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Sarah Garland/The Hechinger Report
Hechinger Report
Desperate parents need help as coronavirus upends our lives
We’re all exhausted, some of us are going hungry, and more and more of us are getting sick
By Sarah Garland
March 27, 2020
As an education reporter, I’ve watched hundreds of teachers lead
classrooms and I’ve learned that their job is one of the hardest in the
world. The best teachers seem to have endless supplies of energy,
patience and creativity. They manage to inspire both love and awe,
keeping kids simultaneously inspired and on task.
It’s a job I know I could never do myself. And yet here I am. Here we all are.
My 4-year-old and 6-year-old attend public school in New York City,
which closed schools Monday, March 15, to slow the virulent spread of
the coronavirus here. During the first week, our school sent home a
handful of worksheets and some links to educational software and shows.
I made a color-coded schedule accounting for every hour of the day that
usually fell apart by 10am.
A week later, we were hit with a flurry of instructions about how to
set up remote schooling on laptops and iPads in our homes (parents who
needed devices were instructed to apply for them online, of all
things). The Google Classroom page for my first grader included
multiple assignments from multiple teachers, plus instructions on how
to teach her to type in a pdf.
That first day seems like years ago. I feel exhausted and frayed by
this new expectation that I add homeschooling to the already
overwhelming demands of parenting and working. And that, to top it off,
I must somehow do all these tasks all at the same time — as the economy
crashes and coronavirus threatens our livelihoods and our lives. One
parent wrote in an email that she was in tears: “It is way, way too
much.”
I’ve heard the same thing from dozens of parents across the country. It’s a universal cry: HELP US!
For homeschooling, we need simple, easy-to-follow schedules that don’t
require hours of work navigating online software and explaining math
concepts we forgot ages ago. We need printed worksheets, assignments on
paper and books (because the libraries are closed, too), resources that
don’t require a device and wi-fi.
Even more urgently, we need more help and support for parents who have
kids with disabilities, who don’t speak English, who are homeless and
who otherwise especially vulnerable. Don’t shrug your shoulders. Pour
everything you can into getting help to the kids who need extra even in
normal times.
And we need lowered expectations for what we can accomplish with a
pandemic raging, even if we’re trying as hard as we can. Many of us
will get sick. Already, two families I know have parents who are
severely ill.
How can we do it all then?
At Hechinger, we’ve tried to ease the stress by asking parents with
kids at home to put in half days and make up the rest of their work
when they can, although many of us are staying up late and working
seven days a week to get everything done.
Many parents need more than added flexibility. I spoke with Rita, a
43-year-old single mom in Thomasville, North Carolina, who works at
home assembling window locks. (She asked that her last name not be
used.) Her son has a Chromebook his school sent home at the beginning
of the year. Since teachers and students there are used to doing
assignments online, the transition to full-time remote learning has
been relatively smooth — once she can convince him to turn off
Minecraft and log on.
Rita is more worried about what they’ll eat. And whether she’ll be able
to keep on the electricity that powers the Chromebook and the cellphone
service that powers the wi-fi. Her weekly paycheck of $120 slid to $40
in March as the economy crashed. She has $4.01 left of the $190 she
receives in food stamps each month to last her until April 5.
Her 12-year-old son, Payton, attends Thomasville Middle School and has
been getting food deliveries once a week: breakfast, lunch and some
snacks. But he’s a preteen boy who is hungry and home all day wanting
to snack. “These little meals, they don’t feed him,” Rita said.
“My light bill is going to be higher because I have a kid here all
day,” she added. “Payton won’t have no way to do his homework if I
don’t have that bill.”
Rita Tweeted at the North Carolina governor, Roy Cooper, about food
stamps, also known as SNAP: “Are you going to release snap benefits
early or give extra soon so it will help us parents that has kids home
right now?”
No one responded.
She’s kept her television tuned to the news each day, following the
status of the stimulus plan and whether it might reach parents like
her; though she works, she makes so little she hasn’t filed taxes in a
couple of years. “It still doesn’t tell whether I’m going to get a
check or not,” she said.
Rita is grateful to the schools. Teachers are calling to check in, and
a national program, Communities in Schools, which provides supports to
low-income schools, delivered groceries from a food pantry last month
and has checked in on her. Cathy Davis, the student support specialist
for Communities in Schools at Thomasville Middle School, says she’s in
touch with many parents like Rita. “It is taking a toll on some of our
family members,” she said. “We are trying to be there and make that
burden a little lighter till the end of this pandemic.”
Rita is also worried about getting sick. Both she and her son have
health issues that put them at higher risk for Covid-19. She’s started
making her own disinfectant wipes, and she cleans constantly. “I’m
trying to keep a good attitude about it for his sake, so he doesn’t see
me stressed, but it’s been hard,” she said. “It scares me.”
For parents who are sick already, the only thing they’re focused on is
battling a deadly disease and staying alive. It is really hard out
here, and we need help.
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