I must preface this post by saying that I really like Reggie's teacher. He is the exact teacher that I hoped Reggie would have, because I knew he (a)loved his job and (b)would hold Reggie accountable. But...I wonder how in touch with reality he is when it comes to how this distance learning stuff goes.
Take for example, one of the questions he asked through a survey he sent out for parents this week:
How much support does your 4th grader need with their school work each day?
No support - they do well on their own
Little support - sometimes they have questions, but they do 90% of the work on their own.
Some support - they have questions, but they do 80% of the work on their own.
Moderate support - they need frequent support or check-ins, but they do 70% of the work on their own.
Heavy support - they need continuous support throughout most of their learning. They do less than 70% of the work on their own.
To put this in context, this week's "packet" that the 4th graders were supposed to complete was 99 pages. Ninety-nine pages! If on Monday morning, you hand a 9 or 10 year old a 99 page packet and tell him to complete it by Friday, what do you suppose will happen?
Found 4 more pages after I took this picture.
Now, let's take that same, typical 9 or 10 year old and completely turn his world upside down with a scary global crisis that requires him to give up all the things that are important to him. He can't see his friends, play sports or activities, and the comfortable routine and structure of school is gone. Now, what do you suppose will happen?
Well, let's take today for example. Reggie and I do our "check-in" every morning at 7:10. (If I'm not up and getting my coffee by 7:00, he comes and gets me! He's always been an early-riser.) We go through the work he completed the day before and then he tells me what he's planning to get done that day. Today, I needed to go to the grocery store in the morning, so I made sure he (and his brother and sister) were set up with work they could do independently. While I was out, he emailed me four times, and used his echo dot to message and call me. He also bothered his dad and his brother with technology problems, and accomplished nothing in the two hours I was gone. So, I do not feel bad that I marked "Heavy Support" on Reggie's survey yesterday. I suspect he is not the only one.
We have been under a stay-at-home order for one month now. The original two week order was quickly extended by an additional month. It is due to expire on May 4th, if it is not extended again. Last Thursday, the governor finally officially said students would be doing distance learning through the end of the school year. But if I'm reading between the lines correctly, he seems to be leaning toward loosening restrictions for the sake of the economy. Yet, our daily death toll has been climbing rather than decreasing, so we will see what happens this week.
Under the stay-at-home order, we have been doing what we're supposed to do - staying at home except for limited necessary trips to the store and close-to-home recreation. Today is Monday, and I haven't left the neighborhood since Wednesday which was Earth Day. The kids and I rode our bikes on a nearby trail to a gas station and bought ice cream treats. The kids had not been in a store in over a month. I decided it was time for them to start seeing how life has changed outside our home, as many of the things like social distancing and the wearing of face masks are here to stay for the foreseeable future. They have also -to varying degrees- become fearful of getting sick. I'm hoping they will adjust to being cautious without being anxious. Bryan has been taking one kid "out" to lunch each week (drive-thru or pick-up) and we usually get take-out or delivery once a week to support our local restaurants. Bryan did the grocery shopping last week, so I have not driven for almost two weeks, which was the last time I went to a grocery store.
Yes, our world has drastically changed since the beginning of March, but it hasn't all been bad. Here are three things I don't miss about our normal life.
1. Spending 2-3 hours a day driving the van. That's been my average daily routine this school year with Lydia going to the middle school for math in the morning and Brett doing part-time school in Stillwater, plus the normal running kids to sports, piano, and therapy. I don't miss this at all!
2. Speaking of activities, I don't miss rushed evenings! Some days I would have meals prepared by 4:30 ready for a kid or two to grab on their way out the door. Then I'd come home around 8:00 from taking another kid in another direction to a messy kitchen because we didn't have time to clean up. It is so nice to just eat together when the food is ready.
3. Only a true introvert like myself will understand this one. I don't miss obligatory niceties. You know, the conversation you have on the sidelines with Johnny's mom because you're sitting next to each other for 90 minutes, or the exchange of "how-are-yous" at church with someone you don't really have any sincere connections with, or running into someone you know at the coffee shop and feeling obligated to linger in conversation even though you have a million things to get done. I just don't need that much social interaction, and it wears me out in my normal life.
