Online School During Covid-19 (eBook)

Chapter 1

CRITICAL INFORMATION FOR ALL PARENTS TO KNOW BEFORE MAKING A DECISION REGARDING ONLINE SCHOOL

For all of us, what we know is what we know. What we grew up with and what we have been exposed to determines our attitude about what is “normal.” In the area of education, some 98 percent of us received our primary and secondary education through either a public or private school. We are indoctrinated to believe that “school” is when your kid gets on a bus or is dropped off at a building and goes into a classroom where a teacher educates and manages the classroom. Those of us who home or online school refer to those types of schools as “brick and mortar.” When considering online schooling, it is imperative that parents understand that online school is VERY different from what you are familiar with.

One of the “issues” related to online school is that there is more turnover than in public and private schools. In general, every year, each online school has a certain percentage of children that are enrolled and then disenrolled within the first three weeks, six weeks, or nine weeks of school. Online school detractors point to this as a “failure” of online schools. I do not see it that way at all. What I have seen is that parents do not do enough research and do not read the fine print while they are enrolling their child. They sometimes have no idea what they have signed up for. ALL of this information is presented to the parent on the schools’ website and during the enrollment process, but because we see “school” in a certain way, many parents seem to not understand how this is going to work. In addition, many parents sign their kids up for online school after a “blowup” with the public school. The parent may already be frazzled, knowing they are required by law to have their child in school, so they do the online sign-up without spending enough time thinking the situation through.

The reality is that your child will log into their school’s website on their first day and find a checklist of “Things to do.” As they click on the things on that list, they will be directed to watch a video, or read certain pages of their textbooks, or do problems 1–27 on a certain page in the math book. There is no teacher involved for most of the day. Your child does, in fact, have at least one certified teacher assigned to them (In Eli’s case for fifth grade, he had three teachers). That teacher will provide “live lessons” at scheduled times during the day or week. For instance, your child may have a math class scheduled Monday through Thursday from 10:00 to 10:45 and a language arts class scheduled from 1 to 2 on Tuesday and Thursday. At those times, your child will log into their teacher’s classroom and engage with her and other students. In Eli’s three-year online career, he was scheduled for an average of seven hours per week directly with the teacher. The rest of the time, he was on his own with me, his Learning Coach.

Some of you may want to put this book down right now and forget all about considering online school. I can’t blame you, but I’m going to ask you to continue on. Choosing an online school for your children means thinking outside of the box, reconsidering things that you feel you “know,” and taking responsibility for your child’s education. Quite frankly, if you are reading this book, you must already have a desire to do things differently. If you haven’t seen it yet, online schooling is very similar to homeschooling but with some added bonuses.

I have several friends who homeschool (one homeschools all SIX of her kids), and through my work at Next Step Therapy, I have had the opportunity to work with many families who homeschool. Homeschooling involves the parent, for the most part, choosing the curriculum for their students (there are entire lines available for purchase online), setting up lesson plans, and actively teaching during the school day. Online schooling, in my opinion, takes the best of homeschooling and adds the benefits of having your curriculum provided for you, the lessons already pre-planned, and a certified teacher to grade the student’s work. In addition, you have a professional on hand to deal with any difficult subject matter, like sixth-grade math. From my perspective, online school takes away any doubt that your child is learning and progressing at the same rate as their peers while still allowing you an enormous amount of control over how and what your children learn.

Having said all of that, online school requires that a “learning coach” be assigned to the child. Many people feel that they can’t do online school because they work a job outside of the home. That is simply not true. There is no law that says that the learning coach must be a biological parent, and there is no law that says that “school” can only be done between 8 a.m. and 3 p.m. In reality, while most of the children I have come across were being supervised primarily by their moms, I have seen dads, grandparents, and even aunts who supervised a child’s online education. In one case, I met a woman who had retired as a public school teacher, put two of her grandchildren through their last three years of high school online, and then hired herself out to a two-professionals family to be their children’s learning coach. While most of us can’t afford to hire a teacher in-home, there are an endless number of possibilities for supervising and teaching your child through online schools. In some households, mom does the bulk of the school work during the day, but dad hits the math lesson after dinner. Choices, choices, choices! Many teenagers doing online school don’t even start their work until noon. While this might strike you as weird and lazy (Because everybody needs to be up and at ’em by 8 a.m., right? Except, what about the people who work night shifts?), in the real world, science has shown that teenagers have a natural sleep pattern shift that avails itself to being wide awake at midnight.

In my opinion, online schools basically say this: “It does not take a certified teacher with a master’s degree to tell a child to read four pages of a history book and answer three questions at the end of the chapter.” I agree. Ninety percent of what an elementary school child does during the school day (reading out of textbooks, answering questions from the book, practicing math problems, practicing handwriting, writing a paragraph, researching for a report, practicing spelling words) is easily handled by your average adult. A teacher is needed to explain difficult concepts (math, rules of the English language that don’t make a lot of sense, understanding how to thoroughly answer an essay question) and to grade/critique work turned in with suggestions on how to improve. While public school teachers may disagree, it has been my experience that the majority of their job is “classroom management”—keeping children on task, ensuring safety, dealing with behavioral issues, and housekeeping jobs like keeping attendance. The average elementary school teacher only lectures or explains for short periods during the day. The rest of the time is spent at their desk or walking around overseeing what the children are working on. In online school, the classroom management portion is removed from the teachers’ job description, and therefore the teachers are able to spend their time on teaching those live lessons, grading tests and work turned in, and dealing one-on-one with children struggling. During our three years of online school, I found this to be a much better usage of the teachers’ expertise. High school online students have more “live lessons” and interactive time with their teachers, which makes sense as the subject matter gets harder and a learning coach may find themselves out of their depth.

The next crucial piece of information is this: your state’s Department of Education has clearly defined rules and regulations regarding what is required to be offered as far as curriculum and how many hours per week a child must be in school. For example, Pennsylvania requires all elementary-aged students to have twenty-five (25) hours per week of instruction. That is five hours per day. A quick calculation in your head should tell you that brick and mortar schoolchildren are typically in school from around 8:00 a.m. until around 3:00 p.m. Seven hours. For some reason, I find parents who look at online schooling frequently make statements such as, “Well, my child is very bright, and without all of the distractions of a classroom, we can get that work done in half the time.” No. No, you cannot. No, No, No! Because your state requires a certain number of hours of instruction, the curriculum is built to take the required amount of time. The online schools’ websites clearly state that 5–6 hours per day is minimum. In fact, Eli had a few days where the stars were perfectly aligned and he did complete his work in less than four hours, but he had many, many, more days that required 7–8 hours. If your child completes all of the work on their daily “To Do List,” they will be busy for the entire 5–6 hours. In addition, there will need to be a lunch break and bathroom breaks in there, and many parents allow a child a “recess” break like their brick and mortar educated peers. If you start your online school day at 8:00 a.m., you can assume that your child will not be finished until around 3:00 p.m. Beyond that, if your child has special needs, attention deficit or health problems that require additional breaks, it will take longer.

I have to admit that I don’t...