How to Homeschool your Children during a Crisis Situation: a Comprehensive Guide for Non-Educators

I was talking with one of my oldest friends the other day, and as one might expect the conversation turned to what my district was planning to do when school opens back up in … uh, less than a month.

“Nobody knows!” I said. “There’s no plan.”

Which, okay, is a slight exaggeration; it is fairer to say that the plan that they do have is grossly inadequate in every measurable way. But it’s a plan! It’s a plan that’s going to fail miserably, but it’s a plan!

She lives in another state, and like most of my long-term friends she is a college professor. (I am very much the uneducated rube among my closest friends, believe it or not.) So she is already trying to figure out how to manage her own classes in the best way she can, and she commented that she just didn’t know what the hell she was going to do if all three of her kids were home with her all the time. While she’s lucky in that she can work from home, that doesn’t mean that she can work from home and take on schooling responsibilities for three kids, who are all at inconveniently different grades and levels of responsibility.

I figure she’s not the only one.

I am here to help.

THE LUTHER SILER GUIDE TO EDUCATING YOUR OWN CHILDREN DURING A PANDEMIC, WHEN YOU ARE NOT A TEACHER, DO NOT WANT TO BE A TEACHER, AND FRANKLY WOULD BE PERFECTLY HAPPY TO LOCK YOUR OWN CHILDREN IN A BOX FOR EIGHT HOURS A DAY IF IT MEANT THEY WOULD LEAVE YOU ALONE FOR A FEW MINUTES

It’s a working title.

Here is how to homeschool your kids until such time as it is safe to send them back to school:

1. Make sure they read every day. At least a couple of hours. I don’t care what they read. Game guides. Comic books. Nonfiction. Chapter books. Newspapers. Age-appropriateness is probably a good thing; if you have a library nearby, and it’s still open, take ’em a couple of times a month and get a big pile of books. When you have time, ask them about what they read.
2. Maybe– maybe— go on the internet, I recommend math-aids.com— find some math work from under the grade they are in right now, because you are making sure they’re keeping up basic skills, not reinventing the wheel– and make them do a couple of pages of math a day. Focus on basic operations, fractions, decimals, percentages, things like that. Story problems are good. Yes, I know you hated story problems as a kid. Make ’em do some math once in a while that doesn’t immediately tell them every step to do, is what I’m saying.

That’s it.

That’s the whole curriculum.

Worried about science or social studies? Okay, make some of those books they’re reading be about topics in those departments that they find interesting, and again, asking them about what they read is good. If you’re concerned about them getting some exercise, figure out the safest way to force them to run around once in a while and call that gym class. If they already play an instrument, have them keep practicing that with whatever they have on hand. If they don’t, this is not the time to learn. Call that music class. If they’re artistically inclined, get some books on art and buy some paper to draw on. There’s art class.

My point is, you do not need an expensive fucking curriculum and you also do not need to feel bad about being an inadequate educator when your actual job is keeping the lights on and food on the table (I have enough trouble just remembering to feed my own child, who would only eat once a week if we never made him) and a roof over their heads.

Keep them reading, make them do some math once in a while, and pull in stuff from other subjects that they find interesting. Do not fight with them on anything but the reading. And, again, if it has printed words on it it is reading. Your main focus is to keep their brains from either solidifying into cement inside their skulls or liquefying and dribbling out of their ears. We’re looking for a nice tofu-like brain consistency here, and yes, I just Googled “consistency of the human brain,” and it’s the best thing I’ve done all day.

It’s possible that there are laws wherever you live that regulate homeschooling, but I genuinely doubt anybody’s paying attention to them right now and I’m absolutely certain that if you have to tell the state what curriculum you’re using or some shit like that they aren’t going to come to your house and double-check. If your kid is enrolled in school and is e-learning, and you find the volume of work you’re supposed to keep track of for your kids to be impossible, email their teachers and tell them the deal. Chances are, it’ll be fine. The parents who are worried about it are not the ones we’re worried about.

Breathe.

It will be fine. Your kid will miss some learning and some later teachers will have to clean that up. That’s okay. It will be fine.

It will not keep them out of college. It will not keep them from being able to hold a job later on in life. They’re all gonna miss a good chunk of this year. Once they’re back in school, we’ll take care of it.

Just keep them safe, keep them healthy, keep them fed, and keep their brains at a nice, moist, tofu-like consistency. Everything else is fixable.