‘A really big experiment’: Parents turn teachers amid virus

BUFFALO, N.Y. » After her sixth-grade son’s school in Buffalo, New York, closed amid the coronavirus outbreak, Roxanne Ojeda-Valentin returned to campus with shopping bags to take home textbooks and weeks’ worth of assignments prepared by teachers.

A single mother with a full-time job, she now joins millions of parents around the country — and the world — suddenly thrust into the role of their children’s primary educators, leaving them scrambling to sift through educational resources and juggle lesson plans with jobs and other responsibilities.

“It’s a really big experiment,” Ojeda-Valentin said as she left the school, her second stop after picking up materials from her fourthgrade daughter’s school.

Even in school districts that are providing remote instruction, the burden falls on parents to keep their children on task. In others, parents are left to find educational websites and curricular materials on their own. And while the challenges are daunting for all, they can be nearly impossible to overcome for parents limited by access to technology and their own levels of education.

Across the United States, more than 118,000 public and private schools in 45 states have closed, affecting 53 million students, according to a tally kept by Education Week. While many closures were initially announced as short-term, parents are wondering if schools will reopen this academic year as the outbreak intensifies.