The home learning learning-curve

As parents across Missouri are starting to settle into the new reality of crisis home learning, many of us are having to do some learning ourselves to ensure our kids are getting the education they need.

The first step for many of us was discovering the plethora of resources out there for both home and online-based learning that we can use as resources. CEAM has collected a curated list of those resources here.

But once we found those tools and resources many of us have struggled with how to use them to help our children keep learning during the pandemic.

We started to learn what it is like to be a teacher and as a result, we gained a lot of appreciation for the people who take care of children every day.

The next step came when we received learning materials and plans from our kids’ schools. Since each school district or charter school has responded to the crisis individually, this has looked very different based on where you live and what school your child goes to.

Some schools sent parents 100+ page PDFs expecting them to print them out at home and have their kids fill out generic worksheets that supposedly covered multiple grade levels. Other schools have set clear criteria for how work is to be graded and helped their teachers develop ways to have synchronous meetings with their students assuming that those students had dependable access to the internet.

The variety of responses from school districts highlights, and in many cases deepens, the disparities that already existed in our education system. It is clearer now than ever before that the quality of education your kids are receiving depends on a whole lot on what zip code you live in.

Which brings us to the third step in the crisis home learning learning-curve. As parents are getting more involved with their children’s education many are learning just how much, or how little, their kids know.

Some of us will be pleasantly surprised, but given that less than half of the students in Missouri are at grade-level in either reading or math many parents, once they get more comfortable with home learning, will quickly discover that their children are actually behind where they need to be.

So what does all of this tell us?

This pandemic has helped us recognize and appreciate the complexity of teaching, highlighted and heightened the disparities in our education system, and revealed the true quality of education that our kids are currently receiving.

When the crisis passes and we finally move into the new reality of a post-Covid-19 world we can simply forget what we have learned and return to education as normal, or we can use what we have learned to transform the education system.

Many parents, having experienced a forced version of homeschooling will discover they like it and decide not to send their children back to a district school. If you are one of those parents check out this website for first steps.

Many parents will like the online tools that their kids have learned to use and consider transitioning to virtual education. If you are interested in doing this in Missouri then you need to start with the MOCAP program here.

But maybe we as a society need to have a larger conversation on what education should be in the 21st-century and maybe, just maybe, this crisis will serve as the catalyst to make that a reality.