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Why My Children Are Not Part of the ‘Lost Covid Generation’
The fifth-largest school district in the nation, Clark County School District in Las Vegas, NV, has been closed since March 16 of this year. And when the governor initially signed the order to close schools, it was to be for two weeks. The notice sent to parents said, in part, “This closure will continue through Monday, April 13, which includes the already scheduled Spring Break.”
But instead of just two weeks of halted instruction, Las Vegas students have now been out of the classroom for 269 days. And although there has been “school” for the last few months, it would be a very hard case to make that students are getting the education they signed up for.
NPR recently aired a report in which they discussed the “lost Covid generation,” which is the term UNICEF has used to describe the effects of school closures due to Covid. The report states that students worldwide have lost an average of 47 days of instruction this year. And, no doubt, that could have harmful effects on children everywhere.
As I listened to the report, I couldn’t help but think about how grateful I am that my children’s education has not been impacted or interrupted one iota due to Covid.
We homeschool. We have homeschooled since my eldest child’s first day of school. Our schedule has remained the same throughout this interesting and uncertain year. Our homeschool was not delayed last school year and the start of this year was not delayed either.
There are many benefits to homeschooling, and the one I find myself talking about most often is the freedom of it. We are free to choose our own curriculum(s), determine our own daily, weekly, monthly, and yearly schedule, take breaks whenever we decide, go on field trips or vacations at any time, slow down or speed up if needed, and structure lessons according to each individual child. But given the current situation of education in this nation, what I am most grateful for right now is the great amount of consistency homeschool provides.
On March 16, when every school in this valley closed its doors, our lessons did not skip a beat. As parents, students, teachers, and school staff in Las Vegas wondered when schools would return or how it would be structured, and as any of the other hundreds of unanswered questions lingered, my children and I have had none of those concerns for our homeschool.
I have watched as the Clark County School District hosts meeting after virtual meeting to discuss the ideas and options for the kids in this city, always ending with the same decision: keep learning online. And I have watched as parent after parent, beyond frustrated with the Board of Trustees, give distant learning a try and then pull their kid(s) from public school.
Honestly, I think this pandemic and CCSD’s (and many other school districts) response to it, has simply exposed underlying issues with public education that already existed, but were hidden for decades. But that’s another essay for another time.
Here in the Bridges Brood Academy, we finished term one of the 2020-2021 school year yesterday. Today we’ll do quick, simple exams and break until January. We finished only three days “behind schedule” and that is simply due to my giving my children a day off here and there to play outside when the weather was too good to pass up.
There are innumerable benefits to homeschooling, but right now, when it seems that the whole world has gone mad and when all that lingers is uncertainty, I am most grateful for the consistency of our homeschool. And I’m grateful that my children won’t be counted as part of the “lost Covid generation.”
Now, if only I could convince more parents to join us!
Published in Education
Very good, very encouraging article, Jessi! I wish you every success in your own project and in persuading other parents to follow your example.
While we homeschool as well, there is much that my teeenagers have missed this past year, including (but not limited to) church youth group and the choir that they’re part of.
And then, of course, simple things like just hanging out with friends. The continued shut-down of all the activities they used to take part in is doing a number on them.
So yeah, continuing schooling is great. But there’s so much more that our kids are being denied.
We homeschooled our three with good results. All three are now adults, two are engineers, the youngest is a CAD/CAM tech, and planning to finish his engineering degree.
You homeschool, yet you and all other angry parents are still paying the property taxes that support the Unionized Teachers and Public Schools which have ruined life for so many who simply do not have the resources to homeschool.
Your area is heavily dependent on travel and tourism, which are all but destroyed; the vast majority of those hospitality employees who lost their livelihoods due to actions of Government, in the main simply cannot homeschool their children. Their kids are the ones whose future lives and earning potential have been adversely affected by the government shutdowns of the economy. I just read an article in my local (Seattle area) news that nearly 45% of area restaurants are not expected to make it through 2021. And our local governments, and the Restaurant Association, are begging the federal government to support them.
I saw your Instagram post about this and made a mental note to ask you to write this. But here it is! Thank you!!!
The school shutdowns are why teachers should be one of the earliest groups to get vaccinated so we can get kids back into school. While there are many good homeschoolers out there, the problem is that many kids are not getting much homeschooling nor does zoom seem to work for kids.
Fortunately, in the State of Nevada, there is no income tax and property taxes are low, and sales taxes have been low as well. The State, and the schools, are mostly funded by revenue from casinos. Although there may thus be significant shortfalls in tax revenues currently.
This has definitely been a challenge for us as well. We’ve had to be more intentional about getting together with other families so our kids are with other kids. Thankfully our church has not adjusted anything so aside from Sunday worship, we still meet biweekly with other families for activities and have fellowship nights. But I imagine things are a bit harder for teenagers especially when it comes to programs and sports and those sorts of things.
The whole things is one giant infuriating mess. Our governor has shown himself to be incredibly incompetent and extremely ignorant when it comes to the economy of this city and its future. I said on day one of the shut down that he was signing Vegas’ death warrant. I honestly cannot see how we survive this in any meaningful way, short term or long term.
True, for now. But if the Democrats have their way, I don’t think this will last. And thanks to the droves of liberal Californians who have taken over Clark County in recent years, we are bluer than I have ever experienced since I moved here 27 years ago.
And the left doesn’t want to shut down just charter schools, they want to end home-schooling too.
Unfortunately, homeschooling isn’t an option for many families. Both parents work outside the home, so there’s no one there to teach. We had a go at lockdown teaching with our grandson. Wow. Teaching is not our gift. And now the lad has moved a couple of hours away from us, so that’s not an option anymore, either.
How much you wanna bet that will change with the pandemic? Gotta get that dolla, dolla bill.
Nationwide, six times as many teenagers have killed themselves since the start of this madness, as have died from COVID. And one in four teenagers has seriously thought of suicide.
Considering how few teens die from Wuhan Flu this is unsurprising. In fact so few have died from WuFlu that I am not sure of having six times the number of deaths from suicide as from Covid means that we are seeing an upsurge in teen suicides. It might even mean teen suicide rates have dropped.
I have been very encouraged, and I may write something about this soon, by the number of families who before all of this always told me they could never homeschool because [fill in the blank] who have since made it work. That includes working moms, moms who thought they didn’t have the skills needed to teacher their children, and those who moved in to their current home specifically to send their children to a particular school to name a few. I think it’s more feasible than many families are/were willing to admit. It just takes some creativity and work in most cases.
These sorts of consequences are absolutely heartbreaking. This is not okay.