Confessions of a COVID Homeschool Mom

I never, in a million years, had any intention of homeschooling my kids. Ever. 

For one, I didn’t really understand what homeschool IS - I thought homeschool was either regular school at home for eight hours a day, or ultra religious families who wanted to teach flat-eartherism and creationism. 

For another, I’m a single parent and it just wan’t an option when I worked full-time. My kids had to be in school or day-care when they were younger. 

But then I retired from the Air Force. And then COVID-19 happened and schools shut down in March 2020. Of course, we all know what happened then...

NO ONE DID WHAT THEY WERE SUPPOSED TO DO 

...so schools went to virtual learning. When the county we were in announced they were going to virtual learning for the first nine weeks of the 20/21 school year, I knew it was not going to work for Declan and Harper. The end of 2nd grade was honestly horrible for everyone. It wasn’t the teachers - let's be clear about that. They were both fantastic and were doing the best they could with what they were given. 

But it's hard to turn a soup sandwich into a five course meal.

I reached out to a fellow twin mom who I knew homeschooled her four kids and asked her to break it down for me. How long did it take? How did she teach? How did she figure out what she needed to teach? She explained it took them around two hours a day to complete all the core learning objectives and the rest of the time was art projects, or going outside and exploring, or reading (at least for her 8 y/o twins. Her older kids took a little longer each day, but not by much). 

What? That’s it?!? I could do that! I wasn't working yet so I had time. My friend pointed me in the direction of several Facebook groups, curriculums, and workbooks she liked for her kids and I started researching. I found an all-inclusive curriculum through Timberdoodle, substituted a few things that weren’t completely secular, and waited for it to arrive. 

But it’s hard to let go of the ingrained idea that your kids are supposed to go to “school”. What if I didn’t teach them what they were supposed to know? What if they fell behind? What if I damaged them irrevocably and they ended up homeless living in a cardboard box because I wasn’t able to teach them their times tables?!? 

Yes, I had to be talked down from several ledges by several people. But just in case they were wrong and I was right, I had a virtual meeting with my kids’ assigned teacher. 

[I requested they be put in the same class because there is nothing worse than having kids in the same grade at the same school do different work because teachers in the same grade at the same school don't assign the same work.]

She was lovely and caring and passionate about teaching and she teared up talking about how much she loved "her kids" and how hard virtual schooling was for her as a teacher. I decided to give virtual schooling a try just because I could tell she really cared about the kids.

In the mean time, I was hired by the Department of State as a Foreign Service Officer and began my own virtual training. 

School started and we lasted a week. Declan and Harper were in tears. Not the fake, “I’m trying to get my brother/sister in trouble” tears or “I fell and it hurt” tears; big, sad, soul crushing tears. They were so frustrated with everything. I was frustrated, because I would have to pause MY training to help them with theirs. I was missing information, they were missing information, everyone was miserable. So I pulled the plug. 

In North Carolina you register your homeschool with the state. You even have to come up with a name. Ours is ETS Academy. ETS stands for Embrace The Suck. If 25 years in the military taught me nothing else, it’s that sometimes embracing the suck is all you can do.

ETS Academy

Embracing The Suck one day at a time

And it worked. The flexibility of home school - deciding when to start, what to cover, when to take a day off because no one was feeling it or my schedule was too full, being able to do a unit on the animal kingdom and then take a trip to the zoo (!) - worked for us. I was able to set them up with work they could do on their own while I completed my training, then we covered the things they needed help with in the evening before dinner. We’ve substituted or replaced a few things we started with originally because they weren’t working and have settled on a pretty regular rhythm. Now that we’re at post, they’re able to complete 90% of their course work while I’m at work and then we over history, grammar, and cursive together after dinner. I go over the work they did during the day and we discuss anything they weren’t sure of or got wrong. In the evenings they read to me for 15-20 minutes before bed.

So many of my friends whose kids are virtual schooling have told me how unhappy their kids are and/or that they (kids and parents alike) don’t feel like they’re learning anything. My kids have thrived this year. Yes, they jump out of bed and do their school work so they can play, but they’re grasping concepts, they’re advancing, and they’re improving. 

In the Foreign Service, flexibility is key. Whether it’s figuring out how to transition from one country to another or what to do with those hideous hippo headboards, you have to remain flexible - sometimes even more so than in the military. 

Homeschooling provides an enormous amount of consistency in an otherwise inconsistent lifestyle. I don’t have to worry about them transferring in the middle of the school year. I don’t have to worry about whether they're ahead of or behind their peers at the new school. I don’t have to worry about them getting pulled out of AP physics to finish US history because they only completed half a semester through correspondence because they were in a non-US  school for three years. Oh wait...that was me.

When people hear I’m a single parent of twins, a Foreign Service Officer, AND I’m homeschooling my kids I get one of two reactions: Wonder Woman or Crazy Woman. 

Most days I lean toward Crazy Woman. 

It’s hard. The days I doubt myself are greater than the days I feel like I have it all together. I'm leaning toward sending them to "regular" school next year. I haven't made a decision yet because the school here hasn't announced whether they'll be in person or virtual. On one hand, I've heard great things about how the school here is handling virtual instruction and they'll be able to pod with other kids nearby. On the other...it's still virtual. 

The key element they're missing this year is structure, which is the hardest thing to provide as a single, working full-time, parent. But in the grand scheme of things, I’ll sacrifice structure for my kids’ mental well-being and happiness.