BETHESDA, Md. — With public schools across the DMV closed for at least two weeks to try and mitigate coronavirus spread, parents are finding themselves tackling a new role, as homeschool educators.
Across D.C., Maryland and Virginia, more than two million kids in public school are now at home. WUSA9 visited with one of them to see how students are handling their new routines.
Fifth-grader Della McCahill uses FaceTime to stay in touch with her classmates, while still practicing social distancing. McCahill chatted with three fellow classmates from Bannockburn and Chevy Chase Elementary schools, trying to make sense of their "new normal."
"t’s really nerve-wracking, because I never said goodbye to Mrs. Ray properly," McCahill said, reflecting on those finals days she had at school.
Parents have set up so-called "triage" classrooms in their home basements. They say they are satisfied with the lesson plans Montgomery County Public Schools provide online, but it does involve a bit of guesswork of what lessons to prioritize. In short, education these days is a bit of semi-organized chaos.
"Today I did, it was like this poem thing and you do a topic," fifth-grader Natalie Issac said on the FaceTime chat.
"Today I did the lunar landing thing," replied McCahill.
With help from their parents, these students made their own class schedule, reading books they checked out before the libraries closed.
"The scheduling really helps the kids keep expectations into a structure that they’re used to at school," parent Erika Satloff said. "Most of the school work these counties are putting up is in theory, review, so I haven’t been putting tons of pressure on learning, learning, learning. We’re trying to make it a bit fun. We’re doing science experiments."
For these fifth graders, school recess has been replaced by taking outdoor strolls to open fields and creeks, while trying (and sometimes failing) to maintain social distance.
