Homeschooling: Reality Check

This is not a blog about the weekly fun we have home schooling. This is a blog about the reality.

I saw some people on twitter today claiming that what parents are doing is NOT home-schooling. We are not writing the curriculum. We are not writing the lessons. We are not researching the resources. We are simply delivering what the teachers have devised, and that is different. Less.

So, here is our case study in lockdown education. Before I begin: I cannot fault either school for their care about our emotional wellbeing during this, and I really appreciate the absolute horror of trying to deliver half a term of work remotely. This is not criticism, just observation.

Our kids are in two schools. Jim is eleven. He's in a specialist autism school, in a small transition class of mixed age and ability. The school give every child an individual curriculum, based on their needs and interests as far as possible. Jack and Alex are both in a mainstream primary school. Jack is in year four, and Alex is in foundation.

Jim's school provide a weekly curriculum on Monday afternoons. This is a seven page document, including learning outcomes, ideas for activities, and is holistic: it includes objectives on communication, social development and autism-specific psychology. We are also sent resources. His teacher does a face to face tutorial once or twice a week, and phones me weekly as well. She is in constant email/messaging contact. The school have provided Jim with a 365 login and Teams, so we have the software necessary to do the work.

Jack's school send out a loose timetable every two weeks. It includes set spellings, and then a choice of activities to do across the week in topic, english and maths. He gets nine choices in each, and has to do eight of them: I let him choose which one to bin off. There are no additional resources provided.

For Alex, we get one sheet which includes links to the songs they use in school to teach phonics, and a few recommended activities. Alex will do ABSOLUTELY NONE OF THEM. He LOATHES the sheet. He REJECTS it.

Jim's timetable is the most completely presented, although it still requires a fair amount of me doing lesson planning. He asked if he could learn about Japanese art recently: he's really into cherry blossom. So I told his teacher, and I started looking up Japanese art resources (as did she). I bought paint and brushes for him to do his own. He's also doing castles, and I ended up writing my own powerpoint to teach his whole cohort about the history of castles, because I couldn't find anything that went into the right amount of depth for his age.
What I find difficult about Jim's work is deciding what lessons to do when: what's going to overwhelm him? What's he going to struggle to settle down with? Last week he was asked to make a plan of his bedroom, and then his local area: autistic kids can really struggle with spatial navigation (the idea of where your body is in space and time). This simple task really upset him because he didn't understand why he couldn't write down what he knew.
Every session begins with Jim listening to an audiobook and then doing comprehension questions, but this is the only work he can do entirely independently. Everything else requires my presence and guidance: this is why he's in a special school.

Jack's timetable is, to a certain extent, determined by him. He chooses one activity from each section on a Monday and Friday, and two for every other day. I try to make sure he doesn't front load the week with stuff that's easy because then he's gets steadily grumpier throughout the week. He is fairly independent, but so easily distracted that I have to monitor him throughout. He gets really upset if he gets things wrong, and will give up at the first hint of difficulty.
The difficulty with him lies in getting him resources. Sometimes the suggested links from the school don't work, sometimes they're in a format he can't engage with. Sometimes he just doesn't understand what he's being asked, and needs extra. Sometimes his timetable asks him to do ludicrous things: "Think about your class reading book. What do you think happens next?" He hasn't heard his class reading book since mid-March: how on Earth is he supposed to remember the plot?
I find teaching Jack the easiest in terms of planning, but the hardest in terms of motivation and interest. If you're not interested in rivers and pollution, and half the activities are on that, it doesn't give you anywhere to go.

Alex is simply against learning at home. Tom is supposed to teach him, but he's working from home doing remote support (ironically, for schools), and that takes precedence. So AFTER I've finished teaching his brothers, I try and teach him a bit of writing. He has really poor pen control and in school, had daily speech and language and occupational therapy. I don't know what they were doing, so I can't replicate this, and just have to wing it. I tell you now, when you have an autistic child and have just had a year of non-stop intensive diagnostic assessments, courses, and meetings to plan his ongoing support, to suddenly have to wing it is really disconcerting and frightening. WHAT IF WE MESS HIM UP FOR LIFE?

As well as all the above, home schooling is RESOURCE HEAVY. Jim's school provided him with one, A4 unlined exercise book when they closed. Jack was provided with one, A5 lined exercise book. Alex was given nothing. I asked Jim's school to provide a lined book as well, which they did. But that's all we got in terms of physical resources. Here are some the main resources I have to use every day:
Pencils and coloured pencils
Exercise books
Paper (coloured and plain)
Printed worksheets (printer, ink, paper)
Felt tip pens, liner pens
Modelling materials and PVA glue
Wipe clean whiteboard and pens (for Alex to practice writing)
Audible (for Jim's comprehension work)
Microsoft 365 (provided free for Jim, not for Jack: thankfully we have a work account)
Two separate computer systems with 365 and video call capability
Poster paint and brushes
My phone (for making youtube videos)
The internet

Then there's the endless sea of online resource: Twinkl, Bitesize, Youtube, WhiteRose Maths, The Maths Factor, Time Tables Rock Stars, Mathletics.

We are extremely lucky because our income has not changed since lockdown started, but you need MONEY to run a school at home, and you need TECHNOLOGY and to be IT literate. I can't work while 'school' is in session because Jim uses my laptop and Jack uses the desktop. So after a full morning teaching the kids, I have a full afternoon of work. A lot of their suggested activities are 'optimised for tablet'. We do not have a tablet, and I'm not about to go and buy one, but I also keep wondering if I should.

Is this homeschooling in the sense that I am developing the curriculum? Well, not exactly, but I would argue that I am the one who decides how the curriculum is delivered. I am the one being three teachers in one person, teaching three separate curriculums, for three hours, every single day. I am responsible for getting them to work, for trying to keep them vaguely up to speed. I decide what they do every day, and when they've done enough. I do the marking, I decide what needs more work and what's good enough.

And then I turn back into Mummy, who looks after them, feeds them, reassures them, breaks up their fights, cleans up their mess, and reads them to sleep.

I'm an intelligent, academic woman, who (unofficially) tutors university students, and lectures other adults on history, and I do not feel remotely qualified to do this. It is stressful: a Sisyphean task that feels endless and unrewarding. The most reward I can expect is that my children will not be too far behind when school resumes.

There are HUNDREDS OF THOUSANDS of parents doing the same thing worldwide, in differing circumstances, hoping against hope that they are doing enough. Nobody claps for us, because we are doing what we absolutely have to do, from the comparitive safety of our homes. We have a choice: teach or do not teach, it's up to you. We do not yet trouble the national discourse, although I wonder what the news will be on education in a year's time.

It is the hardest thing I have ever done.