Thursday, March 19, 2020

’How do I plan a lesson?’ A teacher’s guide for parents reluctantly homeschooling their kids. - The Washington Post

’How do I plan a lesson?’ A teacher’s guide for parents reluctantly homeschooling their kids. - The Washington Post

‘How do I plan a lesson?’ A teacher’s guide for parents reluctantly homeschooling their kids.
‘What if my kids won’t listen to me?’




Parents nationwide find themselves serving as teachers of their own children — some of them reluctantly — with most of the nation’s schools closed amid the coronavirus pandemic.
Many schools are sending home packets of work and moving to online education, but most parents aren’t trained as educators. In addition, researchers have warned parents in the past that getting too involved with homework can hurt their children’s academic achievement because they don’t always know the right way to approach it. Parents have no choice at the moment, but there is often tension between children and parents when they work on schoolwork together.


Here is a practical guide for parents who are doubling as teachers at the moment, written by educator and author Roxanna Elden.
Elden combines 11 years of experience as a public school teacher with a decade of speaking about education issues. Her first book, the nonfiction “See Me After Class: Advice for Teachers by Teachers,” is widely used for teacher training. Her debut novel, “Adequate Yearly Progress,” follows a diverse group of educators in an urban high school as their professional lives affect their personal lives and vice versa.
By Roxanna Elden
I’m often disappointed at how little my teaching experience prepared me for parenting. Eleven years in front of the classroom has done nothing for my skills at managing supermarket tantrums, getting a toddler to finish a yogurt in less than two hours, or reliably getting dirty clothes placed into the hamper.
So now, as school districts around the country announce coronavirus-related shutdowns, I’m no more excited than any other parent about becoming my kids’ full-time teacher until … whenever. In this one small corner of our new parenting normal, however, instructional experience offers an edge. At the very least, I’ve been able answer some of the questions raised by non-teacher parent friends as they prepare for the unasked-for career change ahead. Here are a few.

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