An agonizing decision to withdraw children from school
This past school year, as COVID-19 cases started spiking in Connecticut, Aaron Tiezzi, who goes by A.J., was in kindergarten in Colchester. His brother, Grant, 3, was in preschool.
As schools across the state began moving to remote learning to lessen the spread of the virus, A.J. and Grant joined the hundreds of thousands of Connecticut school children to go home and stare into screens of cherubic faces. Their parents, Aaron and Beth, told them there was a germ and they needed to stay home for a while. The boys mostly adjusted to the new routine — mostly.
Beth Tiezzi had once wanted to be a teacher, and she’d taught English classes remotely, so she was no stranger to delivering curriculum online. She tried to motivate her sons, but keeping up with the Zoom meetings — which son met at what time — was frustrating. Or she’d figure out their schedules, and one of her children would balk at sitting in front of a screen. Add to that, the family was expecting a third child — Ellie, now 6 months old.
Can we agree that remote learning is challenging? Technology — at home and school — must be equal to the demand. Children are asked to be more self-directed, and parents are doing more of the heavy lifting when it came to educating their children — and that’s challenging even if the parent has the time and patience to teach.
And then there is the homework and what the child heard was the assignment, as opposed to what the parent heard. A grownup could be excused for having the occasional meltdown.
In April, Sarah Parcak, an anthropology professor at University of Alabama at Birmingham, became the national darling of Zoomedout parents when she announced that she and her husband were withdrawing their first-grade son from school. She tweeted, “We cannot cope with this insanity. Survival and protecting his well-being come first.”
When the Twitterverse reached out with helpful tips for the family, the professor responded, “Don’t any of you dare offer help or resources. We both work full-time, I also help run my nonprofit AND manage a complex project in Egypt AND am running a COVID-19 tracking platform. So, his happiness trumps crappy math worksheet management.”
A few hours later, she was named a Guggenheim Fellow. The two events are not related, but still.
The challenges of remote learning have moved some parents to take on the education of their children on their own, or with the help of tutors. According to the National Center for Education Statistics, prior to the pandemic, just 3 to 4 percent of American children were home-schooled, but industry watchers expect that number to balloon. The National Home Education Research Institute estimates as many as 14 percent of
American school children will be educated at home by school year’s end. A spokesman for the National Home School Association told the Associated Press that in just one day in July, they received 3,400 requests for information.
The organization had to upgrade its email inbox to handle the requests. Connecticut-based Facebook pages for families interested in home schooling have been rapidly gaining new members as the weeks get longer.
Beth Tiezzi spent part of the summer agonizing about the fall. The Tiezzis worried about exposure to the virus, but mostly, they worried about the emotional and mental health of their sons. Some universities and colleges announced they would resume in-person classes, with significant modifications. When Colchester, like so many districts in the state, announced they’d adopt a hybrid schedule that involved a significant amount of time online, her heart sunk.
“Two days in school, three days at home, we would be all over the place,” said Elizabeth Tiezzi. “I was stressed out all the time.”
Home-schooling seemed like a big step. A.J. is sociable, like his mother. How would they create opportunities for social gatherings during a pandemic? But one day, Beth Tiezzi was again musing out loud about school, and her husband said quietly, “I think you’ve already made your decision.”
The family wrote a letter to withdraw their sons from school, bought curriculum for their first-grader, and turned a playroom into a classroom. Some days, the boys want to play. That’s allowed, and then they do a little more work the next day. They’re on a schedule that better suits them and the meltdowns are at a minimum.
You should know that Beth Tiezzi has nothing but praise for her local teachers and school administrators. They are attempting the impossible in a ridiculous situation. She says she feels fortunate that her family has the option to homeschool. She calls it the best decision she ever made.
That was reinforced this week, when Colchester schools announced they would shut down in-person classes for two weeks because of a staff shortage. Students were given a day off on Wednesday while teachers prepared for allremote classes. Other schools in towns like Bridgeport, Waterbury and Wallingford — among others — have gone to remote learning because of students or staff testing positive for the virus.
When Tiezzi saw the news about her local district, she knew.
“We definitely made the right decision for our family,” she said.