WEDNESDAY: Drop-off went easy again.

I hope they keep the multiple door drop-
off next year. Sydney came out again
with a smile on her face and says the
day was great! Her class has been doing
lots of review of concepts that were well
mastered last year. I hope they move on
from counting to 10 soon...

Name: Christine Stevens
Town: Owings, MD
Child: Sydney, 6
Child’s Grade: First
How are you doing school this fall? Our
school is going four days in-person,
Monday through Thursday, then distance
learning on Friday mornings.

MONDAY: Drop-off was amazingly
smooth. Instead of all the kids going
through the front doors, grades are being
separated and sent into three different
doors to minimize mixing of the grades.

I kinda like it. No more bottleneck, and
they’ve extended the drop-off time from
15 minutes last year to 30 minutes this
year. After a quick temperature check and
asking the standard COVID questions, we
are allowed to pull up to the back of the
school and let her out. Pretty easy.

Syd says that school went great, and
they got to take their masks off outside.

Loving their new teacher so far as well.

TUESDAY: Drop-off went much like
the day before—very easy and smooth.

Pickup in the afternoon is just like last
year: All the kids come out the front
door as their names are called. Her
teacher seems to be really organized and
is communicating good information via
email, such as reminders to have their
computers charged and bring snacks
and about upcoming events like back-to-
school night.

FRIDAY: As promised by the teacher,
assignments were posted early this
morning so we had time to look over
them before the morning meeting. All
the kids wore their headphones to cut
out distractions (which I think is working
well) and spent about 30 minutes going
over what they’d be doing for the day
and a short lesson from the teacher. We
completed the three assignments that
were listed in Google classroom, scanned
and marked them as complete. Spent
another hour reading and working on IXL,
a web-based program to supplement math
and reading.

Any final thoughts? Overall, I couldn’t
be happier with the way that school is
going this year. The mix of in-person
and distance learning is going well, I
believe, mainly due to the teacher’s
great organization and communication
to parents. She’s teaching the concepts
during the week, and we’re helping to
review and reinforce them on Fridays. I
could totally get used to this! n
16 Washington FAMILY OCTOBER 2020
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VIRTUAL LEARNING
Name: Susan-Lisa Gvinter
Town: Rockville, MD
Child: Ilan, 6
Child’s Grade: First
How are you doing school this fall? One
hundred percent virtual.

MONDAY: Today started off OK. Ilan
was logged in on time and ready to go
in his new “office”—the dining room.

He met his teacher and was generally
complacent throughout the day. Recess
was the highlight: Ilan rode on his bicycle
for 90 minutes around the cul-de-sac and
almost forgot to eat lunch. There were
expected technical kinks with first graders
not fully knowing how to read and log
into things and the teacher learning how
to use the system concurrently. I chalked
them up to “growing pains” and figured by
tomorrow, we will all have one more day of
experience and, hopefully, fewer technical
issues. TUESDAY: A total disaster. The teacher
was discussing reading comprehension
requirements with the reading specialist
over Zoom while the kids were supposed
to be doing individual work, and they
didn’t know whether to listen to her or to
watch the video attached to their work.

I had to jump on and request that the
sidebar conversation be taken offline to
reduce the distraction and to protect the
students’ privacy. I sat there the entire
time because the technical issues were
out of hand. As soon as Ilan turned his
CHRISTINE STEVENS; SUSAN-LISA GVINTER; SHEENA GIRTY
HYBRID LEARNING
THURSDAY: Last day of in-person
learning for the week. Sydney came
home with additional links saved on her
computer for distance learning tomorrow,
and the teacher emailed a schedule of
exactly when the kids should be logged on
to their Google classroom and how the day
will work. The teacher’s organizational
style makes me feel so much better about
distance learning. We know what to expect
and what to do. Very low stress.




camera on, everything went to black
screen. He restarted the computer at least
five times and logged out of/back into
Zoom at least eight times. I called the
school for technical support, but they were
unable to help. Eventually, the problem
self-corrected. WEDNESDAY: Breakout rooms were
interesting. I watched my son staring
at four other children, not one of them
willing to be the first to speak. I emailed
the teacher letting her know that they
needed guidance in these breakout rooms
as the students aren’t certain what is
expected of them. We had the black screen
issue again, but it self-corrected an hour
into the morning. Otherwise, the technical
issues had calmed down and it was a
generally better day.

