Mom may chuck the Chromebook out window
And just whose idea was it to enrol the three kids in French immersion?
Flipgrid. SMART Notebook. WordReference. The Hub. Prodigy. Raz-Kids. Tumblebooks. YouTube. Google Drive. Nine apps needed on Day 1. It’s 9 a.m.
And I’m nine hours away from wine time.
Let me preface this by saying we are usually a very busy family. We have three small kids — nine, eight and five — and are constantly rushing from thing to thing to thing. School, homework, play dates, birthday parties, making and eating dinner as well as hockey games, practices and tournaments — times three.
To say this coronavirus isolation is a change of pace for us is an understatement.
For the first couple of weeks of COVID-19 closures, including March break, I was enjoying the slower pace. I had set up some work for the kids to do, but I was so unbelievably thankful when the teachers took the reins again and the programming from my hands.
I don’t know anything about the curriculum for senior kindergarten or Grades 2 and 4, so I was constantly second guessing what I had set up and whether it added value. I was so sure that once that was off my plate this would all be easier. Boy, was I wrong.
The first day of home-school was pure chaos. Trying to help my three kids just set up and get organized took nearly the entire day.
The emails from the teachers were detailed and looked easy enough in theory. Easy instructions, links to the work and good to go.
For my eight-year-old, the work required a simple download of SMART Notebook. No problem.
We fired up that new Chromebook we needed to facilitate three kids working simultaneously, found the SMART website, found the Notebook link, scrolled down, scrolled down and then …
Mac or Windows
Wait, what? Where is the Chromebook version?
You’ve gotta be freaking kidding me …
After calling my tech support (my hubby), we searched the web … nothing. Searched YouTube for instructions on workarounds … nada. I emailed his teacher asking if there was a different link or website. Nope.
Turns out you just can’t run that program on a Chromebook.
After a morning of getting my oldest up and running with the new apps and links all set up on our MacBook, we had to shut him down, switch computers and start from scratch — all so the eight-year-old could download this stupid program. That was just the first two hours. And ONE app.
After troubleshooting, getting all three kids signed in and registered on nine different apps on all three devices, more than half the day was gone, the kids got hangry (or maybe that was me) and we broke for the day.
Which brings me to my biggest frustration through all of this: Why are all these teachers using different platforms? Three kids and each one is using two or three different apps and platforms. There’s one for communicating with the teacher, one for reading, another for math and other assignments, and sometimes a different one for submitting work. There must be a way to streamline this for parents.
I will say the routine got easier as the week went on. The school work? Not so much.
Full disclosure: I do not speak French. What possessed us to put our kids in French immersion I will never know … oh wait, yes I do. It was my husband. How dare he want a wellrounded education for our kids?
Luckily, my oldest seems to be able to find, complete and keep up with all his own Grade 4 work, more or less on his own. I occasionally need to keep him on track, but I haven’t had to help him with any of his actual work so far.
As for my Grade 2, he doesn’t understand any of the French instructions.
You know who else doesn’t understand them? Me.
So now, let’s add translating all the instructions to the daily routine, then googling what the heck a parallelogram or an irregular shape is, teaching it to him and then helping him complete the work — all while my senior kindergartener is tugging on my shirt and waiting impatiently to do her assignments.
I know we are very lucky. We have three electronic devices that our kids can use while some families have none. I am off work (a blessing and a curse), so I can give the time that’s needed for their education, while there are lots of families where both parents are still working full-time or single parents who are still working.
In fact, I have a good friend who is an ICU nurse with three kids and is juggling 12-hour shifts, co-parenting, handling their education, keeping her mental health above water, with the extra stress of working in a hospital during a pandemic and then, on top of that, a grocery run now takes hours because you have to stand in line before entering and she can’t take her kids with her.
In the grand scheme of things, I really shouldn’t be complaining. But this new normal is hard and I think it’s important to remember that it’s hard on everyone, particularly the teachers, and that it’s OK to give ourselves a break.
I know everyone is doing their best and I definitely don’t blame the teachers for any of this, but if the home-school bumps don’t smooth out soon, Mama is gonna lose it … or chuck the new Chromebook out the window.