How's It Going?!

Well it is e-learning. I'm incredibly thankful to our teachers who are trying to hold things together to get our kids in school at least half days. They are a God-send for working parents and even the stay at home parents but most especially for our kids. Our kids need to be back in the schools doing what they do. They are not getting at home what they surely can get at school.

It's apparent already that some curriculum had to be cut because they just don't have the time. Our 5th graders aren't getting any homework which I'm not complaining about but I worry that next year will be a rude awakening for them because I know how much homework they get in 6th grade.

I worry that I'm losing Hailey. It's been increasingly difficult to get her to follow a schedule in the morning of getting up, getting dressed and sitting down to do her work. Then when she has a break, she wants to play and is annoyed at me when I call her down for lunch because she has to eat and go to school in the afternoon. Not to mention that these teachers don't have ample time to test for math and reading. I mean Hailey came home with a book at the level she was in last November/December! I had a few back and forth email exchanges with her teacher who was so great and told me that that level is the start of first grade. Well, that's great but she was reading at that back in the first half of kindergarten! She agreed to re-test her and her teacher will finish up this week but thinks she should be at the last level of first grade or into the beginning of the second grade level (where I thought she should be). 

As for Austen, he's in 8th grade so he's pretty much on his own (although we got him a new desk for his bedroom). But, I wonder how he's going to do in Algebra 1 without being in class all the time or how they will get everything in for Spanish 1 so that when he goes to high school next year he can fall easily into Spanish 2. 

These kids, like all kids across the world this year, are going to struggle at some point because of something they didn't get enough of during this crazy year. In fact, we may all struggle especially as the weather grows colder again. 

I still can't walk away from Hailey for very long in the mornings while she's doing her lessons because she needs my help to figure out what she has to turn in or simply how to navigate a link in an app or how to log in to another app. But thankfully, I don't have to do this all day. I get a 2.5 hour break where I can workout, shower, do laundry or write a blog before I need to walk the dog and pick them up from school. A. Much. Needed. Break. We all need those to keep us sane during these times and for this I'm thankful to our teachers and our community for doing the right thing during this time so our kids can be in school. 

Eyes closed and listening intently to her music lesson