Anonymous wrote:My kids are 10, 8, and 5. My spouse is a teacher and I always work from home. I am waiting to hear what they say about how many days teachers will have to go in before I decide.

But I’m not doing well mentally - this is a tough blow (realizing no normal school likely for another year).

I don’t see any proposed scenario where teachers are not in the building 5 days, unless the teacher opts to sign up for one of the 100% DL classes for at risk students/teachers. Otherwise teachers will be there daily with a subset of their students.

My kids are 10, 8, and 5. My spouse is a teacher and I always work from home. I am waiting to hear what they say about how many days teachers will have to go in before I decide.

But I’m not doing well mentally - this is a tough blow (realizing no normal school likely for another year).

Anonymous wrote:We will be hiring someone. I am not sure if the person will be more like a tutor or a nanny (kids are 7, 5, 2) but it is a nice. We will not have her come full time so there will be leave and faking it and screen time invoked again too.

+1

We have a nanny. The nanny will do what was done this spring.

We will not go without help again. We’ll hire a babysitter to come to the house. We have a teacher working with us this summer and she said she’d stay for fall if she’s doing her remote videos again.

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:By homeschool, do you mean follow your school district’s online learning? Or actually homeschool them separately? We’d consider the latter if learning is all online again in the Fall. It was an utter disaster for our K and 2nd graders. At least if we truly homeschool, we could set their schedule.

Either but more likely the former. I could see myself pushing off lessons if I get pressure from work to complete something asap. DH's job is even more demanding than mine. I've thought about true homeschooling, but it's never something I've even considered prior to Covid. I'm not a school teacher and don't even want to try to be one. There's a reason why teachers are required to have master's degrees in most places.

But much of teaching kids is classroom management, which isn’t an issue in true homeschooling. That, plus the flexibility of approaches, makes it far more appealing than the cluster that was MCPS distance learning, at least for us. I’m biased because I took some courses in education in undergrad, but homeschooling young elementary kids is WAY different than teaching an entire classroom full of kids.

My kids are older than yours—10 and 13. My 10 yr old is currently homeschooled due to medical issues. He started long before Covid. For him, the closures did not impact his learning at all this year.

My rising 8th grader was an absolute disaster. She has requested to be homeschooled with her brother if school is not full time in the building.

Homeschooling, not distance learning from the school system, is much easier. I’m able to schedule around my work schedule , his drs appts, lunch, dinner prep. Her classes occurred whenever and not always at the same time on the same day. I’m able to keep track of his assignments and know what’s coming up rather than the random worksheets and assignments that don’t have rhyme or reason.

My son is enrolled in a variety of homeschool education programs. We’ll keep it up for the fall. If my daughter ends up being homeschooled, I’m going to be scrambling to get her enrolled since many classes are filled.

We will be hiring someone. I am not sure if the person will be more like a tutor or a nanny (kids are 7, 5, 2) but it is a nice. We will not have her come full time so there will be leave and faking it and screen time invoked again too.

Anonymous wrote:By homeschool, do you mean follow your school district’s online learning? Or actually homeschool them separately? We’d consider the latter if learning is all online again in the Fall. It was an utter disaster for our K and 2nd graders. At least if we truly homeschool, we could set their schedule.

Either but more likely the former. I could see myself pushing off lessons if I get pressure from work to complete something asap. DH's job is even more demanding than mine. I've thought about true homeschooling, but it's never something I've even considered prior to Covid. I'm not a school teacher and don't even want to try to be one. There's a reason why teachers are required to have master's degrees in most places.

By homeschool, do you mean follow your school district’s online learning? Or actually homeschool them separately? We’d consider the latter if learning is all online again in the Fall. It was an utter disaster for our K and 2nd graders. At least if we truly homeschool, we could set their schedule.

We paid our nanny to stay home this time (i.e. since March) and we will limp through summer with a combination of leave and alternating schedules but we’ve told her we need her to come back in the fall. If I were you, OP, I would consider the short-term benefits of a nanny even though the obvious downside is it’s expensive. Did you normally pay for before or after care?

Anonymous wrote:How old are DCs?

5 and 7. I thought of hiring a nanny but it would eat up most of my paycheck. Job already sucks.

How old are DCs?

I hear you but yeah, we will just have to do it again.

If you have to homeschool again, even just 1-3 days per week but still work from home full time, how will you handle it? DH and I did it this spring and it was a nightmare. We got everything done, but it was stressful and not something we can do again. For those of you who may be in the same boat this fall, what do you plan on doing? Ask your employer for an alternate schedule (mine said no) or quit? Find online work you can do off hours? I can’t imagine going through this again, pushing Kids through daily lessons while trying to handle work duties and phone calls and deadlines.