What day one of home schooling looked like in CQ

FIRST day back for term two usually has ups and downs, but this year, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, there have been sweet moments and some ‘hair pulling’ moments.

FIRST day back for term two usually has ups and downs, but this year, thanks to the coronavirus pandemic, there have been sweet moments and some “hair pulling” moments.

Rockhampton artist Emma Ward said her four daughters were coping well with the changes which had led to them doing school from home, on top of their father working from home.

Normally, Emma has the house to herself so she can let the creative juices flow.

Unfortunately, her work has been interrupted a bit with extra people in the house during work hours.

“Two of my four children are working in the art studio, one is using her room, the other is working on her university assignments in her room,” she told The Morning Bulletin.

“Dad’s working remotely from his home office … and I am washing, making meals and trying to run my creative practise simultaneously.

“It is a very different feel when everyone is at home. In some ways I love it (lot less driving) but it is hard to find moments and places to retreat to when everyone needs some distance … we are adapting. Girls prefer home lunches to school lunches!”

Emma’s daughters go to St Peter’s Primary, The Cathedral College and CQUniversity.

Meanwhile, another Rockhampton parent, who wished to be anonymous, has ended up with more grey hairs trying to get his daughter set up to do school from home.

He said he had received multiple emails from the school on how to set up, but he was still struggling to get it done.

The dad said the stressful set-up problems were not linked to the State Government’s learning at home sites which crashed early Monday morning.

Parents reported being unable to access the Learning Place and the Learning at Home websites, online resources for that house learning materials for students to use while they homeschool for the first five weeks of school.

The websites were unable to be used just minutes into the first day of Term Two, as the majority of the state’s students started homeschooling for five weeks.

It comes after parents were told to keep their children home from school, with classrooms only open to children of essential workers who can’t work from home.

People trying to log onto the sites this morning got a message reading: “This site can’t be reached. The connection was reset.”

Authorities were expecting less than 100,000 children to turn up to schools today – only about 10 to 15 per cent of the total number of Queensland students.