Pandemic Homeschool Diaries – Running Starts and Wrap Ups
It has been ten weeks since the schools closed, and all talk of establishing a “new normal” has died down, replaced the daily grind of normal pandemic homeschooling. I didn’t even have anything new to write about last week as we just keep on truckin – in place. This week, though, I’m starting to get some end of the school year vibes as some things start wrapping up and planning for next year gets started.
Running Start
The biggest news of the past week, and big chunk of our time, has to do with Running Start. We had multiple online conferences, watched informational videos, and filled out lots of paperwork. My daughter even learned how to digitally sign a pdf. And at the end of it all, my daughter was registered as a Running Start student at the community college next fall. She will take Chinese and English 101 there, and then return to high school for math and science. She’s pretty excited to be a college student.
College Life Lessons
There’s a major life lesson in this experience. I’m not sure that my daughter has actually figured it out, yet. But I can tell that her brain is chewing on the edges of the idea, because the other day she commented that she will have gone to three schools in three years even though we never moved.
She went to one school for freshman year and had to transfer when the new high school opened and boundary lines were redrawn.
Her freshman year, she didn’t really even try to connect with her school community. She didn’t join any teams or clubs and made almost no attempt to make friends, even though she’s an extrovert. She had decided there was no point, since she would only be there one year. Although she excelled academically, it felt like she wasted the year.
This year, she threw herself into her “real” high school. She joined the student council and the Asian Student Union, formed a tight-knit group of friends, and had a blast. Until the schools shut down. Even before the pandemic abbreviated her on-campus experience, she knew she would be spending time at the community college next year.
By senior year she may be off campus entirely (again). Her high school experience bears no resemblance to the classic image of going to one school with the same bunch of friends for four years. On one hand, that’s sad. But on the other, it’s partly a result of her own choices, because the Happy Days mold doesn’t fit anyway. I’m not sure that she has quite internalized the idea that change is the only constant, and that it’s not necessarily bad. But she’s getting there.
Looking Forward to Middle School
While my teen was signing up for college classes, my tween was getting sorted for middle school. She attended an online orientation and picked electives for the first time. At her middle school, students get 2 electives each semester.
One of the four is supposed to be PE unless you get a waiver(where you submit that your out-of-school physical activities are an adequate substitute for PE). Like her mother before her, my daughter really didn’t want to take PE. But since we don’t know whether soccer will be a possibility in the fall, she decided not to do a PE waiver. She chose the yoga version of PE instead of the regular class.
She asked for a full year of art class and one semester of journalism (aka, the school newspaper). As back-ups in case her choices are full, she chose theater and leadership.
Wrapping Up Chinese History
My teen really didn’t like the very old, college-level history book that I assigned with the Arsenal Military Academy-inspired history unit. And it was way over my fifth grader’s head. But rather than give in, she is now reading it out loud to me. Every paragraph or so, we stop and discuss to make sure she understands. We’re getting through a page or two each day and might finish the chapter by the end of the school year.
But aside from that, both girls have completed the unit. Along the way, they researched and learned about the establishment of the Chinese Republic, the May 4 Movement, early Chinese cinema, footbinding, the Meiji Restoration, and badass women in Chinese and Japanese history. I had a lot of fun. The girls were not quite as enthusiastic as I had hoped. But they both gave it a general thumbs up.
My oldest suggested more activities and less desk-sitting. When pressed, she came up with ideas like making some of the food they ate in the show and doing some of the training exercises from the military academy. These would not, strictly speaking, contribute to any learning targets for history class, but they aren’t without value.
Wrapping up 4th Grade Math
Just when we had decided to break formation and do Khan Academy instead of the easier math assignments, my younger daughter’s math teacher announced that he had presented all of the fourth grade material. For the rest of the school year, they’ll be doing fifth grade math. That still doesn’t get her up to the level she was supposed to achieve in advanced math this year, but it’s an improvement.
Superior Sonnets
I mentioned earlier that we’re following Patrick Stewart’s readings of Shakespeare’s sonnets on Instagram. I had started to regret that choice, since the first couple weeks of sonnets were just exhortations to breed. But with Sonnet 17’s pondering of whether verse is futile in preserving beauty, things started looking up. Sonnet 18 is the famous “summer day.” And since then, they’ve been a bit more interesting, talking about love and beauty with the wit and wordplay that we expect from Shakespeare. I’m particularly fond of the linked pair of 27 and 28 that deal with sleeplessness.
COVID Count
On Friday, May 29, King County reported a total of 7,923 confirmed COVID cases and 562 deaths.
About The Author
GD
I'm a freelance writer in Seattle specializing in parenting, arts and the environment.