I have my Kinder and 2nd grader in distance learning care or whatever we're calling daycare that tries to do online school due to school campus closures. If you're using a similar program I'd love to hear about your experiences and what's working/not working.
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My kids are in K and 2nd. School started on the 13th and care started on the 24th. The program is run by the on campus afterschool group but enrollment is so low the district has been consolidated at one school. What normally would be hundreds of kids in the program is just two groups of 12 right now. Cost is $10/hour per kid which is the kids' normal rate but we're using double the time to cover the day.
It's been going better and better day by day. There were a lot of wifi issues at first few days so the kids missed whole days of class. Everyone's school day looks a little different so my daughter's class continues while 'everyone else' at care goes outside for recess.
More and more of the kids' assignments are getting completed daily which is nice because the first week we were doing work 5:30-8:30.
I'm spending a couple hours Sunday night organizing a week's worth of print outs for the week for my 2nd grader. The staff is communicating with us through a spiral bound notebook that gets sent home daily since we can't go into the classroom to talk to them face to face (or mask to mask).
Besides the pandemic I've been facing bonus safety factors. Smoke, construction on campus, and this week bomb threats. It seems like there's no end to what 2020 will throw at us. One of my biggest struggles is guilt. I need to stay off Facebook because I feel so much of the local discussion as shaming people that are using care.
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This sounds great! Our former daycare is offering a similar thing except without the distance learning - so basically, they're offering full day care for kindergarten and school aged kids, with the caveat that you'd then have to do the actual school stuff on your own, a program which made NO SENSE to me - can you imagine putting your kid in daycare all day while you work and then coming home and trying to, on top of all the wind down/make dinner/chores stuff, do a full program of learning? Yikes.
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@Corduroy: my kids are back in school (for now 🤞) but if school was online we 100% would have to look into a program like this. I’m working outside the home, husband is working 90% from home but no learning happened during the spring. It was not good for us or our kids. So I just wanted to say do not feel guilty for doing what is best for you/your kids. These are unchartered waters and we are all doing our best
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We are part of a parent-led pod, where each parent takes a day facilitating the virtual learning for the group. If that hadn't worked out, I 100% was looking into a similar program and would have done that. My daughter is doing so much better with virtual learning now than she did in the spring. Part of that is due to her teacher being much more prepared and engaging, and part of that is having more attention from a grown up while she's learning. It didn't work to have her at home logged into her school while my husband and I were both logged in and busy with work.
As the parent facilitating the virtual learning for several kids, I would say the biggest challenges are the differences among the different classes. One of our teachers is clearly struggling with the technology, and the students in her class are struggling with paying attention accordingly (she just talks at them the whole time, no visual aids or anything). It also causes issues if one class takes a break and another one doesn't, one does a loud activity while another is being quiet, etc. But overall, I definitely think it's better than what we had in the spring.
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