THURSDAY: The teacher is getting better
acclimated, and things seem to be calming
down. Unfortunately, one student was
crying and, without knowing how to use
Zoom in gallery view, the teacher didn’t
see the upset child. I texted the mom that
he might need help in order to de-escalate
the situation. I suspect that the teacher
does not have two screens, one with Zoom
in gallery view and the other to share her
screen. FRIDAY: Ilan got kicked out of Zoom and
couldn’t get back in without the teacher
letting him in. I had to text another mom
to have her daughter let the teacher know
that he was stuck in Zoom purgatory. She
eventually let him in and the rest of the
day went fairly smoothly.

Any final thoughts? There are a lot of
growing pains associated with virtual
learning. First graders are not designed
to sit down for a full school day nor
should they be expected to know how
to maneuver a Chromebook or laptop.

These are also extremely trying times
for teachers as they are working on
commanding a class of 20+ young children
who are expected to pop in and out of
different Zooms. Every day is better than
the day before, and I think we will have
kids who finish the year knowing more
than when they started, but it might not
be quite the same quantity as in-person
learning. n
HOME SCHOOLING
Name: Sheena Girty
Town: Hanover, MD
Children: Eli, 10; Shiloh, 8; Trinity, 4; and
Asher, 2
Children’s Grades: Fifth, third, pre-K and
preschool How are you doing school this fall? We are
doing full home school using the Sonlight
curriculum exclusively. Our curriculum is
literature heavy and everything is done in
books. We don’t use devices at all for school
unless we are looking up more information
about a field of learning or taking virtual tours.

We are currently doing the following
subjects daily: Bible, history, geography,
math, science, language arts and reading.

In October, we will begin learning Spanish.

Throughout the week we make sure to do art,
P.E. and music, as well. With our curriculum
you can choose between a four- or five- day
school week. We chose the four-day schedule,
and I’m so glad we did. We have one day
open for extracurricular activities, field trips,
co-ops or whatever we decide to do.

graders. When they’re set up on something
they can do independently, I do circle time
with the little ones. We go over our alphabet,
numbers, days of the week, months of
the year, shapes and colors. Then we do a
coloring activity and read a book.

WEDNESDAY: Wednesdays are identical
to Tuesdays. We get to work, do what we
need to do and get done. Wednesday is
usually when we do our more “involved” art
projects. We study and make sure we have
our weekly math concept and spelling words
down because tomorrow we will have tests
on those. Any spelling words that are missed
are added to the following week’s list, and if
the math concept wasn’t fully understood,
we don’t move on until it is.

THURSDAY: It’s test day! It’s also our last
full day of school, and it’s our shortest day.

MONDAY: Mondays are always filled with a
bit of excitement and a bit of drag. We start
our day at 8 a.m. and we end around 2 p.m.

On Mondays we are introduced to our new
concepts that we will be learning for the week
in each subject. We get our spelling words, our
new geography song and our new Bible verse.

FRIDAY: We have been doing outdoor field
trips on Friday. We went to the National
Zoo to see some of the animals we had
learned about in science. We are hoping
the Smithsonian will open up eventually
so that we can explore those too. We just
finished ancient Egypt and wrapped up
study with King Tut. It would have been
nice to go and see what the museums have
on ancient Egypt, but we made due with
YouTube videos and virtual tours of the Giza
pyramids. TUESDAY: The kids know the flow. They
rise, dress, clean their rooms and head
downstairs for Bible time and breakfast. We
recite our memory verse for the week and
get into our Bible reading. During breakfast,
we strategize for the rest of week, then we
head to the basement for school. We do all
the remaining subjects down here. Most of
the “teaching” I do is for my fifth and third
Any final thoughts? Although we feel like
we were forced into this position, home
schooling is what it is best for our family,
and we are thankful we are able to do
it. We like that we don’t have to have a
Wi-Fi connection to do school, plus our
curriculum is only 36 weeks long. We
actually are at the beach for a week, and we
will be doing school in our down time. n
WashingtonFAMILY.com 17