Parents, ditch the guilt and follow these three home-school tips

Parents working from home are asking how will they get their own work done while supervising online lessons between 9 and 3? While others are worried about kids falling behind during the crisis? Paul Williams has this advice.

NEWS that Queensland schools will open next week only for children of essential workers will bring mixed emotions.

On the one hand, we’re reassured the State Government’s rigorous social distancing rules remain in force. But the thought of another five weeks of home-schooling for kids already climbing the walls will see mums and dads sweat bullets. Even before the Easter break parents reported sky-high stress levels as schools closed and kids’ learning moved online.

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Already frazzled by their own newly enforced work-from-home regime – the challenge of new technologies like video conferencing can be overwhelming for older workers – parents may well feel anxiety and guilt in equal measures.

How will they get their own work done while supervising online lessons between 9 and 3? And what sort of a parents are we if our kids fall behind during the crisis?

As a former classroom teacher and currently stressed parent – and at the risk of incurring the wrath of my own child’s school – my first advice to parents is to relax and have confidence in their own abilities as any child’s most important educator.

Second, like any good teacher, engage with your child’s learning in a way that’s right for both you and your kids. That means your home-schooling practices might be very different from your friends’, and you might even use different methods with different children within your own family. We all know some kids respond best to praise while others work better under the thumb. Work out your child’s individual learning style and work with and not against them.

Third, remember any sort of educational engagement during lockdown is better than none. Don’t be too concerned if your child sometimes works at half-speed.

But, no matter your child’s age or disposition, there are a few things all parents and kids should observe, beginning with the setting of daily and weekly goals for work completion that are ideally written down after a friendly and collaborative discussion with your children. The same goes for the rules of home-school so that kids know when study ends and recreation begins. Generous and regular break times – and healthy eating and exercise – are critical to success.

And allowing your child to transition from one screen (a laptop cluttered with assignments) to another (a tablet or phone full of games and social media) is not necessarily a “break”. Enforce long periods of time away from screens where they read hard copy books and magazines, listen to music, phone friends or just chill in the garden.

Critically, the pragmatism of home-schooling while we, ourselves, try to work remotely means we must encourage independence in our kids. When a task has been allocated – either from teachers’ set curricula or by yourself – encourage your child to revise their own work, and move onto the next task without checking in with you every ten minutes.

Of course, the age of our children will determine what form home-schooling takes, and parents with primary school kids will enjoy more flexibility than those with children in senior years. But, even here, parents stressed at not being able to supervise Year 12 calculus can take comfort in the fact effective learning is found in ‘horizontal’ and not just ‘vertical’ curricula.

By this I mean parents can expose their kids to a range knowledge and skills outside standard school syllabuses – education that builds genuine life-long learning. For example, regardless of your children’s ages, encourage them to describe (verbally or textually) in their own words what they have learnt from any set task. A child’s personal evaluations of their own performance and progress in a written diary are also useful.

Children of all ages will also benefit from discussions about favourite books, songs and films where authors’ historical, cultural and economic circumstances can be explored. And don’t feel guilty about binging on National Geographic or history documentaries, as long as it’s a shared experience followed by discussion and review. And how easy is to take an online tour of the world’s most famous architecture, art galleries and museums?

For younger children, take time for shared reading experiences, and perhaps cooking lessons where estimation and measurement can be practised. Ask them to cost everyday items around the home, and compare those to pocket money allowances.

And don’t forget grandparents’ life experiences. Give grandma a call and get her to describe what it was like to go to school in a time before calculators and computers.

So, ditch that guilt and remember: education stretches much farther than a school’s brick and virtual walls.