What we are experiencing now is not "normal" and I refuse to call it the "new normal". I'm fully expecting that eventually our life we become too busy again, and I will spend too much time driving and I will feel obligated to converse with a mom at practice - from 6 feet away. And I will welcome it - the sooner, the better! But aspects this collective pause the virus has created have brought respite and perspective.
Maybe our "new normal" can be a better version of our "old normal".
We had high expectations for Reggie's wrestling season this year. In most of the tournaments he participates in, 3rd and 4th grade wrestle in brackets together. As a 4th grader, this is generally an advantage. In other words, it is a well-known reality that youth wrestlers experience alternating "growth" years and "pay-off" years. This year was supposed to be Reggie's pay-off year.
Last year (growth year), in the NYWA State Tournament, there were only three 3rd graders in his 16-wrestler bracket - Owen, Seth, and Reggie. (I'm naming them because wrestling is a pretty small world!) Owen had won Reggie's bracket in 2nd grade when Reggie placed 3rd. Last year, Owen placed 3rd as a 3rd grader, which was pretty impressive. Seth lost his first two matches and didn't place. Reggie wrestled 4 matches before he was out, but that didn't take him to the podium.
Reggie started taking a class at a wrestling school last summer. The wrestling school attracts athletes who are more experienced and highly competitive. While his home team tends to be new wrestlers and he doesn't really have anyone his age and skill level to practice with, the school gives Reggie a run for his money and keeps him humble! Having a good partner is a really important part of growing in the sport. So unlike previous seasons, when December rolled around, Reggie had already been training with almost no off-season and was ready to hit the mat!
Reggie competes in at least one and sometimes two tournaments almost every weekend for about four months. But not all tournaments are equal. The local ones put on by high schools as fundraisers for their wrestling programs are fun to do with his team, but not usually very competitive. Out of 11 tournaments, he placed 1st nine times, and 2nd twice. In the tournaments he placed 2nd, he was bracketed with older kids.
A higher level of competition is found at the Midwest National tournaments. There are 4 in all - this year there were two in Minnesota, one in Wisconsin, and one in Iowa. These tournaments have larger brackets based on grade and weight. Last year, Reggie wrestled in two of the tournaments and did not place. He only won one match. This year, he wrestled in three of them.
The first one, Yellowjacket Nationals, was in December. It was a bracket with seven kids. He had wrestled one of the kids, AJ, a few times. Another one of the kids was Seth, who he had never wrestled but as I mentioned, he was in the same bracket at the state tournament last year. We didn't know the other four kids. Reggie won his first match and his second match was against Seth. Seth beat him (7-1), putting Reggie on the consolation side of the bracket. Reggie won the next two matches, putting him at 3rd place. He didn't wrestle the kid who got 1st, Blake. Owen, who had been in Reggie's weight bracket in previous years, had a growth spurt and was in a heavier bracket - and won.
At the second tournament, Badgerland in Wisconsin, there were 6 wrestlers in Reggie's bracket. Seth had bumped up to the next weight. There were some familiar kids including Blake, and a few new kids. Six wrestlers or less means you wrestle every kid in the bracket. Reggie would have to wrestle Blake first. It was an intense match and I think Blake underestimated Reggie. Reggie won in a sudden victory, 4-2. Reggie won his next two matches. We knew the 4th kid, Karrsen, would be his most difficult match. Karrsen pinned Reggie in the third period, the only time Reggie was pinned in a tournament this year. Reggie went on to win his last match, placing 2nd in the bracket.
We decided against going to the Hawkeye Nationals tournament - too far to go in one day and we had other stuff going on that weekend. There ended up being a major snowstorm that weekend, and we would have had to drive on really bad roads to get there - or back out.
Gopher State was the last tournament of the series. It is generally a bigger tournament because of it's proximity to the metro. There were twelve wrestlers in Reggie's bracket, about half were familiar faces. Reggie earned a first round bye, then won his first match. With 4 left on the championship side of the bracket, Reggie met up with Blake again. It was another close match, but Reggie won 4-3. The championship match was against Karrsen again. Reggie came up short, but this time with a score of 4-2.
