CORONA-TINED

Just wanted to write about my personal experience with quarantine & COVID-19. The first big experience was that our boys stopped going to school. I loved this. I like having them home. We've done homeschool & enjoyed it. This was not that. This is having teachers assign a bunch of assignments of their choice & you just have to enforce the assignments, no matter how much sense they make or don't make. Some teachers were great right away and some teachers acted like the only possible thing you should focus on should be their class. It never even seemed to enter their consciousness that your student would have other classes or that you might have multiple kids. I reached out to some & tried to find a better solution. Surprisingly enough (dripping sarcasm), the teachers that assigned the most unreasonable amount and kinds of assignments were the least flexible in finding other solutions.

Some of the curriculum my kids were being exposed to (especially for high school) was alarming but being home gave us a chance to have discussions about it and I was grateful for the chance to address some of the propaganda that infiltrates the curriculum. Because we were close to grades for the quarter, we kind of just rolled over & played along, trying to salvage grades for the quarter. It was incredibly stressful to help manage 15 classes (& I realize other households had much more than this to manage). I did try to leave much of it up to my boys but they struggled to know how to manage it, especially when there were so many different programs-Canvas, Google Classroom, Math XL, etc., etc. As I saw my boys getting no credit for some of their assignments that I watched them do, I'd delve into it and find you had to go so many layers in just to correctly submit things & just the navigating of programs was a nightmare for me as an adult, let alone them. Teachers weren't even using the same programs or systems and it was very chaotic. People kept posting on social media about all these fun places you could go to learn online & I wondered who had time to choose any of their learning? We were starting school around 8 a.m. and finishing up around 4 p.m. & I'd try to feed everybody and go to work and we'd do it again the next day. There was no free time or choosing what we were learning. Once 3rd quarter was over, I thought that pace was not sustainable and we weren't happy. Luckily, other households weren't doing perfectly and teachers, even the crazy ones, were kind of forced to ease up at least a little. I honestly told my 7th grader that I wanted him working & learning but that it was up to him. 7th grade doesn't count so why stress ourselves out? I care about learning but not about doing it in only one way to fit one person's expectations. I do expect him to learn & I make sure he's working on school but I encourage him to explore personal interests for part of the day and he tells me what he learned. Assignments that are nothing but pointless busy work that he doesn't get done, I don't push him on too much. I mention it so he knows that I know he didn't do it but I tell him that he has to make some choices about his education. For my high schooler, he likes knowing what my minimum expectations are for him and his teachers have really come together to make the work load reasonable so I will just write a list of what assignments he has to finish and he can come to me for any help or support that he needs. Some days he gets done fast and independently and some days take a long time & require hours and hours of help but everything feels much more balanced. I don't explore all the fun learning sites that people share. There are many sites that look pretty cool but everybody stays busy enough with what we have that we're not bored & wondering what else to do. That's been our experience with school.

In general, I have chosen to approach all of this with cautious optimism. Don't contribute to the problem but don't obsess about the problem either. We sanitize & wash. We socially distance ourselves. We do what we can to be responsible. However, we don't get too carried away. I'm a news junkie & I just stopped reading or watching the news. It's easy to get too wrapped up and pulled in many directions. I know this approach isn't for everybody. Many people who never watched the news are now the news junkies and we've switched. For me, turning off the news is one of the easiest things I can do to stay centered and feel peace. I feel like for me, it allows me to embrace faith and dispel fear. I still hear plenty about it. I spend a few minutes a day on social media & I have a job & I listen to podcasts (none that say they're dealing with coronavirus but it slips into most everyday podcasts anyway) so I still hear plenty about what's going on. I just choose not to be afraid. Fear has never prevented or cured an illness before so why pull that dark cloud over us? It serves no purpose. The one choice I've made that people have mixed feelings about is not to wear a mask. I put a scarf in my car so if our state forces us to have our faces covered, I have preparations in place to legally comply but I won't use it until forced to. At work, there is a very small percentage of us that leave our faces uncovered. The CDC at one point told us NOT to wear masks and now they say to yes, wear them and I feel like it's weird that so many immediately comply without question. I doubt the efficiency of wearing masks and I have glasses that just fog up with a mask on so I just choose not to do it. I don't mind if others feel better wearing them. If that small thing offers another human the smallest bit of comfort, then more power to them. I do my best to keep distances with people at work. I have no desire to make anybody else feel uncomfortable. I do try to act in a responsible way but also make some of my own choices where I safely can make them and I just try to lead as normal of a life as possible without focusing on or feeling afraid of the corona virus. I realize how much I miss being out & about, taking the kids to movies, and going on just-for-fun strolls through different stores. However, I feel so incredibly lucky that the people I love most are around every day and I see a LOT of them! For what it's worth, that's what our experience has been.