My name is Lindsey Miller. I am a SAC member as well as a mom in recovery and have been part of this MORE Study since the beginning. I have two daughters Phoenix and Olivia. Currently I am dealing with all the struggles of remote learning.
Olivia is seven and in second grade and I decided, for various health reasons, that she should do total remote learning from home. When COVID first hit she finished the year through remote learning which wasn’t too bad. Then when school opened again this year, it was total chaos right from the beginning. It wasn’t until days before the official start date did we get word on how things were going to go. Everything was going to be 100% remote learning on the computer along with Google meets which were set up once daily. It wasn’t easy but we were finally getting the hang of it.
Then, on Friday, October 16 at about 9 PM, I received an email from a new teacher at another elementary school in town stating that she would now be Olivia’s new remote learning teacher because her teacher was needed for the “hybrid” students to go back to school. My email address was given wrong, so I should’ve received an email on Monday and not Friday because Friday was the day that the new supplies were to be picked up at the school at 1 PM which I had now missed. Now everything is changed yet again. They are expected to do work on the computer as well as written work and it is to be turned into the school every Friday in exchange for new work for the following week. They expect a morning meeting from 8:45 to 9 AM (which always goes over), a title 1 meeting from 10 to 10:30 AM, and then a small group meeting from 1:00 to 1:30 PM, and in the middle of all of that, work on the assignments for the day and somehow still have a life! I did not go to school to be a teacher and this is not what I expected my life would turn into. Olivia does not know how to run a computer and, honestly, I don’t want her to fully at this age so I literally have to sit there with her the whole time as well as when she is doing paper assignments because she cannot read the directions and gets distracted very easily! Also having a 23-month-old toddler at home makes it for an extreme challenge! We are in the middle of a pandemic!!!
I can’t imagine what the parents that work are doing or how they are dealing with all of this? I never in my life thought that this was something that we would be dealing with, but we are and as a mom in recovery I do my very best on a daily basis. Olivia’s education is very, very important to me, and I am doing everything I can to keep both of my children happy and healthy during these challenging times!! Thank you for your time to read this!!