Reggie placed 2nd. With the Midwest tournaments, if wrestlers place 1st-4th in at least 3 of the 4 tournaments, they are given a belt, which looks a bit too WWE for my taste. But it's a pretty big deal for kids.
In hindsight, I'm glad Reggie had that moment, tho, because the coronavirus disrupted his season at it's pinnacle. Reggie's last tournament, though we didn't know it at the time, turned out to be our home district qualifier tournament. The regional and state tournaments were canceled. Assuming life returns to normal, next year will likely be a growth year. Maybe 6th grade will be the pay-off year that Reggie gets his shot at the state championship...
2019-2020 Stats:
37 out of 42 matches won
13 pins
2 tech falls (match is won before time is up due to having 15 more points than opponent)
11 major decisions (winning by 8+ points)
1 sudden victory (match is tied and goes to overtime)
Here is what it has looked like for us. The teachers had two weeks of planning before launching into distance learning, which I think was a wise decision. Might have something to do with the fact that our governor was previously an educator!
To recap, the kids are at three different schools in two different districts, plus shared-time home school for Brett. At the start, during the planning weeks and first week of distance learning, we were inundated with emails, voice messages, texts, and surveys from the schools. Fortunately, that has somewhat leveled off now that we are starting to get in the routine of how things work. The second big thing was new technology, and learning very quickly how to use it. It seems like each school and even each teacher has different preferred platforms and we have had to learn how to navigate all of them. Then the big launch day came and one of the platforms crashed because it was overloaded with users!
In our home district, two weeks' worth of materials are delivered to K-5 students by teachers riding the bus routes. Technology is not required to complete the work because the district was unable to provide it to all students. In our first delivery, Lydia's teacher had included her supplies from her desk (crayons, paints, headphones, calculator, etc.) Reggie's teacher had included mechanical pencils just in case we didn't have pencils or a way to sharpen them. Even though technology isn't essential, both of their teachers are having regular virtual whole-class, small group, and individual meetings that are encouraged. Lydia has a "morning meeting" every day, and her teacher sends the same information out in an email. Her class is reading a book "together", where her teacher sends out YouTube videos of portions of the book read aloud, and they are reading portions independently. For Reggie, his teacher is doing a lot of differentiated learning, so he has a weekly whole class meeting on Monday, then he has various groups throughout the week, and an individual conference on Friday each week.
But since Lydia takes math at the middle school, she has a whole different platform in which that takes place (the district loaned out chrome books to middle schoolers). All of her math lessons are through Schoology, which was a disaster at first, but is working pretty well now. Lydia had the wrong login information at first and though she had done the work, I got an email from her teacher on Day 3 asking why Lydia hadn't logged in yet!
Brett, who is currently enrolled in two classes at a charter school in another district, is using google classroom for all of his work. His school is very small, so they are able to make accommodations for individual families who need them. For home school, I had my goals set for the year and I really wanted to keep them. But one-on-one intervention-level teaching doesn't work out as well when you are simultaneously facilitating the learning of two other kids. We are still pushing through the reading and spelling curriculum at a bit slower pace, and math is hit-and-miss. By that point in our day, the other two are finishing up or burning out on their work. That's when we play a game, and I attempt to make it a math game most of the time.
Prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, Brett had private speech twice weekly and speech through his school twice weekly. Now, he has his private therapy and one school session as virtual appointments, and I am supposed to do the other school therapy session using resources the therapist provides.
For both of the districts, "attendance" has been important. Kids/parents are supposed to have some sort of contact with their teachers each day, even if it is just an email saying "hi". From what I've heard and read, this is mostly a way for the districts to keep tabs on who is engaging in distance learning and, probably more importantly, who isn't. Reggie and Lydia's elementary school has already informed us that all students will receive "NG" (no grade) for the third trimester and there is no system for turning in and grading work. Students are encouraged to take pictures or share google documents of their work, but the school will not collect completed packets or books due to contamination risks. Essentially, completion of work is inconsequential. The only grades my kids will get during distance learning is Lydia for her math class and Brett for his two classes. Brett's school openly acknowledges that they have cut their work demands in half, in hopes that - despite the circumstances - students will engage in learning on some level.
