Coronavirus homeschoolers, welcome to the jungle

To all of the parents forced home due to the coronavirus crisis who are suddenly homeschooling: Welcome to the jungle! Millions of American parents have suddenly adopted our counterculture lifestyle, one that most would have said they could never do. You’re about to find out if you can, and this veteran would like to give some encouragement: You can do this, but it requires a total reevaluation of what school and education looks like.

In one of the Facebook groups I’m in, one parent recently asked “Am I the only one who is not ‘homeschooling’? We aren’t doing any schoolwork or lessons. It’s all craft projects, playing outside, baking, playing with the dogs, etc.” The veteran homeschool parents in the group let her and others in on a secret: All of that is homeschooling. There isn’t just one way to learn, and there are a lot of ways your kids can learn valuable life skills, not to mention academic ones, while at home with you, even if you’re working.

While parents are in survival mode, this is the big lesson they need to internalize: Education doesn’t have to look exactly like it does in a classroom. Taking time together to bake muffins is educational; it’s a sensory experience for a preschooler, a math lesson for a grade-schooler, and a home economics lesson for a middle- or high-schooler.

Imagine for a moment if, after your entire life was upended, someone came to you with a tightly packed schedule for how you would be spending every single moment, mostly indoors. If you’re dealing with serious behavior issues at home, that inflexible schedule may be why.

You don’t need a master schedule, you need a bit of grace for yourselves and your kids about this sudden new reality. It takes veteran homeschoolers years to create a working schedule. Many others just rely on checklists and work on getting things done loosely throughout the day. (That’s the kind of homeschoolers we are in my home.)

The best advice I’ve gotten is this: Find your philosophy. Yet for many parents, this crucial step has been skipped. Parents are either on their own work on piecing together worksheets or jumping between kids doing digital “distance learning.”

For parents in the latter camp, they have been expected to become a teacher’s assistant overnight, despite having no training or desire to take on such a project. If “distance learning” isn’t working for a family, parents and teachers need to communicate about how to improve the system. Perhaps the volume of work on students is too much, perhaps too much parental involvement. Whatever the problem, now is the time to work out the kinks, before everyone settles into an unsustainable and maddening routine.

For parents who are on their own planning lessons, try to answer these questions first to narrow down your options: Do you want a nature- and literature-based curriculum? Then, Charlotte Mason or Waldorf is your philosophical home. Do you want your kids to have the kind of rigorous education that built some of the greatest minds in ancient Greece and Rome? Classical Conversations may be right for you. Do you want to let your kids guide what they want to be learning? Unschooling or unit studies could be where to start.

Finding your right philosophy doesn’t mean learning it overnight, nor fully adopting it. But if you feel like you have a starting point, it’s easier to improvise from there.

The wonderful thing about homeschooling for parents is this: There is no one to be accountable to except yourselves and your kids. Relax. Families may want to take the next weeks to settle into this different routine and spend some time reflecting on what’s working, what isn’t, and how they want their temporary “homeschool” to look. This time for planning and consideration will go a long way in creating a calm and productive atmosphere for however long this period lasts.

Mandel is a stay-at-home and homeschooling mother of four.