Trying Not to Fail at Remote Learning
My kids have not been in a classroom since March of 2020. It was that fateful Friday the 13th when the schools closed in Illinois due to COVID-19. We had seen the writing on the wall and kept our kids home that day.
Spring was admittedly a disaster all around. My 2nd grade and 4th grader met with their teachers twice a week for 30 minutes via Zoom, and that was it. Otherwise, they were on their own. My husband and I were juggling work and a toddler as we were thrust into these new circumstances. I’m pretty sure not a lot of learning took place.
I finally threw up my hands and wrote off the end of the school year. They weren’t being graded anyway, per Illinois Department of Education guidance. It was truly survival mode and nothing more.
I knew that Fall would be different. The kids would be graded, and I had a feeling we were in this for the long haul, and the entire school year would be 100% remote learning. We would need to figure out how to make it work.
I set up a “classroom” in our basement. Desks came out of individual bedrooms, and I sectioned off space with dividers. I put up Harry Potter décor to make it fun.
We had some early mishaps, like learning the Zoom schedule and missing assignments, but after a while, it settled into a rhythm. I used a combination of Alexa…