As I am writing this, Minnesota has not officially closed school through the remainder of the year, although no one is expecting it to resume. Thirty-six states have made this call. I'm guessing we haven't yet because our school year extends into June. I think there will be an announcement by the end of the week.
Well, this was definitely an Easter that will not soon be forgotten. For as long as the kids can remember, we have gone to an experiential worship service at a local church (not ours) on Good Friday, and an egg hunt at a park in the neighboring community on Saturday. The kids have now all aged out of the community egg hunt, but they still like searching for candy and other treats. 😉 It was hard to miss out on the experiential worship, but our church did stream a nice Good Friday service. It included communion. While at first it seemed a bit strange, it turned out to be nice, as the kids aren't usually in the service when we have communion.
The forecast disclosed Saturday to be the best weather day of the weekend, so that was when we did our egg hunt. I have always had designated colors for each kid, because they are all both very competitive and very concerned about fairness! We also caught a glimpse of the Easter Bunny touring around town in a trailer pulled by a tractor, waving a sign that said, "Wash your Paws". So there's one for the history books.
On Sunday, as predicted, we got 6 inches of snow (followed by four days of cold - BooHoo). We attended online church. Most of us dressed up for the occasion. Lydia even found a new dress in her closet that I had bought on clearance at the end of the season. We had ham, cheesy hash brown casserole, kale, our traditional egg-shaped fruit pizza, and banana cream brownies. That was followed by an Easter nap for some of us and watching The Lego Movie 2.
We made sock bunnies. I managed to come up with all the supplies without going to the store!
Hot cross buns...and Gatorade... for communion. I forgot to buy grape juice.
No fancy egg dying kits this year, just whatever food coloring we had on hand.
Caught the kids discussing where they'd spotted each other's Easter eggs.
She couldn't resist temptation any longer!
Cold hard cash? Yes, please!
Don't forget to "wash your paws".
The kids love finding coupons for staying up past bedtime, getting out of a chore, and extra screen time.
We are in our third week of distance learning now, and we've been mostly-home for a full month. I feel like life has come to a screeching halt. But time hasn't - it keeps moving on without us. Every day I wake up and it takes me a few seconds to remember that we are in the midst of perhaps the greatest global tragedy of our lifetime. And every night I tuck my kids into bed, and Reggie asks the same question he always does - "What are we doing tomorrow?" - as if he expects a different answer.
A long time ago, I picked up a book off the library's discharge rack because the cover caught my attention. I had good intentions of using it for a read-aloud, which we sometimes do at breakfast. I finally pulled it off our shelf in the early days of our stay-at-home experience, and we have been enjoying it here and there. The book is The Junction of Sunshine and Lucky by Holly Schindler. In the book, a girl's school is closed and she has to attend a new school. She decides she is only going to allow herself to miss three things about her old school. The home school teacher in me decided this would make a good writing assignment, and my kids clearly miss their friends more than anything else.
Me? Here's what I miss:
1. I miss watching my kids play sports. I really, really miss this.
2. I miss getting together with extended family. Even though we live far away from family and don't see them in our regular daily lives, this still makes my list of three. My parents go south for the winter, and they have now made it home safely. But we haven't seen them since Thanksgiving. We were planning to get together for Easter with Bryan's parents, but we had to cancel our gathering.
3. I miss "field trips". I really like the days off and summer days when we spend the day at the park or the beach or the museum. As of right now, we are not even allowed to use the park in our neighborhood. I'm really struggling to think about how we might possibly do summer without outings!
To answer your question, Reggie, tomorrow, we are going to make the best of it. And by God's grace we will press on through this hardship together.
Reggie's old bike endured one too many collisions last fall. So glad we found this gently-used one at a local bike shop.
