Homeschooling Got A Bad Rap This Year. For Some Kids, It's A Game Changer
When my son’s school moved online in March, I, like many parents, hated it. There were too many moving parts, and I was overwhelmed trying to figure out things like where and when we were supposed to log in, in between attempting to get my own work done, as a freelance writer.
My nine-year-old doesn’t know how to type, so completing assignments online took him forever. We don’t have a printer, meaning that I had to copy out the worksheets his teacher posted by hand so he could fill them out, which also took forever. On top of all that, I wondered just how much he could be getting out of it. Surely one hour of online teaching per day was a weak substitute for hours and hours of in-class learning?
I assumed my son felt the same way as I did about distance learning. To my surprise, he actually loved it. He missed his friends, of course, but for him there ended up being a lot of upsides.
Some of the positives were predictable: There was no morning rush to get ready and catch the bus. The condensed schedule meant he had hours of free time to do whatever he wanted. And he got a hot home-cooked lunch every day. Some were more unexpected, like the fact that being able to fidget or idly play with LEGO or even get up and walk around during lessons was actually hugely beneficial to him, both from sensory-seeking and learning perspectives.
I’d always known my son processed information better when he was physically active, but my focus as a parent had been on helping him try to adapt to the classroom, to learn to sit still. Now that the learning environment had accidentally adapted itself to his needs, he was thriving. Previously a reluctant reader, by the end of June, he’d jumped several reading levels in the span of a few months. When I spoke to other parents about my son’s surprising appreciation of learning at home, I found out he wasn’t the only one.
Sabrina Holland, a former high school English teacher who currently works as a technology director for an...
