Kara Jung: Why I wish all SA kids could return to the classroom this week

Back to school for many today means stressful virtual classrooms - we should have saved some heartache and had them all back on site today, says Kara Jung.

Over in Melbourne, the world’s most locked down city, I watched one of my dearest friends as we shared a cup of tea (okay, it wasn’t tea) over our regular Zoom catch-ups.

She looked more stressed, drained and on edge as the Covid crisis went on and on.

I would listen as she explained working while also homeschooling her two children. It was a nightmare.

I realise here in SA we have not had to endure anything to that extent.

Late last year though, we got our crack at homeschooling for about a week. I had most of those days off work and still found it a rather excruciating experience, especially the wild emotional outbursts (not just from the little people in our house).

Homeschooling is like herding squirrels.

Homeschooling while working from home is like herding caffeinated squirrels who are having a breakdown in a ball pit while trying to smile serenely at your boss over Zoom.

If you had asked me two years ago what would be the hardest part of navigating a global pandemic, I would never have imagined my answer to be: ‘teaching year 3 maths while also trying to fashion a guitar out of cardboard’.

We’d start out strong but by recess I’d be shuffling the schedule to allow for PE so I could boot the kids into the backyard for some hard-earned respite.

So when we let Covid into the state, I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be having this discussion again – the homeschooling one.

Siblings Hugh, 8, will be online learning at home whilst his little sister Harper, 5, is starting reception and going to be onsite at school. Picture: Keryn Stevens

Year 11 Blackwood student, Ben, will start school online. Picture: Matt Loxton

My vote would be that every kid was back in the classroom today – unless you have Covid or are showing symptoms of it.

And, like many parents, I’ll be counting down the days until all my kids are back at school.

As it stands – one will go to school on Wednesday and the other will stay home.

Widespread school closures come with pretty devastating costs – and I don’t just mean monetary.

Firstly, lots of parents last time said some days homeschooling just wasn’t worth it, so they didn’t do it. When you have a project deadline at work and your child is having a meltdown, isn’t it better to skip school? The danger in that is it shows poor attitudes about the importance of education – statistics from the US show in some cases only half of the students even logging on.

For many that do log on and struggle with the technology or need more teacher guidance, homeschooling has made them feel lost and stressed.

And we know the work-school juggle for parents often leads to poorer health outcomes for kids. Who hasn’t let their kid play an hour of Minecraft so you could get some work done? And, I’ll just put it out there (and I’d like to note this ain’t true at our house) – a huge amount of this workload statistically falls to the mums.

For many kids, school is a safe haven and not being able to go makes them more at risk of abuse or neglect.

Our schools, teachers and support staff have been back on site working madly behind the scenes to ensure our children’s safety and wellbeing as they either return to class or start their 2022 school journey from home. I feel for them and thank them as they put themselves in the Covid firing line – that’s happening anyway whether you agree with students going back at once or a staggered start with virtual learning.

It’s messy for them to create a virtual curriculum for children they might not even have met yet.

Could we have saved some heartache and just had all kids back in the classroom from Wednesday?

We don’t know how much of a spike the return to school will have on cases, except to say a spike is likely. We don’t have a crystal ball for how that will impact our hospitals, except to say children have so far shown less severe symptoms and Omicron has appeared to be more mild than Delta.

Whatever happens on Wednesday, let’s all try to be kind to ourselves, our kids and our wonderful teachers.

And if you need to ring the homeschool bell early and all go for ice cream, that’s okay too.