids miss seeing their friends, but they’ll spend time on FaceTime,” Ganyo continued. “They are kind of used to it. They’d come home and spend time texting or on FaceTime. They don’t have to get up at a certain time, which they kind of like. So it’s not as hard for them as it is for the younger kids.”
Ganyo, 40, is thankful the school has been so helpful during the first few weeks following the school closures.
“Woodland Christian has done a pretty good job of getting the workload online, so now we have turned into the teachers with homeschooling,” Ganyo said. “I mean, the teachers are still very much involved, but it’s up to us trying to manage our kids to get them to do their stuff.”
The family has had to be more hands-on with their younger kids’ homeschooling because naturally, they need more direction and instruction, like getting to the right website.
Ganyo says his two youngest boys haven’t a lot of online learning interactions with their teachers yet. A lot of their work has been packets sent home, but there has been some contact with their teachers.
“My youngest boys have some interactions with their teachers,” Ganyo said. “I think all of the teachers have done some sort of Zoom, where they kind of check-in and say ‘hi.’ They have checked in with our kids. The whole class gets to see everyone. It’s interactive, but they weren’t working on anything.”
As his kids get older, they find more things online available. His fifth-graders teacher has offered to hold once or twice a week Zoom calls if any students have questions about the homework, or just want to check-in.
“The teachers are being fairly flexible and trying to help us out,” Ganyo said. “My eight and tenth graders actually do have some classes set up on Zoom. I know for their Spanish class, some of it has to be done in person through Zoom. For them, everything is online, but they are more capable of managing themselves.”
Ganyo has also discovered some positives that may not have been uncovered without
Woodland Christian School students hear from a teacher as part of their social learning curriculum now being used by public and private schools for students from preschool through 12th grade. a quarantine.
“It has not been easy. We are a very active family with all the things and sports we do,” Ganyo said. “But one nice thing is that this is a good reminder that we needed to slow down. Get back to having dinners as a family every night. Get back to enjoying each other by playing board games. So that part has been a good reminder for us.”
Even with the unexpected positives, the family is experiencing, Ganyo says he’s eager to get back to whatever normal will be.
“I’ll be very appreciative when we get back to that stage,” Ganyo said. “It’s just hard to get work done at the house with my kids here. School just adds an excellent routine. It keeps their days structured.”
Mellina Collazo, a mother of five, is also adjusting.
“My kids are just very bored,” Collazo said. “They are trying to be understanding, and they have been pretty brave about everything.”
Collazo’s kids include second and fourth graders at Maxwell, eighth and seventh graders at Lee Middle School, and a junior at Woodland High. She has been keeping a weekly routine with her kids, including an 8:30 a.m. wake up on weekdays, followed by packet work, reading, and exploring the Kahn Academy website.
“It’s a website where the kids can do all kinds of academic stuff,” Collazo said. “It goes by grade. There are math, science, finance, computing, and test prep courses. A friend recommended it, and it’s great.”
Before the shutdown, Collazo, 32, worked at Maxim Behavioral Health in Sacramento, but since the closure, she has had to take a job as a certified nurse assistant working at a memory care facility for elderly dealing with memory problems.
Despite not being able to be there for her kids all day, she has some help at the house and feels comfortable when she leaves for work.
“I think as a parent, I feel content because my kids are home and safe every day,” Collazo said. “I go to work with peace of mind. My mom does live with me and is here for them when I am at work.”
Collazo has, however, experienced some trouble going over her kid’s course work. She feels she would have to re-learn some of the coursework and finds it frustrating when she doesn’t know how to help them.
“I feel like we are all learning together,” Collazo said. “But the teachers have been emailing us making themselves available. They’ll let the kids know they are still being thought of and missed. Just because they aren’t in school, they still have their backs.”
Collazo was scheduled to pick up district-provided Chromebooks for her two youngest kids on Tuesday. Her older kids had already been issued some earlier in the school year.
“I’ll miss these times when we are all together,” Collazo said. “It’s not that I want them quarantined, but it’s a good feeling that they are here and OK. I do want to go back to normal though because my kids are frustrated.”