1. 17 year old, 12th grade. I count on him to do his own work, besides which, he has already been accepted to college, and I doubt they are going to rescind his admission over whatever assignments he has to do during this coronavirus time. I am more worried at this point about him finishing his Eagle Scout project, which he has until May to complete. He is still going out to the woods to work on it a few days a week, and I think he is coming up to the end, but the suspension of the meetings and everything has come at an inconvenient time.
2. 16 yr old, 10th grade. I'm trusting him to do his own work too. He did approach me with an Algebra II question the other day, which I was a little apprehensive of being able to answer, but fortunately it was about the graphing of functions, which I can do.
3. 13 yr old, 7th grade. He goes to school online regularly anyway, so I am used to having to oversee him, though he does not maintain quite the pace or workload I would like him to carry. I do most of his math with him. The other classes I mostly let him try to do on his own, and only intervene when he gets a 50 or 60 on an assignment and has to do it over. In my humbled state I take some mild pride in being able to work English compositions that he has gotten a 40 on up to a 90 or even sometimes a 100, despite the rather clunky directions on the grading rubric ("in the conclusion paragraph, I clearly included a reflection that reveals what the protagonist learned or how the protagonist changed"). My kid may not have any instinctive idea of the shape an essay is supposed to take, but by gosh, I do!
4. 10 yr old, 5th grade. The elementary school teachers have taken a two week hiatus to try to figure how they are going to this distance learning, though a few general admonitions have been sent home (read 20 minutes a day! Review the spelling lists! Math worksheets!) This kid is actually pretty conscientious about keeping up. He did come to me for help on one of the math exercises.
5. 8 yr old, 3rd grade. The school is still working on the plan. I am having her read me a chapter of Charlotte's Web (which I had never read before) every day. I would have her read more, as I enjoy this, but I am actually rather busy during the day. There is a lot of housework (laundry, dishes) to do with everyone being home, I have to make something in the pot for dinner, and I am still going to work every afternoon, though for how long remains to be seen. I am also still trying to get out and take a thirty minute walk every day, which I am supposed to be doing as part of my heart rehab. When I get home from work at midnight I read a little of my current book (Bleak House, which I thought might be long enough to outlast the quarantine, but now I'm not so sure), and watch about a half hour of whatever movie I happen to be on. I can sleep in the morning until 9 or so now, as opposed to having to get up at seven when regular school is in session.
6. 5 yr old, pre-school. I'm supposed to be teaching her how to read, but it isn't going too well so far. She has a pretty good grasp of the letters and a few very short words, but working all the way through to a second consonant remains a bit of a challenge. She is also probably watching too much TV. I am sending them out into the yard a little bit, though it isn't quite warm enough to play outside calmly for an extended period. Everybody needs more attention. I'm probably taking it too much for granted that no one is going to get sick.
I doubtless am writing all of these posts out of some amount of anxiety and dread (and also boredom, and disbelief, and other more excusable reactions), though I do not feel as depressed (yet) as I have at times in the past. Whatever difficulties are looming, it is not quite clear to me at least what form they are exactly going to take, and it certainly appears that they are going to be broadly shared. Maybe they will be very terrible indeed, of course. Sometimes in these kinds of crises it becomes clear to people what their role is and what exactly they are supposed to do (right now a lot of people seem to be auditioning for a role as Leader in the Crisis in various ways who are not quite however suited for it), though this is not characteristically how thinks go with me. The main thing I am worried about at the moment, for whatever reason, is that my oldest son isn't going to make it to college in the fall, and maybe won't end up being able to go. It is entirely possible that circumstances will force him to have to do something else which ultimately would do him just as much good, somehow, but as I am not able to envision what that might be I cannot be easy about it.
A couple of years back when I was very depressed something that cheered me up in the dark winter evenings was that out the window of my office I could see, in the distance, the twinkling lights and ski trails of a mountain in the distance where, that particular year, one of my children would go on Friday nights with a group from his school. Since that time I have always taken note of it in remembrance of that difficult winter. Of course, for the past two weeks, it has gone dark, which is obviously not a great tragedy in comparison with all that is going on, but it is something palpably melancholy that has made an impression on me. I find myself looking in the direction of the mountain quite a lot now and wondering when it will be lit again, and even if I will be around to see it...That is enough for today.
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