A few days before Bryan's birthday, the kids asked him what "kind" of birthday he wanted to have. Bryan sarcastically said, "a coronavirus birthday". So we got him a coronavirus DQ ice cream cake. We also got take-out from a local Mexican restaurant.
The kids made posters and gifts. Reggie thought about what his dad likes and decided to build him a beer mug out of Lego. Brett likes to give out "coupons" for various services. Bryan turned in his coupon for one big kiss.
The coronavirus is stretching us to be creative and stripping us down to the essence of what matters. It might just teach us a few things.
...was what will be remembered as the last day that life still resembled normal. Bryan went to work before we were up. We were on spring break, so we spent the day mostly at home doing laundry, etc. Bryan had meetings that evening, so all the kids came with me to what turned out to be Brett's last basketball practice.
All of Brett's basketball season has been canceled. This year was exciting for him because he had made it to the "B" team, which plays full court. The last two years, he had played on the half-court team that plays 3-on-3. March 11th was the last day of the NBA season, and the sports world imploded from there. Bryan came home that night and told me wrestling would be canceled. I didn't believe him. Thursday, I took the boys to the barber (for the last time in the foreseeable future) and Lydia had what turned out to be her last piano lesson (in the foreseeable future). Reggie's wrestling season was essentially canceled. There is still a ray of hope that NYWA may host an open state tournament at a later date. The NCAA canceled March Madness, and the wrestling championship. It was going to be held in Minneapolis this year, and I had bought tickets to surprise Bryan for his birthday.
Friday, Bryan's parents came to visit, and we made plans to gather for Easter. That won't be happening. I'm so glad they came when they did. Church was canceled on Sunday morning, and that is when our governor would officially cancel school statewide for two weeks. The two weeks was to be a time for schools to plan for "distance learning". In a matter of four days, everything in our calendar other than medical appointments had been canceled.
By Wednesday the 18th, the therapy and medical appointments shifted to virtual appointments. Reggie's wrestling school (that he does year-round) had also moved to an online format, and track, baseball and softball seasons have been postponed indefinitely. It was also the last day that Bryan went to the office. He set up a temporary office in a corner of Brett's bedroom, which is located where he will not be as distracted during the day.
We've kept busy at home. We made traditional St. Patrick's Day food and sugar cookies.
We play games almost every day. The kids have been playing with Lego a lot.
For the next week, we felt pretty free to move about while practicing "social distancing". Bryan or I would do our shopping without much thought and we'd go to the various parks in our area. We did two things we have never done since we've had kids: got pizza delivered to our house and drove through Culver's for ice cream sundaes. The kids and I went to pick up our meat order from our farmer and detoured to a state park over an hour away. But I was starting to feel a bit anxious about things like letting the kids go into the gas station to use the bathroom (because the ones at the state park were locked).
Things that seemed strange or foreign even a few weeks ago have started to feel common place - conducting almost all of our business online, including appointments and attending church in our living room. We've even attended a virtual birthday party, which turned out to be a bit of a bummer (no cake!).
Meanwhile, schools were crazy busy preparing for distance learning. The middle school set up a drive-through delivery for kids who needed chrome books. At the elementary level, bags with two week's worth of school work, books, and supplies were assembled and delivered via the bus routes.
On Friday, March 27th, the governor's order to "stay-at-home" went into effect. Initially, it was for two weeks, but he is already saying it will likely be extended until May. Since then, we have barely left the neighborhood. The kids have seemed to settle into life at a slower pace and essentially only having each other to interact with. I mean, 90% of it is fighting, but I still believe it would be harder for children without siblings. Tag on spring break, and they have had a full four weeks of being each other's best/only in-person friends. It warms my heart when, after being tucked in for the night, I can still hear them calling each other on their Alexa devices! They officially started their distance learning on Monday, and we'll just say it's had it's ups and downs. I will write more about that later.
This post is not meant to minimize all the suffering and hardship that is happening worldwide. I am very well aware that our lives have been relatively unscathed thus far, and for that I am grateful. But this blog is a journal recording our family experiences, and nothing more.
